Motorola Edge+ Verizon Price And Exclusivity Will Make It A Hard Sell

Motorola hasn't launched a premium flagship since the Motorola Z3 Force in 2017 (the 2018 Motorola Z3 had 2017 specs). It may finally be breaking that cycle tomorrow when it announces the Motorola Edge and Motorola Edge+. Only one of those, however, will be the actual premium device. That might not matter much to most consumers, however, because you'll only be able to buy it from Verizon and at a price you probably will be hard-pressed to accept.

Let's get this out of the way quickly. According to a prematurely published announcement, the Motorola Edge+ is practically the modern-day version of Moto's old DROID line. In other words, it will be more powerful than the regular model, a Verizon exclusive, and have a higher price tag. In this case, the latter amounts to $1,000.

On a purely technical basis, that $1,000 may be easy to justify. Based on the accidental leak, the Motorola Edge+ will stand head to head with this year's high-end phones, powered by a Snapdragon 865 5G with 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256 GB of UFS 3.0 storage. The "Edge" name comes from its curved edge screen, something relatively new to Motorola but not to the rest of the smartphone market.

The Motorola Edge+ is priced competitively and is on the same level as the Samsung Galaxy S20 (not the S20 Ultra, of course) and the OnePlus 8. The difference is that Motorola doesn't exactly have a proven track record in recent years when it comes to updating its phones or being committed to its products. It's definitely not new to the game but it will be asking for a lot of faith and trust it has yet to earn back.

That might be moot for everyone outside of Verizon anyway. Those will be stuck with a mid-range Motorola Edge running on a Snapdragon 765 with slightly lower specs and probably still a high price. At that point, many will probably consider getting a OnePlus 8 if they don't have much loyalty to the Motorola brand.