motorola launched the signature, the company’s latest top-end smartphone in the new signature series, in India last week. This packs the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 SoC, has a 6.99 mm sleek design, and is India’s first smartphone with 24 x 7 exclusive privileges. Is the phone worth the price?
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- motorola signature 16GB + 1TB in PANTONE Martini Olive colour
- 90W turbo charger
- USB Type-C to-C cable
- SIM Ejector tool
- User manual
Display, Hardware and Design
Starting with the display, the motorola signature features a large 6.8-inch 1.5K 165Hz quad curved Extreme AMOLED screen with a pixel resolution of 2780 x 1264 pixels, 20:9 aspect ratio and a pixel density of about 446 PPI.
The display is bright, since it has up to 6200 nits peak brightness, and the sunlight legibility is good as well. The colours are vibrant as well since it has 100% DCI-P3 color gamut. This also has Pantone™ Validated Display and SkinTone™ accuracy, Dolby-powered Dynamic Video Enhancement, Smart Water Touch, advanced eye-care protections.
The 165Hz LTPO panel can go down to 1Hz. It has 360Hz touch sampling rate in gaming mode. It also has HDR+ and Dolby Vision support. The phone has Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection.
Under the display options there are different options to adjust colours from Natural, Radiant and Vivid colors. There is flicker prevention option in the settings. It doesn’t have notification LED, but there is Always on display.
It has a 50MP camera on the front. The earpiece is on the top edge. The phone has minimal bezels at the bottom of the screen.
The main highlight of the phone is its 6.99mm sleek design that you rarely see in a flagship phone. It has an Aircraft-grade aluminum frame with a matte finish that is premium in looks and feel. Despite the sleek look, it is solid to hold.
The volume rockers and the power button are present on the right side. The dedicated AI key is present on the left side. The dual SIM slot, USB Type-C 3.2 port and speaker grill are present on the right side. The secondary microphone is on the top, along with Dolby Atmos branding and a large secondary speaker. You can see the antenna bands.
The phone comes with military-grade durability with MIL-810H standard certification and also has IP68 + IP69 ratings for dust and water resistance.
The Martini Olive colour that we have has a golden-green hue with twill-inspired weave, and it also comes in Carbon colour that has a navy blue shade with a linen-inspired texture on the back. These look premium and feels like a fabric to touch and doesn’t attract fingerprints.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with 1/1.28″ Sony LYT-828 sensor, f/1.6 aperture, OIS
- 50MP 122° ultra-wide Auto focus camera with f/2.0 aperture, macro
- 50MP 3x telephoto camera with 1/1.56″ Sony LYT-600 sensor, OIS, 100x Super Zoom
- 50MP front-facing camera with 1/2.93″ Sony LYT-500 sensor, f/2.0 aperture
The camera UI is familiar with most Motorola smartphones that include quick toggles between the main camera, ultra-wide, and telephoto cameras on the bottom, quick toggles for flash, timer, aspect ratio, and more.
Other camera features include Scan, Night Vision, Panorama, Ultra-Res, Photo Booth, Long Exposure, Group Shot, Timelapse, and Dual Capture Video.
Coming to the image quality, the new Sony LYT-828 offers impressive images in all scenarios, including low-light. The 50MP autofocus ultra-wide camera is good as well, and the 50MP telephoto camera has a 71mm equivalent focal length, offering up to 3x optical zoom, but misses out on the telemacro option. You can shoot macro images from the telephoto, but can’t go too close. Compared to shooting macro with the ultra-wide camera, telephoto is better. The 3.5° Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) offers stable shots even in low light.
The portrait mode has specific “Humanistic” focal lengths (23mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm). The 50MP front camera does a good job and also offers good edge detection. For the price, the camera performance is brilliant.
Check out the camera samples.
It can record videos at 8K resolution at up to 30 fps and 4K resolution at up to 60 fps from the front and rear cameras and can also shoot Dolby Vision HDR from all the rear cameras. OIS does a good job in stabilization which is automatic. It offers 4K 120fps and FHD 240fps slow motion recording. There is no portrait video option.
Software, UI and Apps
Coming to the software, the phone runs on Android 16 with the January 2026 security patch, making it one of the first moto phones to run Android 16 out of the box. On top of Android 16, it has Hello UI, which is stock with added moto features. The company has promised 7 OS updates and 7 years of security updates for the phone, a first in a moto phone.
There is nothing to mention regarding the software in specific, since it offers stock Android 16 experience with added features. There are gestures such as Quick capture, Fast flashlight, Three-finger screenshot, Sidebar, Double press power key, Press and hold power button.
AI Features and Moto AI With the dedicated AI key on the left, the motorola signature puts Artificial Intelligence front and center. By default, a single press launches the “Moto AI” assistant, which acts as a system-wide helper, but this key is customizable to launch Copilot, Gemini, or Perplexity, which comes pre-installed.
Moto AI features are deeply integrated into Hello UI. The Magic Canvas allows you to generate unique wallpapers from text prompts, while Style Sync uses AI to create themes that match your outfit by analyzing a photo. The phone also utilizes the NPU on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 for on-device processing, enabling features like AI Notification Summaries which group and summarize long streams of alerts, and Smart Connect, which uses AI to predict and optimize connection strength between the phone and PC/tablet peripherals.
moto ai 2.0 can be accessed dedicated AI key offering
- Next Move contextual suggestions that understand what’s on your screen and offer the right actions in real time
- Creative tools like AI Image Studio, Sketch to Image, Style Sync, Text to Sticker, and avatar creation.
- Catch Me Up 2.0, Pay Attention live transcriptions, AI Playlist Studio, Global Search, Auto Screenshot Blur, and seamless cross-device task flow via This On That.
- Remember This and Recall act as a smart memory vault, while Perplexity integration enables instant exploration, planning, and contextual recommendations.
- Choose between motoAI, Copilot, Perplexity, and Google Gemini
Apart from the usual set of utility apps, Google apps, there are some apps such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Perplexity, Copilot, PhonePe, and Instagram, but you can install them easily. It has 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, out of which 14.88GB of RAM is free. It also has a RAM booster option to add up to 16GB of virtual RAM, and the AI auto RAM boost option is enabled by default. Out of 1TB UFS 4.1 storage, 921.2GB is usable.
Fingerprint sensor
The phone has an in-display 3D ultrasonic fingerprint sensor that works even with wet or oily fingers. You can add up to 5 fingerprints. You can also use the fingerprint for app local and payments in apps. The phone also has face unlock, but it is not as secure as fingerprint.
Music Player, and Multimedia
YouTube Music is the default music player. It also has Dolby Atmos and is certified by Bose. Audio through earphones, is good, and the stereo speaker is decent, but could have been better. It has Widevine L1 support, so you can play HD content on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other streaming apps without any issues. HDR works for YouTube and Amazon Prime Video but doesn’t work with Netflix, even though the phone has Dolby Vision support.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It has the usual set of connectivity features, such as 5G with a lot of (n1/n2/n3/n5/n7/n8/n20/n25/n26/n28/n38/n40/n41/n66/n70/n71/n77/n78/n80/n81/n83/n84/n89/n94) bands. Jio and Airtel 5G work out of the box. It also has dual 4G VoLTE, 4G carrier aggregation or 4G+, Vo 5G or VoNR, 5G++, Wi-Fi 7 802.11 ax (2.4 + 5 + 6Ghz), Bluetooth 6.0, GPS, AGPS, LTEPP, SUPL, Glonass, Galileo and NFC.
The motorola signature’s body SAR is 1.03W/Kg, and the head SAR is at 1.03W/Kg, well under the limit in India, which is 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g).
Performance and Benchmarks
This is one of the first phones to be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 platform. It has a 2 + 6 all-big core architecture that uses 2 x Oryon Prime CPU at up to 3.8GHz, 6 x Oryon Performance CPUs at up to 3.32GHz.
The chip is fabricated using the TSMC 3nm process technology. It promises a 36% improvement in overall performance compared to its predecessor.
The phone has 6,002 mm² vapor chamber + ArcticMesh Cooling for cooler, a unique combination of a copper mesh layered with liquid metal cooling that promises the most effective temperature management.
We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact, thanks to the new Adreno 829 GPU clocked at 1225MHz that promises 11% improved performance compared to the predecessor.
It supports 120fps in BGMI, but 165Hz doesn’t work in any games. In 3D Mark Wild Life stress test, it scored 67%, which is decent. The temperature shot up from 25 to 45 degrees, which is decent. Check out the benchmarks below.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a slightly smaller 5200mAh (typical) built-in silicon-carbon battery compared to a bigger battery in some of the flagships, mainly due to the sleek design. Thanks to the optimization, battery life is good even with 5G and multimedia use. I got over 5 and a half hours of screen on time with 2 days of use, mostly on Wi-Fi, and occasional 5G use in 165Hz, which is good enough.
It has 90W fast charging. It takes about 45 minutes to charge the phone fully using a bundled charger, and 50% charge takes around 15 minutes. The phone also has 50W wireless charging, which other phones in the price range lack. There is also reverse wireless charging.
Conclusion
The motorola signature isn’t just another flagship; it’s a statement of intent. By combining an impossibly sleek 6.99mm frame with the raw power of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, Motorola has managed to bridge the gap between “lifestyle luxury” and “powerhouse performance.”
At a starting price of Rs. 59,999, the motorola signature is aggressively priced. It undercuts several “Pro” models from competitors while offering a cleaner software experience (Android 16 out of the box), a versatile camera setup and a more sophisticated design. If you want a phone that feels premium, software support for 7 years, and comes with a literal personal assistant for your lifestyle, this is easily the most compelling Motorola device in years.
This phone is clearly aimed at the professional who values aesthetics and service. The Signature Club privileges (24×7 concierge) move this device beyond hardware into the realm of a lifestyle companion. While hardcore gamers might be slightly miffed that the 165Hz refresh rate doesn’t fully unlock in every title, and some might miss portrait video, these are minor trade-offs for an otherwise stellar package.
Alternatives
At a cheaper rate, the OnePlus 15R offers similar performance and has a bigger battery but doesn’t have a versatile camera set up. The latest Vivo X200T also looks like a good alternative in the price range.
Pricing and availability
The motorola signature is priced at Rs. 59,999 for the 12GB + 256GB model, the 16GB + 512GB model costs Rs. 64,999 and the 16GB + 1TB model is priced at Rs. 69,999. With the Rs. 5000 bank offer, the effective starting price is Rs. 54,999. There is also up to Rs. 5000 discount on moto watch if you buy it with the phone.
There are also exclusive Signature Club privileges with 24 x 7 exclusive privileges such as bespoke assistance and always-on support across travel, dining, wellness, lifestyle, and exclusive club access, said the company.
The phone will be available from Flipkart, motorola.in and offline stores starting from January 30th.
Pros
- 165Hz LTPO AMOLED display is brilliant
- Good build quality, sleek design, IP68 + IP69 ratings
- Good cameras
- Clean UI
- Decent battery life, fast charging
Cons
- No 165Hz support in games
- No portrait video recording