I wrote a 5000-word review of the original ThinkPhone here on my Blog, kindly loaned by Ben Wood of the Mobile Phone Museum and I have been able to compare it as I've gone along, not just with other Motorola devices but also hardware from other manufacturers in the Android world and beyond. So I was very keen to see this new release. Hopefully I can get my hands on one of the new units soon so that I can put them head-to-head. In the meantime, here are my expectant thoughts!
The new ThinkPhone is pretty much an armour-plated Motorola Edge 50 Neo (here's a blow-by-blow comparison at GSMArena), but how does it compare with the first ThinkPhone? As discussed on our Phones Show Chat Podcast, the first huge difference is that the release-price is about half! The original was £899 (and difficult to get outside of business/educational circles at first) whereas the new one is pitched right down at £449. So much more affordable and a smart move by Lenovorola! But there's more to it than that. In some ways the new is clearly not as premium as the old, though updated in others.
It's also lighter - perhaps partly because the new one, like the Edge 50 Neo, has a plastic frame where the original was all cool and gorgeous aluminium! The plastic hasn't deterred from the robustness however, with the same MIL-STD-810H compliance and IP6/8 and the back is similarly Aramid Fibre. Gorilla Glass 7i is used for the new one - "advanced toughness for intermediate devices" with claims for the same protection, pretty much, of the more premium Victus on the original ThinkPhone.
What has been added to the new unit is eSIM capability, whereas the original had just physical nanoSIM available. Aimed at business environments and remote management from IT departments, perhaps this will be a good move for those in control, along with the baked-in Walkie-Talkie functions.
Most people will raise an eyebrow at the chipset being not in keeping with the original ThinkPhone's SnapDragon 8+ Gen 1, or as one might expect by now an increase/improvement over that but, again, in line with the hardware specs of the Edge 50 Neo - an arguably lesser MediaTek Dimensity 7300. I'm no expert here but yes, most people who have been running benchmark checks on the two chipsets are clearly showing that in most of them, the SnapDragon is ahead and more powerful. Having said that, there's also clear evidence that the new one is more power-efficient - and all the time I've had the original ThinkPhone here, I have now and then considered that power efficiency was not its strongest point (even though performance is). Not terrible, by any means, but I'm guessing that the Dimensity will have been chosen, yes, to reduce cost, but also to give (particularly) corporate users more power between charges, out on the road and in the air!
Other corners cut include the uMPC storage instead of UFS, but again, long-lasting performance with a guaranteed 5 OS updates (Android 14-19) and security updates to 2030 mean that components need to be built to last. The ThinkPhone was given 3 OS updates (Android 13-16)and 4 years of security, incidentally. USB 3.1 with HDMI-Out by cable has gone on the new model, a feature that I have often used on the original. The move is towards wireless connectivity of course, so more shaving can be executed here to reduce cost and arguably not impact the end-users much, they, armed with the whole Smart Connect software which, to be fair, works flawlessly in my tests wirelessly too. Both phones can be plugged into a PC via USB-C to connect to the Moto Smart Connect software, regardless of HDMI. WiFi is the same 6e, Bluetooth hiked from 5.2 to 5.4, same under-glass optical fingerprint scanner, NFC and GPS etc.
The camera has also been improved, again, identical to the Edge 50 Neo - notably the addition of a 3x zoom secondary 10MP f2 lens with OIS which doesn't exist at all on the older model. The main 50MP f1.8 shooter looks to be pretty much the same on both (neither having the f1.4 wider aperture of some Moto models) and the 13MP f2.2 wide-angle with AF making for decent close-ups. You don't get the ThinkPhone's 8K video shooting on the ThinkPhone25 but the 32MP Selfie shooter is all-but the same on both models.
Both phones have stereo speakers. One of them doubling up as an earpiece for phone calls and the other bottom-firing. I'm hoping that the newer phone will sound better than the old one, which has never been that powerful/optimised. The Neo range of Moto Edge phones, however, has always had very good speaker output and so I'm hoping, yes, that following the same hardware components, the new ThinkPhone will sound better than the old for media playback.
Because the phone is physically smaller, they have not been able to match the original's 5000mAh battery, but as mentioned above, hopefully with the chipset efficiencies, all will be good in that department. The new one (and Edge 50 Neo) has a 4,310mAh unit. They do both have 68W wired charging, with a TurboPower brick in the box, and 15W wireless for overnight charging.
The elephant in the room however, for me, is the missing programmable button on the left side, red accent in keeping with other Think products, it's just gone! That's a real shame as I can't imagine people supplied with this phone not making use of it. But perhaps I'm wrong. I have it assigned to play/pause music but the user can assign it to pretty much any function they like. I guess that again this is a shaving to hit a price-point or maybe I'm wrong and the firms market research declared it an underused feature.
Anyway, needless to say, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this unit as soon as I can, hoping it won't this time be locked into enterprize/educational channels. I get the distinct impression that this time it's going on open sale, by Moto's blurb and website positioning etc. So fingers crossed and hopefully I'll be back soon with a full comparison - maybe even a 3-way with the Edge 50 Neo!
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