Motorola One Zoom is the most beautiful phone I’ve seen in years

I did not expect this at all. 

Lenovo’s Motorola launched a new mid-range phone at IFA Berlin, and it changes the game in several ways. First, it has a powerful, quad camera on the back, which is really nice for a phone that only costs $449.99. 

But even more striking is the phone’s design. On the front, it’s just another phone with a waterdrop notch — nothing fancy but not too bad, either. On the back, the four cameras are placed symmetrically, inside an unapologetically large bump that also sports a glowing Motorola logo. The bump is a dark shade of gray with a silver outline — a perfect match for the phone’s brushed gunmetal back. It makes me want to have this phone just for its look, which hasn’t happened since forever. 

Image: STAN SCHROEDER/MASHABLE

Maybe it’s just me, seeing imaginary things. Or, maybe it’s the fact that this phone comes at a time when Apple is about to launch a new iPhone with a rear camera bump that — judging by the leaks, rumors and renders — hits all the wrong spots. The design of Motorola One Zoom just feels right — I keep imagining an iPhone with a glowing Apple logo below a nice, centrally placed, symmetrical camera array, and it’s the kind of phone I’d gladly (OK, slightly less reluctantly) dish out a thousands bucks for. 

Image: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

Enough about the design; let’s talk about those cameras. I haven’t had time to test them out, but the specs are impressive. A 48-megapixel main sensor which collates pixels to produce bright, 12-megapixel photos, is coupled with a 16-megapixel wide angle sensor, an 8-megapixel telephoto one with 3x optical zoom and a 5-megapixel depth sensor. On the front, the 25-megapixel camera that can also produce quad pixel, 6.25-megapixel photos in low light conditions, should be enough to take some decent selfies. The only thing missing (and it is quite a big omission) is 4K video recording on the rear camera; oddly, the front camera can take 4K video at 30fps. 

Image: STAN SCHROEDER/MASHABLE

The rest of the specs are flat in mid-range territory: A 6.4-inch, 2,340×1,080 pixel OLED screen, Snapdragon 675 processor, 4GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a 4,000mAh battery and Android 9 Pie. A headphone jack is included, too. 

At $450, the Motorola One Zoom is not the best bang for the buck, specs-wise; that honor goes to Xiaomi. But it’s still a fair deal cheaper than many flagships, with its killer looks and awesome camera specs, it should find its way to quite a few buyers.