The smartphone experience on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion

Using the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion proved to be an excellent experience for me, personally. Starting from the basics, this is a really good phone: all the calls I initiated or received were of top-notch quality. The signal reception was good, and the voices of those with whom I was talking were clear and loud. I didn’t have any complaints from them either.

I have only good things to say about the screen. It’s an exquisite piece of technology, and everything on it looks beautiful. As far as I can tell, the pOLED display used by the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is one of the best I’ve seen, and it’s comparable to the ones found on even the most expensive flagships. The billion-plus colors are vivid, and the contrast is excellent in any condition. Furthermore, the maximum brightness can reach a very high level, making the screen visible even in direct sunlight. Oh, and if you’re watching videos and movies on your smartphone, you should know that the panel used by the Edge 30 Fusion supports HDR10+, making everything look nicer but also more realistic.

Watching videos on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion

The audio is another aspect that impressed me. Considering that the Edge 30 Fusion is not Motorola’s flagship (that’s the Edge 30 Ultra), I expected to get an average listening experience from it. However, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. The Edge 30 Fusion is quite outstanding: the maximum volume is very loud, but neither the bottom loudspeaker nor the top ear speaker distorts the sound. For a smartphone, this is as good as it gets.

Playing games on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion was also a very satisfying experience. The Snapdragon 888+ chipset is one of the best for that, offering excellent performance even in the most demanding mobile games. I’ve tried The Elder Scrolls: Blades, Asphalt 9, and Diablo Immortal. Even on the highest available graphics quality settings, I didn’t notice any lag or stuttering, and the number of frames per second was high enough for everything to look smooth.

Playing games on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is a pleasure

Navigating through the user interface was a fine experience, too. The powerful chipset paired with the adaptive refresh rate of the display makes everything smooth and fluent. Just like in games, there’s no lag or stuttering whatsoever. Launching apps is fast, as is switching between them.

The optical fingerprint sensor found under the display is also excellent: fast and accurate. Unlike other phones, the Edge 30 Fusion never asked me to press my finger longer to recognize the fingerprint.

Last but not least, battery life is good too: its 4400 mAh managed to keep me going for about a day and a half. However, you should know that I’m not an avid consumer of mobile content, meaning I don’t regularly use my smartphone for gaming or permanently staying online on social networks, for example. My routine involves reading news and other articles, chatting, and speaking with family and friends. If you’re playing mobile games or watching videos often, the battery endurance will be lower, but it should get you through a whole day. And, if you think about how fast charging the Edge 30 Fusion is, things look great. I’ve measured the time it takes to fully charge it with the bundled 68 Watts charger, and I found out that it only needs 42 minutes!

Motorola Edge 30 Fusion 68W fast charging (100% in 42 minutes)

The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is not just an average mid-range smartphone; it’s an excellent one! The display is beautiful and very responsive, and the last generation flagship-level chipset is really powerful, making the smartphone great not only for daily use, as well as for demanding apps and games.

The camera experience on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion

NOTE: For optimization purposes, the pictures in this review are resized. If you want to see the full-sized original photos and videos I shot with the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion, open this gallery:

The Camera app offered by Motorola is well organized and easy to use. Just like on all other Motorola phones, the app gives you access to all the standard shooting modes such as HDR, Portrait, Macro, Night vision, Panorama, or Pro (including settings for white balance, ISO mode, shutter speed, etc.). You can swiftly switch between all the common shooting modes by swiping on the screen, and you can also access the more specialized ones by going to the More section. Furthermore, you can further adjust each shooting mode by dragging a small line-shaped button on the viewfinder.

The Camera app on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion

Moving on to the photo quality, the main camera is excellent for a smartphone with this price tag. In daylight or anywhere else where the lighting conditions are great, both the main wide camera and the ultrawide one shoot perfectly acceptable photographs. With the main one, the details are plenty, and the colors look natural. With the ultrawide camera, which is also used for macro photography, I noticed a bit more noise, and the colors are not an exact match to what you get from the main camera. Also, with the latter, the colors seem a bit less vivid. However, in the end, both cameras are excellent for a mid-range device such as this one.

Wide vs. ultrawide camera photo comparison

Low-light photography is also relatively OK. Contrast and detail are good, especially where lights are involved, but could be better in the darker areas of the shots captured. On the other hand, the noise level is acceptable for a mid-range smartphone such as the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion.

Low-light photo sample took with the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion

Selfies are of good quality, both the skin tone and texture being fairly accurate and with good detail.

Selfie sample shot with the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion

The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion does well in terms of video recording too. The colors look natural, the contrast is good, and image stabilization works as it should. The smartphone can go up to 4K and 60 frames per second using both OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) and EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization). OIS is available on the main camera, while the others use EIS. The main camera can go even higher in terms of recording resolution, up to 8K, but only at 30 fps. Here’s a relatively static video I took in 8K resolution:

And here’s a sample of a video with movement, that I recorded in 4K at 60 frames per second with image stabilization turned on:

The cameras offered by the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion are excellent for a mid-range Android device. The photographs you take with it are great in daylight and above average in low light. The smartphone also does quite well when recording videos, offering high resolution and a high number of frames per second without compromising image quality.

Android 12 and bundled apps

Motorola Edge 30 Fusion comes with Android 12 and a user interface that’s largely unchanged from the standard set by Google for this operating system. There are just a few, let’s say significant, changes to the default Android interface. They include a series of personalized themes and widgets, some new fonts, and a couple of additional icon shapes. In short, if you want something very similar to the stock version of Android, but Google’s Pixel phones are not to your liking, the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion will certainly be.

In terms of manufacturer support and updates, Motorola says that it will deliver up to two operating system updates and three years of security updates. That theoretically means that, although the Edge 30 Fusion is shipped with Android 12, it will get Android 13 and Android 14 during its lifetime.

User interface and apps on the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion

In addition to the default Google apps, the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion also comes with the following apps:

• Device Help - gives you hints and tips on how to use the smartphone and helps you fix potential issues you might encounter.
• Games - a gaming hub that lists all your games and allows you to customize some settings while playing, like what notifications you get, whether phone calls are blocked, or what gestures are disabled.
• Interactive wallpapers - gives you access to some dynamic wallpapers created by Motorola.
• Moto - helps you configure and customize your Motorola Edge 30 Fusion.
• Motorola Notifications - useful if you want to subscribe or unsubscribe from Motorola notifications about special offers, news, troubleshooting tips, etc.
• Ready For - a feature of select Motorola Android devices that lets you connect your smartphone to a screen or computer using Wi-Fi. Similar to Samsung DEX, Motorola’s Ready For lets you access and use your smartphone as a desktop PC, stream apps, share files, and so on.

Using the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion on a Windows 11 PC

The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is one of the few smartphones on the market that gives you a clean user interface that’s as close to stock Android as you can get. I like that, and I appreciate the fact that there aren’t many bundled apps on it. Also, the Ready For feature is excellent and can prove useful to many people.

Performance in benchmarks

In this review, we’ve seen how the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion looks, what it’s like using it, and what software it offers. We also got an idea about how powerful it is, but we didn’t yet see exactly how much performance you really get from it. For that, we have benchmarks:

The first one I ran was Geekbench, a benchmark that measures the processor's performance both on single-core and multi-core. The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion got impressive results: the Single-Core score was 1136 points, and the Multi-Core one was 1797 points. These numbers are huge, putting the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion on the same step of the ranking ladder as the Samsung Galaxy S22!

Motorola Edge 30 Fusion benchmark results in Geekbench 5

Next, I ran 3DMark’s Wild Life and Sling Shot tests to see how good the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is for gaming. In Wild Life, it scored 5848 points, while in Sling Shot, it maxed out. These are again impressive results, showing that the smartphone can run any game without issues, even at maxed graphics settings. Although it’s behind the Samsung Galaxy S22, the scores show that the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is slightly better than a Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G.

Motorola Edge 30 Fusion benchmark results in 3DMark

Next, I moved on to PCMark for Android. This app can measure the performance and battery life in real-world scenarios when using your smartphone to browse the web, work with Office apps, and so on. The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion scored 14069 points in the Work 3.0 performance test and could run the Work 3.0 battery life for 11 hours and 28 minutes. Excellent result for performance and above average in terms of battery life.

Motorola Edge 30 Fusion benchmark results in PCMark

In the end, I wanted to see how fast the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is when transferring data over Wi-Fi. I own a 1 Gbps internet connection, but it only gets to about 750 Mbps in reality, both on Wi-Fi 6 and on Ethernet. I’ve tested the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion using Ookla’s Speedtest, and the result was a download speed of 715 Mbps and a 512 Mbps upload speed. These are outstanding results!

Motorola Edge 30 Fusion benchmark result in Speedtest

The Motorola Edge 30 Fusion is one of the best Android smartphones you can get today. Although positioned as a mid-ranger, the truth is that it offers performance similar to or not far behind many flagships.

Do you like the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion?

Now you know that the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion has become one of my favorites. And what’s there not to like about it? It looks classy, it offers a clean user interface, good cameras, and top-notch performance. What do you think? Are you considering buying the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion? Let me know in the comments section below.