Motorola Edge 70 Fusion review: Mind-blowing battery life

Motorola's Edge family of phones is a little complex, with the standard Edge 70 an ultra-slim model to rival the iPhone Air, and the Edge 70 Pro the new Edge flagship model – now that the highest-spec model has been repositioned as the Motorola Signature.

The Edge 70 Fusion – yet another entry in this range – continues to be a mid-range model, packed into a body that's very similar to the Edge 70 Pro mentioned above, but making a few key sacrifices to hit its mid-range price.

There are also two versions of the fusion: one has a smaller battery (5200mAh), while the other has a far larger one (at 7000mAh – as on test here). There's only a £10 difference in price, so it's a no-brainer to pick the biggie.

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Price & Availability

The Motorola Edge 70 Fusion (7000mAh) is available now from a wide range of retailers, with an RRP of £379.99 for the 8/256GB config – which is the only option available. It's not currently available in the USA, but retails at €439.99 in Europe.

At the time of writing it is discounted to £329.99 in the UK, with free Moto Buds Loop included, worth an extra £129.99. That's a sweet deal.

Motorola Edge 70 Fusion vs Edge 60 Fusion: What's new?

• Big battery option
• Switch from MediaTek to Qualcomm
• Main camera sensor updated
• Display is brighter

At a glance the Edge 60 Fusion and the Edge 70 Fusion offer the same sort of design, just with the annual switch to a different selection of Pantone colourways. The finish and materials are essentially the same.

The big difference is the option for the 7000mAh battery over the 5200mAh battery of the previous generation. That sees the Edge 70 Fusion a little thicker and 15g heavier, but that's easily a trade-off that's worth making.

There's a move from MediaTek hardware to Snapdragon 7s Gen 3, while the display moves to 5200 nits peak brightness (up from 4500 nits) and offers a 144Hz refresh rate (but only when gaming).

Finally, there's a new Sony Lytia 710 sensor for the main camera, which is an incremental change rather than anything hugely meaningful.

Design & Display

• 6.78-inch AMOLED display
  • Corning Gorilla Glass 7i
  • 2772 x 1272 pixel resolution
  • 144Hz maximum refresh rate
• Plastic frame, Nylon or linen inspired back with Pantone colours
  • IP69 protection
  • 193g; 7.95mm thick

Motorola's design feels like it's been set in stone. A textured back, curving towards the edges, meeting a display that curves into the frame too. The highlight of this design is those Pantone colours and the textures, with Motorola doing (almost) everything it can to avoid offering a phone with a glass back in boring colours.

As such, the Edge 70 Fusion is a Nylon or linen effect, meaning it has texture that other phones lack. That brings grip and distinction, leaving the fingerprints to glossy phones like the Samsung Galaxy A57, while coming in Pantone Silhouette (pictured here).

Unfortunately, this big battery version only comes in the one colour, while the 5200mAh version comes in the striking Pantone Orient Blue, Pantone Country Air and Pantone Sporting Green too – all of which are admittedly more exciting.

The camera remains in the top left-hand corner, with what looks like four lenses on display. There's a bit of an aspirational upsell here, because only two are actual cameras.

The 6.78-inch display continues Motorola's trend of throwing everything it can at the screen. The curved edges are a little retro by modern standards. Most rivals are flat, so it's arguably a little dated in design, but the specs certainly are not – especially at this price.

There's high-resolution for detail, with a standard refresh rate that runs up to 120Hz in normal use, while 144Hz is supported in compatible games. There's a really high touch sampling rate for responsiveness, while the brightness is plentiful.

Before we all get excited about that brightness, however, it's worth considering that this only applies to HDR content. That will come through UltraHDR images in Google Photos, but a quick examination of Netflix revealed no content listed with HDR support.

With that said, the display on the Edge 70 Fusion is nice and rich with great colours, so content, in general, looks really good. You might not think this is a mid-range phone as a result.

Performance & Battery

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3
• 7000mAh battery, 68W wired charging

Mid-range phones are potentially a bigger battleground than flagship models right now, because there are variations in pricing and the hardware you'll get. For example, the Nothing Phone (4a) uses Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 at around the same price, while Motorola is using hardware that's a generation older.

It has also shifted from MediaTek Dimensity used in the previous model, but the important point here is that the Snapdragon 7 series hardware performs really well. There's little that marks it out as mid-range in daily use, if you make one important settings tweak.

The shortcoming of Edge 70 Fusion is that it's limited to 8GB RAM. It offers a RAM extension option by utilising some of the storage (which is off by default), but I set this to the max, adding 12GB, which seemed to improve the overall performance.

I've used the Edge 70 Fusion for a full range of apps and tasks and it's just been smooth sailing, with the only performance issues I'd call out related to the connectivity. While testing, I found it had a tendency to drop off Wi-Fi for no discernible reason, while it also disconnected a number of calls unexpectedly.

I found that playing intensive matches of Call of Duty Mobile was rewarding enough, and while it won't match flagship devices it still made for a great experience – with only the curves of the display letting the side down for gamers.

The battery life is stellar, though. This is a hugely capacious battery and, as a result, I found the phone would last through two days easily. Finding that your device is still in the high 90% range after lunch never gets boring, so I was happy to not even charge it every night.

When plugged in, it will support 68W charging. This isn't the fastest that Motorola offers – the Signature supports 90W charging – but it's still faster than most of the big brands. There's no wireless charging support though, which isn't a surprise.

Camera Performance

• Double rear camera:
  • Main: 50-megapixels, f/1.8 aperture, Sony Lytia 710, autofocus (AF), stabilisation (OIS)
  • Ultrawide: 13-megapixels, f/2.2
• Front: 32-megapixels, f/2.2

Aside from the battery, Motorola pushes the main camera experience as the focus for this device. Packing in 50-megapixels with an f/1.8 aperture, it's a typical setup for this type of phone, aided by a 13-megapixel ultrawide lens in support.

There's no zoom camera on this phone, though, instead leaning on sensor-cropping to provide 2x zoom – with digital zoom out to 10x, by which point the photos are mush, so best avoided.

Meanwhile, the ultrawide powers the 0.5x photos, as well as the close-up macro feature, benefitting from the f/2.2 aperture for a wider depth of field than the main camera (so more appears in focus – unless you're particularly close to subject).

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The main camera puts up a good performance in most conditions offering bright and colourful images. There's a choice of styles, including one you can customise, which uses AI to pick a tone you prefer. Staying true to the actual scene doesn't seem to be the consideration – just getting good-looking results is.

The low-light performance is average, but images look reasonable when using the night mode – not that it can hold a candle to the Google Pixel 10a.

The ultrawide is thankfully pretty good, with a colour tone that's close to the main camera, although I found it could be a little inconsistent. There's noticeable chromatic aberation on the ultrawide (with purple lines along contrasty edges, for example), but otherwise it's good for this price – which is a rarity.

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Moving to the front camera and you'll be able to snap reasonable selfies. However, I found that it overexposes in brighter conditions, leaving some highlights blown out. There's a useful Portrait mode, but it turns on face smoothing by default, so it's worth tapping that back off if you want to look like, well, you. The edge detection is a little woolly, too, blurring the edge between subject and background and lacking precision.

In terms of video, there's Motorola's clever horizon lock feature (which limits capture to 1080p), but it downgrades the quality fairly substantially. It's a shame, because it's really effective as a feature, but the results just aren't good enough – especially when in dim conditions. Stick to the 4K capture to get the best results.

Software & AI

• Android 16 with Hello UI
  • 3 years OS updates, 5 years security updates

If you've been keeping up with Motorola's devices over the past year, you'll know that the company has made a big step towards owning the software experience through its Hello UI interface. While previous Motorola phones were praised for being close to stock Android – that being Google's baseline operating system – that's now less the case.

The cause of that is the injection of artificial intelligence (AI) features. Google's own AI services (through Gemini) don't seem to be enough for Motorola, with the addition of Moto AI that turns to Perplexity, CoPilot and Gemini to provide its answers. You have to login to access it, however, which is where it feels like Motorola gatekeeping the experience to a certain extent.

I'm not opposed to the AI, per se, but am the implementation here. There's a universal AI search now sitting in the apps tray, so you might think you're just going to search for an app, but you're entering a multi-functional search space instead, which is messy and a big diversion from the Android norm. I've found Moto AI to generally be slower than using a straight Gemini for general AI interactions.

Changes to the apps tray also come in the form of a newsfeed (which you can switch off), while the lockscreen also wants to serve up "content" (which can also be switched off

This layers into a device that prompts you into installing bloatware through the setup process, with some preinstalled apps unavoidable, yet uninstallable. For the seasoned Android owner, most of these things can be stepped around, but if you're less familiar with smartphones, don't just say yes to everything.

Step away from that and the Moto Edge 70 Fusion runs Android 16 out of the box, but only offers 3 years of software updates. The sting is taken out of this by the 5 years of security updates that are offered, which is average for a mid-range device, but can't match the Pixel 10a (7 years), or the Samsung Galaxy A57 (6 years) for longevity.

Motorola Edge 70 Fusion review: Verdict

Motorola's Fusion model has always been about value for money. In this case, it's also about bona fide battery life – and I'd ensure you only consider buying the 7000mAh model in particular for excellent performance.

The Edge Fusion 70 is the sort of phone that will get you through a weekend (or the longest night out of your life) without a charger. That's a rare thing indeed, marking this handset apart from its core competition.

The hardware positions this phone as a mid-range device, but there's plenty enough power to keep it ticking along, for a smooth day-to-day experience. That's hampered slightly by some of Motorola's software additions, but with some effort you can turn most of those off.

Overall, then, Motorola's Edge Fusion 70 delivers some big wins from its huge battery, decent screen, and workable camera duo. There are some nitpicks, but you'll largely forget about those thanks to how long it lasts per charge – which is the real appeal.

Also Consider

The best phone in this category is the Google Pixel 10a, which has a better user experience with cleaner software and longer support. It also offers a better overall camera experience, although the battery is nowhere near as impressive and the smaller screen can't compete – especially considering the price difference.

The mainstream Android alternative is the Samsung Galaxy A57, which offers One UI with longer software support, but otherwise matches the Motorola on the specs fairly closely – except for the Motorola's massive battery upsell, of course.