Motorola Edge 30 Ultra 5G

Excellent flagship phone, superior functionality but lacking some features – This is my review of the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra 5G, model XT2241-2. This is a great Android phone. I will include what has influenced me to buy this phone. My previous phone was an Oppo, over 4 years old and it was time to update to 5G. So with that I did online research on this Australian model. It was a choice between the Oppo A98 5G and the Motorola XT2241-2.

I was looking for an Unlocked Active Dual SIM 5G phone with plenty of 12 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of ROM storage. My budget was under $700. Finally it was the hugely discounted price which had influenced me to buy this Motorola model because it is considered to be a flagship. In August of 2023 Officeworks and JB Hi-fi were offering this Motorola XT2241-2 at half price, reduced from $1,397 down to $697.   Before I purchased my new 5G smart phone I did my online research on Australian websites on Australian model phones eg. Cybershack. This website provides detailed information with in depth analytics, testing, results, advice and opinion of Android smart phones.

I'm using this phone updated to Android 13. The display is excellent and pOLED, offering bright HD and Ultra HD, 4K & 8k, HDR10+. I don't like the curved edges on the display because when I try to select something from the very edge of the left hand side of the screen it feels odd to my fingertip. The cameras are also excellent offering wide 200MP, ultra-wide and macro, portrait and telephoto and video upto 8K @ 30 fps. 

The processor is an Qualcomm SD8+ Gen 1. It is reported to exceed tests because it is one of the fastest 2022 processors.

Physical connectivity with USB-C (v 3.1)  is also referred to as a digital headset jack (although it doesn't have a 3.5mm headphone jack) because you would connect earbuds to USB-C or Bluetooth. 

• USB-C earbuds are included in the box • A 125w wall charger is included • USB-C cable included (108cm length) is included

I wanted to update my charging cables to power delivery (PD) cables. So I purchased a high quality Baseus, Cafule Series,100w data cable USB-C (200cm long) which is suitable for very fast data transfer and fast charging. And for fast charging in my car I purchased a Baseus 160W Car Charger with QC5 ( model TZCCZM-0G ).

This USB-C is superfast charging and for this this Motorola needs to stay switched On to charge. And you could also connect this Motorola to your smart tv with suitable HDMI cables which you would have to buy separately (although I haven't tried this). 

Setting up to migrate from my old phone to this new Motorola phone was easy using a physical connection with USB-C. The Motorola phone offered me choices in what I needed to transfer from my old phone. So I transferred some gigabytes including all of my music and PDF files, photos and contact numbers and it was very fast.

In using the dual SIMs, I use OPTUS as the first SIM and Telstra (as a backup) the second SIM. I use these 2 mobile network operators because these are the only 2 available in my regional town. I only have SIM plans for 4G.   • To access 5G you will need to buy a 5G mobile Access plan (providing 5G mobile is offered in the area where you will be using this 5G phone).   But if you don't want to pay the extra for a 5G Access mobile SIM plan then this phone will function well on a 4G mobile SIM plan ( it can even do 2G & 3G). This phone offers optional settings for cellular connectivity.

This phone offers calls in HD voLTE which are carrier dependent. And built-in stereo speakers also sound great with Dolby although they could have been a tad louder. This Motorola phone also offers settings for wi-fi calling.

Other connectivity with this phone is Wi-Fi 6E. This standard adds support for 6GHz spectrum, plus faster wireless speeds and lower latencies. But you'll need a new router and Wi-Fi 6E-compatible devices to tap into those new airwaves.

Not all of my devices connect with Wi-Fi 6E. I have some older smart devices which had paired fine with the old wi-fi versions so this Motorola phone provides optional settings for this. 

I use SIM plans with 120gb of mobile data download per month with download speeds over 100mbps. This phone has a reliable hotspot connection which connects to my 8yr old Panasonic smart TV, my 12yr old MacBook Air and to my new Sony Blu-ray player and allows for fast data hotspot connections and fast streaming (This mobile data download has been reliable and very fast in my area, over 100mbps, so I didn't need to have the home NBN anymore).    My other reason for purchasing this Motorola phone was its reported signal strength. I live in eastern regional Australia. On an overcast day this phone can detect 2 other mobile bases even though their signal is weak. However, I travelled to another regional town and on a sunny day this Motorola phone was able to detect 7 other mobile base stations, even those with weak signals. This Motorola has been reported to contain seven antennae and to give excellent signal strength. Overall it should be a good city, suburbs and regional use phone.

For testing of signal strength I've installed and used the app Network Cell Info Lite. For signal strength analytics I used the RAW page. So this app shows that this Motorola phone is also able to receive weak signals, i.e. Reference Signal Received Power, over minus -100 dBm. But those kind of weak RSRP signals could be unreliable or unusable.

RSRP - The reference signal is not the same signal that carries your data.

Indications of signal performance - For RSRP, -80 dBm is an excellent signal whereas -100 dBm is no signal.

However, mobile coverage outcomes can be influenced by a number of factors such as location, local terrain, distance from the base station, number of concurrent users and other physical obstacles such as trees and buildings (including their internal structure) that may degrade the quality of signal being received from the nearest mobile base station. Or if you're using a mobile phone in a mobile blackspot area this can also give a poor signal. ( In that case you might need a suitable legal mobile booster, external antenna for your home or car, to be professionally installed so as to improve your phone's signal ). 

The other 3 things I don't like about this model is that it doesn't have a built-in FM tuner for radio. And it also doesn't have its own media player. This is annoying because Motorola advise to install some radio and youtube apps from Google Play. The other thing I don't like is that this phone doesn't come with a slot for a micro SD card. These limitations and inadequacies are not acceptable for this Motorola flagship phone. 

Other connectivity with this Motorola phone has been good because it connects well to my car's infotainment system with a USB cable eg. I use Google maps for street directions and this phone also connects well with Android Auto and Bluetooth v 5.2. And great for playing my HQ music or video files while I use VLC media player.

• This Motorola phone also has 50w Qi charging but you will need to buy your own Qi charger separately. 

Security has been boosted with Android 13 and with this Motorola  XT2241-2. Security ID biometrics include face recognition and fingerprint sensor on the front. For added security and precautions you will have to navigate through a lot of 'permissions' to allow for functionality for almost everything in this phone. 

I'm hoping that this Motorola phone I've purchased will be reliable for me to get at least 4 years use out of it, I don't know. I tend to drop my phone quite a lot so I've purchased (separately) and fitted a black protective heavy duty Armor case (also called a shockproof cover) made of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) which is a bit more tougher than the clear cover included in the box.

Although this phone does lack some features I did get used to that however it's still is an exceptional phone. But if this Motorola phone didn't have such a huge mark down in price I would've bought the Oppo A98 5G instead because it's under $700 and it's also has dual Active SIMs and also has built-in stereo speakers .