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. 

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. 

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. 

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.