Motorola Edge 60 Neo - the arrival of Android 16

I recently reviewed the Edge 60 Neo here on my blog with all the drill-down, nitty-gritty, but it was still on Android 15. I think it's worth revisiting a few weeks later now, as Android 16 just arrived for it. I had already seen Android 16 running on a Moto as depicted in my other, recent Motorola Signature review. As I said at the time, the Signature is indeed a bit of a step-up from the Edge 60 Neo, but it's dinky little brother does have some benefits of its own, despite the price being significantly less.

The Android 16 OTA download today was 2.14GB and seems to have installed nicely with February Google Security Patches hiking it from January's. Thankfully nothing has changed with the excellent Always on Display after Android 16 - the first thing I look for! It's truly 'always on' (unlike some far-east OEM's definition of the term)! It remains the best AoD you can get on a phone at the moment. It’s nice and big and bright (and doesn’t even kick-down a notch like the Razr phones, making them just in second place for me) when it thinks it’s not needed. And the cherry on the cake is that Peek Display remains, in tandem, also with an Icon Tap for a pop-up window as Notifications come in. So yes - the big clock, hollow when ‘at rest’ and solid when new stuff is waiting - remains. Date, day, month. Weather icon with a splash of colour for a brief look, nice big battery % in figures (and an icon) underneath. The aforementioned Notifications icons - it’s simply the best (as Tina Turner might have said)!

One of the benefits of the Neo over the Signature is a longer-lasting battery. Not that the Signature's 5,200mAh battery performs badly - it's just that it has more to do. More screen to drive, faster chipset to serve, more RAM and so on - so it's bound to have more impact on everyday use. Furthermore, the Signature's battery is a Si-C one, whereas the Edge 60 Neo's is not, thereby demonstrating very clearly to me that, even with the same mAh capacity of 5,200, the little phone is likely to do better. Si-C or not. And it does.

The battery performance under Android 16 has been tested now and I think it can retain its 'champ' status. There's no significant difference that I can see in performance, either with my screen-on 10% Reading Test nor average daily use. Figures remain staggeringly good, dropping only to 99% (and 49% from 50% start) after about 52 minutes. My previous record was the Pixel 9 with 44 minutes. I keep retesting that and it doesn’t shift - almost exactly the same 52 minutes each time I do it, even now with Android 16. I can get well into Day 2 before charging again - but no, certainly not Day 3 like some of those Moto 'Power' models - and now, no doubt the giant Si-C units being put into phones from the far-east.

I am aware of some reviewers suggesting that TurboPower with the 68W brick takes significantly longer to work with the phone since Android 16, but I really haven't detected that here - so your mileage may vary on that one. I don't actually have a 68W Moto charger but I do have a 125W one and a UGreen 100W GaN brick and they seem to work for me just as they did before. If there's something that needs fixing there I'm sure that Moto will be onto it with upcoming updates in due course!

It's quite hard to detect incremental adjustments and improvements often, particularly when one had no complaints before, but maybe across the UI things feel a bit more snappy - animations more fluid, but maybe I'm looking for it too! The optical fingerprint scanner seems to work as it did before - so no, not as well as the Signature's ultrasonic one, but, as I said in my Edge 60 Neo review, a little better than the 50 Neo's.

There are some 'core' changes which come with Android 16, baked into the system by Google which all devices running the OS will get. Notification Cooldown, for example, which prevents one's phone from making a noise and jumping around when receiving a barrage of messages! Be careful with that one as it's on by default - though to be fair you do get a warning and link to turn it off. Advanced Protection is there for anti-phishing, theft detection and spam filtering, though Moto's own Security suite has for a long time now been robust.

I like the fact that Moto have, somehow, gone their own way and rejected some of the Material 3 Expressive elements that Google have been pushing out. I don't want my battery percentage in a battery icon thank you - so great that Moto have kept the option as it was. I don't want an Apple style Control Centre - I like the (more) traditional way that the Notification Shade swipe-down works, though for those who want it, it can be turned on. They call it "Modern style". I guess even Moto think that Apple is 'modern'! I like how HelloUI looked. We don't need change for change's sake and Moto have done well here leaving stuff out and offering options. The way Android was supposed to be.

So why does the Edge 60 Neo hold Pole Position for me when I have so many other options to choose from? Well, physically, it's the perfect balance of size and weight for viewing, using one-handed, popping in a pocket and it's also robust with IP68/IP69/MIL-STD-810H. The P-OLED screen is bright, colourful and vibrant. It gets 5 OS Updates and 5 years of security (although there is now some question, which needs clarity, about the 5 years of security actually being 4). There's plenty of storage (for most people), loads of RAM and as far as I'm concerned a perfectly good camera setup - with "macro" too. The speakers' output is great with a decent soundstage too, the fingerprint scanner is good enough, improved over the 50 Neo and when used in tandem with face unlock and lift to wake isn't needed much of the time anyway. A nice big battery, well-performing, with Qi Charging and fast wired if needed. And to top it all off, full access to the Smart Connect system. Oh and did I mention that it has the best AoD there is, on any phone?! Take all that into account and actually, on some counts, even the flagship Signature can't beat it.

I do love my little Neo (and the one before it). It might not be as powerful and capable as many out there, but for the price and for me, the feature set and benefits are unique. And haven't been ruined by this Android 16 update, unlike some!