GoKawiilI've quickly become a little obsessed with the look of the new Motorola Edge for 2026 during my brief hands-on time with it so far. The $600 phone's new and noticeably lighter design feels great in the hand. The Pantone martini olive green color shade is emblazoned on a smooth texture that Motorola describes as "twill-inspired." The 6.3-inch display -- now with rounded corners instead of last year's curved edges -- gives the phone a more relaxed, easier-on-the-eyes appearance.
It's the design refresh I'd like to see more often on new handsets, especially if they're expecting us to pay a premium for them. A lot of the phones we've seen in 2026 so far look the same as their 2025 counterparts, and are getting a lot more expensive to boot, with $100 or even $200 price hikes. By comparison, the 2026 Edge is $50 more expensive at launch than its predecessor.
The phone has a 6.3-inch display with rounded corners, but only 128GB of storage. René Ramos/CNET
Instead, I quite like that Motorola's Edge phone is leaving the more staid gray and black colors behind in favor of this look, accented with gold around the camera bump and the side rails. The phone's 160-gram weight also makes it one of the lighter phones out there for its overall size. That's including a three-camera array with a 10-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3x optical zoom alongside 50-megapixel wide and ultrawide cameras. (For reference, Samsung's $900 Galaxy S26 weighs in a touch heavier at 167 grams, while the $500 Google Pixel 10A is 183 grams.
I'll need more time with the cameras to see how they perform in a variety of situations, but a few sample photos I took of the decorations around the office show plenty of color in a variety of items. For instance, the wide-angle camera captures plenty of detail and color throughout the Lego Death Star that's on display. When moving over to the telephoto lens, I'm able to use the 3x zoom to focus in on one of the scenes in the center.
Enlarge Image Taken with the Motorola Edge's 50-megapixel camera. Mike Sorrentino/CNET
The move to a 10-megapixel lens is slightly more noticeable -- there's some variance in the color shades of the red between the Lego photos and it's a little grainier -- but the camera gets the job done in terms of zooming into a scene without resorting to the digital zoom we commonly see on similarly priced phones that lack a telephoto camera.
Taken with the telephoto camera at 3x zoom on the Motorola Edge. Mike Sorrentino/CNET
The zoom is more effective in this simpler photo of a red dragon in the office, in which the telephoto camera is able to pick up quite a bit of detail by keeping its focus on the center of the image.
Taken on the wide camera of the Motorola Edge. Mike Sorrentino/CNET
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