Review: Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola

Last year, I said Motorola’s Edge 2022 felt like the “first good Motorola phone in a while.” Well, the company’s two for two now. Except this isn’t your usual Motorola smartphone—the Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is a collaborative effort between the smartphone company and its parent, specifically the Lenovo division with a cult-like following for its ThinkPad business laptops.

The guts feel the same as last year’s Motorola Edge, with improvements here and there, like an IP68 water-resistance rating to protect it from spills, pool dips, and rain and a flagship-grade processor to keep it running smoothly. It looks a whole lot smarter—classy, as Jim Halpert would put it—and there’s even a little red configurable button on the edge of the handset to synergize with the iconic red nub on Lenovo’s PCs. The ThinkPhone isn’t my first or second Android phone choice for most people. Still, if you don’t want a Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel, it’s a nice alternative, especially for anyone already rocking a ThinkPad.

Photograph: Motorola

I’m currently testing the ThinkPhone while using a ThinkPad, and although you don’t get any exclusive features when you pair the devices, it sure as heck feels nice to have a shared aesthetic. The ThinkPhone has Gorilla Glass Victus protecting the screen and an aluminum frame with an aramid fiber rear inlay that matches the weave design and soft-touch texture on the back of the ThinkPad. I'll keep saying synergy because I’m pretty sure that’s what the designers repeated in the drawing room.

There’s a red button on the top-left edge of the phone, and you can set a single press to whatever you want. I use mine to open Google Wallet. The downside is that you can’t configure the double-press. It forces open Motorola’s Ready For service, which you can use to cast your phone’s apps to nearby displays (along with some other functions). I will elaborate below. Naturally, the gestures you’ll find on every other Motorola phone are also present, so you can make a chopping action twice to turn on the flashlight or a double twist to launch the camera. They’re super handy, and I use them every day.

The Ready For feature is available on other Motorola phones, but it lets you pair the ThinkPhone with a PC to unlock perks like using your smartphone as a webcam, running Android apps in a virtual space on your laptop, responding to notifications, and sharing files. I mostly use it for universal copy and paste—like MacBooks and iPhones, you can copy something on your laptop and paste it on your phone (and vice versa). You don’t need a ThinkPad for this to work, just a Windows machine.

ThinkPads are known for their plethora of ports. The one I’m using has two USB-C ports, a headphone jack, an HDMI, and two USB-A ports. Weirdly, the ThinkPhone just has a single USB-C port and … nothing else. Not including a headphone jack or even a microSD card slot feels like a missed opportunity. At least you get 256 gigabytes of built-in storage, which is more than most phones at this price. Oh, and although it’s not always the case on Motorola phones, yes, there is an NFC sensor so you can make contactless payments.

I like the 6.6-inch screen. It’s large, but since the phone is more narrow than wide, it’s still easy to grasp. You’re treated to a 144-Hz OLED panel, which is plenty sharp, bright, and colorful—no complaints here. I set it to 120 Hz because that feels plenty fluid for me and saves a little battery life. Speaking of which, you get a 5,000-mAh battery cell that, even with higher-than-average use, comfortably lasted me two full days. Hooray!

OK, I do have one quibble with the screen. Motorola is just about the only Android phone maker to not offer an always-on display, which typically lets you see the time and notifications without having to pick up or touch the phone. Instead, Motorola employs Peek Display, which requires you to interact with the phone to see the clock and alerts. I get it, not everyone wants an always-on screen, but it’d be nice to have the option.

Motorola does buck the trend of not including a charger in the box by including … a 68-watt charger. A little overkill! It doesn’t recharge the phone scarily fast like a OnePlus handset, but it can recharge your ThinkPad; no need to lug around your bulky laptop charger. There’s also support for wireless charging on the ThinkPhone, which I always love to see. Yes, I’m lazy. I’d rather not fish for a cable in the dark before bed.

You don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to performance. Sure, the ThinkPhone is powered by last year’s flagship processor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, but it’s been delivering plenty of computing power for scheduling all my emails before my upcoming vacation, and even for taking out some baddies in Streets of Rage 4 when I’m killing time.

That leaves us with the camera system, which is this phone’s weakness. It’s by no means poor. I was able to snap some nice atmospheric photos at a Hiatus Kaiyote concert in Brooklyn last week with the 50-megapixel primary sensor. It’s capable, even in low light, though you need to use Motorola’s Night Vision mode and stay super still. The colors look natural, and there’s usually solid exposure. The ultrawide and selfie cameras are also serviceable, though I found the latter lackluster, as it picks up fewer details and my skin tone sometimes looks wonky.

The problem is that the Pixel 7A and Galaxy S23 offer a superior camera experience overall. In fact, those two phones are better in a lot more ways than just the camera. The Pixel has tons of helpful smarts, like Call Screen so you never have to deal with spam calls, and it’s $200 cheaper than the $699 ThinkPhone. The S23 has an extra telephoto camera, a super-bright display, and even better performance. Both also have more generous software update policies. The Pixel will get three Android OS upgrades and five years of security updates, while Samsung goes the extra mile with four OS upgrades.

Motorola is offering three OS upgrades and four years of security updates. That beats Motorola’s track record, but it’s not just about the number of updates. It’s about delivering them in a timely fashion, and Samsung and Google are much faster at this. Take the Edge from 2022. It’s still on Android 12, the version of Android it launched with, and has yet to receive Android 13. It’s great that Motorola is promising lengthier support windows, but I still don’t trust it to deliver them in a reasonable time frame.

The ThinkPhone is technically a business phone, but it’s available at Motorola and Lenovo for anyone to buy. Most people should stick to a Pixel or Samsung, maybe even a OnePlus, but if the above description appeals to you, I think you’ll have a fine time with this Lenovo/Motorola hybrid. Motorola has some ground to cover before it gets a top recommendation from me, but at least it’s on the right path.