Realistically, going beyond a 120Hz refresh rate on a smartphone quickly falls into diminishing returns, with users unlikely to notice any meaningful differences. So the 144Hz here may be overkill but it’s still as smooth as you’d expect, scrolling without stutters and hopping between apps seamlessly.
Brightness is another high point; the standard peak of 485cd/m2 is solid, but swapping to adaptive brightness and shining a torch on the light sensor pushed it to a fantastic 1,140cd/m2. HDR content gets nice and bright as well, hitting a searing 1,690cd/m2 in my testing.
READ NEXT: Best Android phones
Motorola Edge 50 Pro review: Performance and battery life
The 2.63GHz Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor used here is a fine platform but my testing showed it to be quite lacking compared to other options around this price.
In the Geekbench 6 benchmarks, the Nothing Phone (2) soared more than 50% ahead of the Motorola Edge 50 Pro in the single-core portion and 47% in the multi-core portion. Even the Google Pixel 8a, which is a fair bit cheaper, scored 49% and 42% better in the single and multi-core sections, respectively. That’s not a great look for Motorola.
Gaming performance feels pretty lacklustre as well. I was able to play Asphalt 9: Legends but the frame rate was noticeably choppy in places. I had a much smoother experience gaming on the Google Pixel 8a, as evidenced by its higher GFXBench results. The Nothing Phone (2) locked at 60fps when we tested it, but you only need to look at that stellar offscreen result to see the gaming power it has to offer.
I wasn’t thrilled with the Edge 50 Pro’s battery life, either. The result of 20hrs 50mins isn’t bad and should be enough to get you through a day of moderate use with no problems, but as you can see below, there’s better stamina to be had for this kind of money. The Nothing Phone (2) wipes the floor with the competition, but even the cheaper Google Pixel 8a lasts a few hours longer.
The saving grace here is the 125W charger that’s bundled in the box. Motorola claims that this plug can fill the battery from empty in just 18 minutes, and my testing gave me no reason to doubt that figure.
READ NEXT: Best mid-range phones
Motorola Edge 50 Pro review: Cameras
After some relatively disappointing results in the performance section, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro came out swinging in the camera testing. Most outstanding is the inclusion of a 10MP (f/2.0) 3x telephoto lens, which is particularly rare at this price – even the pricier Google Pixel 8 and Apple iPhone 15 lack telephoto cameras.
It’s a solid unit, too, plucking out great detail in the brickwork of the houses, and even producing some decent definition in the trees in the background.
It’s overshadowed by the telephoto lens but the 50MP main camera is a terrific shooter too, with optical image stabilisation (OIS) and a super-wide f/1.4 aperture delivering plenty of detail in the trees and houses.
While the colour balance in the above image is mostly fine, I did notice that going anywhere predominantly green resulted in the “Shot Optimisation” feature going rogue and ruining the image with blown-out highlights and massively overprocessed colours. This is very simple to turn off in the camera settings, and I’d highly recommend doing so if you enjoy nature shots.
Despite that wide aperture, the night mode is a little hit-and-miss; the artificial brightening is decent enough but it layers on a yellowish hue that distorts the rest of the colours, and the detail in the trees isn’t as good as it could be.
The 13MP (f/2.2) ultrawide camera is the weakest of the rear trio. Detail is reasonable and maintained well to the outer edges, but the colours are noticeably duller than the main lens and the contrast is a little too washed out.
My last gripe here is with the video. Footage is decent but it lacks the OIS of the main camera and there’s no option to shoot in 4K at 60fps. The Nothing Phone (2) offers both of these features, and both are something that I’d expect to see at this kind of price.
