ICYMI: We’ve come to the point where the best Motorola phones aren’t sold in the USA. Why is this iconic brand refusing to fight in the big leagues?
There’s a question on my mind. It has been a question of mine for years now. With the many releases of’s long-awaited flagships that turned out to be nothing more than higher mid-rangers, this question kept on bugging me more and more.
We’ve come to the point where the best Motorola phones aren’t sold in the USA. Actually, some of them aren’t present in Europe either. The illogical, for me, decisions of the Lenovo-owned brand have continuously led me to the question not many dare to ask: Is Motorola afraid of competing with the big boys? Is there a duopoly in the US market, or am I starting to imagine things or simply overthinking the mobile business yet again? What does the future hold for Motorola anyway? Here are my sincere thoughts as a long-time fan of the once American-owned legendary phone maker.Remember the? The 2013-released smartphone was the first Motorola with Android I ever owned. Under the brief ownership of Google, the iconic phone brand released great smartphones with a clean user interface, timely updates, no bugs or glitches, and a real brand identity design-wise. Then there was theBut it all went downhill since then, especially in the states. You must agree that despite a strong and loyal fanbase, Motorola cast itself as an outsider with forgettable marketing and devices and also risky ideas of modular phones which didn't stick.were supposed to give the brand a real shot at competing in the premium segment. But interesting design decisions, slim bodies, and Moto Mods were not what the consumer market needed.Samsung and Apple have paved the wayWell, we already mentioned the not-so-attractive marketing of the devices, but even if that wasn’t the case, the Motorola flagship had some much bigger fish to fry before becoming a contender for the crown. While offering a clean user interface with timely updates and unproblematic performance is necessary, areas like the camera department and battery performance seemed to ask you to make a compromise. For a flagship to be great, one should not sacrifice in any aspect.Unfortunately, to this day, Motorola is always behind with its camera systems. The Moto Z Hasselblad mod was simply a bandaid on a wound that needed at least ten stitches. The wound itself was the Moto Z phones' below-Apple and Samsung camera performance. And what about the Moto Mods? Steve Jobs once said, “Who wants a stylus”? Well, during the Moto Z era, I was asking myself who wants to stick thick mods to their phone. After years of disappointing sales of the Moto Z lineup, Motorola decided to pull the plug. Unfortunately, it only got worse.If a Motorola rep is reading this, they might be thinking, “What is this guy on about? We never took a hiatus from making flagships.” But they’ll be wrong. See, in the Moto Z years, Motorola didn’t release any other flagship phones in the states. And if you’re thinking the Moto Z lineup was their flagship lineup, and they kept on releasing new generations for years, you are correct. But at the same time, you are also very wrong. The Moto Z lineup had a huge flaw. Its idea limited the room for improvement in each new generation more and more. There were a total of four generations of Moto Z flagships, but guess what? These were all pretty much the same phone, at least from the outside. For the older Moto Mods to be able to work with each new generation or iteration of the Z phone, Motorola needed to keep the same design for years. This means the same size, the same shape, and even the same choice of materials. As you know, in the smartphone business no design lasts more than a year or two, and Motorola kept at it with its premium segment for four years! Four years of meaningful upgrades that were invisible to the public eye. Not everyone is a tech enthusiast who understands spec bumps and new innovative software features. In fact, most people don’t even know how much storage they have on their phones.You might be wondering why this is a problem considering that during these years Apple released the, which were also left with a very similar design and almost identical dimensions. Well, Motorola is no Apple. You have to have been producing the best smartphones in the business for years. You’ve got to have this reputation for great premium flagships and a mass of people invested in your ecosystem. Also, Apple’s design allowed it to make more iterations to the design while still using the same body, like adding cameras, sensors, and connectors. Motorola never had any of these traits. It didn’t have its own operating system, it never made the best smartphone there is, let alone making it more than once. The Moto Mods didn’t allow for a camera module redesign either. That’s why I called this the Motorola flagship hiatus. Was it that it simply misjudged the smartphone market during the time? Or was it a case of one being so hung up on something that left them clueless about what’s happening outside their bubble? Or was Motorola simply lazy?Here comes the current Motorola Edge era. I guess that after finally realizing the Moto Z series isn’t the real deal, the brand had to move on, but in what direction?from 2020 were nothing short of amazing-looking smartphones. These packed great specs, they were priced well and had good camera systems. So what went wrong? The answer is mostly the marketing of the series. Do you remember Motorola advertising these anywhere? Because I sure don’t. Or even if it did, the effort was simply low. There were also some questionable decisions, like having the smaller Motorola Edge phone use a less powerful processor and camera. While it made it the more affordable phone of the two, the price gap wasn’t that big in the end.So basically, if you bought the smaller Edge, you had to sacrifice not only in terms of size but also in terms of performance. And what about the Edge Plus? Well, this phone was a real flagship, and it also had a flagship price. But the problem is that unless you have a reputation for premium phones, you can’t price yours the same as your competition. If you want people to give you attention despite your poor marketing, you need to undercut rivals by a huge margin or produce a device with much better value-for-money ratio. That of course didn’t happen, and the first Motorola Edge phones were another two to be added to the brand’s ever-growing list of long-forgotten and unsuccessful flagship phones. Did Motorola fix its mistakes with the next generation of Edge phones? Well, unfortunately not. It actually got worse, again. While I’ve reviewed both the