Motorola Signature review: DxO award-winning attack on Ap…

The slim and elegant Signature is the new flagship smartphone from Motorola and is correspondingly well-equipped in Notebookcheck’s smartphone test. Android 16, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB memory, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and a quad camera with Sony LYTIA image sensors a…

The Motorola Signature is a very strong flagship smartphone, although it is not convincing in every area. The slim yet highly durable body, the very bright AMOLED screen, and the camera setup with its four 50 MP lenses are definitely first class. Combined with the 7-year update guarantee, you should be able to enjoy the Signature phone for a long time. However, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 in Motorola's top model is not the most powerful SoC, and anyone who frequently uses the smartphone for gaming will likely be disappointed with the test device due to high heat generation.

The battery also lags behind the competition. Although the noise levels are good, they are slightly below average by high-end standards. The Motorola Signature costs just under 1000 euros from Lenovo. At the time of testing, you can get it for just under 950 euros on Amazon, for example. Motorola has named its new flagship smartphone Signature and is positioning it against the top models from Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi.

It should be particularly impressive in terms of the camera and has already received praise in this regard. In the DxO benchmark, it beat top smartphones such as the Google Pixel 10 Pro, putting it in the top 10 smartphones with the best cameras at the time of testing. Available in the Pantone colors Martini Olive (yellow-green) and Carbon (navy blue), the Motorola Signature features a curved design with an aluminum frame.

The back cover finish of the olive model resembles cotton twill. The navy blue version has a linen-like texture. At 186 grams, the Motorola Signature is lighter than many other top smartphones and measures just under 12 millimetres at its thickest point. It is protected against dust and water in accordance with IP68/69 and meets military robustness requirements under MIL-STD-810H standard. Gorilla Glass Victus 2 is used for the display glass.

Regardless of the color variant, 16 GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512 GB UFS 4.1 memory are on board. There is also WiFi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, dual SIM, a USB-C port with USB 3.2 Gen.1 and stereo speakers. Motorola equips the Signature with Android 16 and leaves the Google OS virtually untouched. In addition to Moto AI, only a handful of third-party apps are installed, but these can be deleted. Motorola promises 7 years of updates.

The Motorola Signature comes in plastic-free packaging. It is printed with soy ink and is made from recycled materials in accordance with the FSC Mix certification. There is a lot to read about sustainability on Motorola's website. However, the manufacturer does not provide any information on the Signature's carbon footprint. Spare parts and instructions for self-repair are available from Motorola's partner Replacebase.

If you buy the Signature via the Motorola website, you can trade in a smartphone that you no longer need. Thanks to its wide selection of LTE and 5G bands, the Motorola Signature should be able to receive a signal in practically any location. Thanks to WiFi 7 support, the Motorola Signature can use the 6 GHz band on our Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 reference router and achieves quite stable transmission rates, which peak at around 1500 Mbps.

The Motorola Signature uses GPS, Glonass, and Galileo to determine its position well, but not quite as precisely as you would expect from a top smartphone. The accuracy is sufficient for everyday use. In a direct comparison with the Garmin Venu 2 fitness smartwatch, however, the Motorola phone was slightly inaccurate in a few sections of our test round and sometimes built an imaginary loop. The Motorola Signature supports dual-SIM operation with nano-SIM and eSIM, and also offers VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling.

In the test, the smartphone delivered good voice quality and reproduced voices clearly and distinctly. Motorola has equipped the Signature with four 50 MP lenses. There is one each in the main, ultra-wide-angle, and telephoto cameras, while number four serves as a selfie camera and does a good job of it. Equipped with Sony LYTIA sensors, the quartet of cameras produces very good images in daylight that have excellent dynamic range, show a lot of detail, and reproduce colors very realistically.

The main camera benefits from its large 1/1.28-inch sensor, which allows the Signature to take very nice pictures even at night. The image quality also remains high with the ultra-wide-angle and telephoto cameras, although the former struggles with slight blurring at the edges of the image. The telephoto camera offers an optical 3x zoom and can digitally enlarge images by up to 100x, which then looks very artificial.

Very good results can still be achieved at medium zoom levels up to around 5x. The Motorola Signature records videos in very good quality with up to 8K at 24 frames per second. At 4K, 60 frames per second are possible. Choose a scene and navigate within the first image. One click changes the position on touchscreens. One click on the zoomed-in image opens the original in a new window. The first image shows the scaled photograph of the test device.

The Motorola Signature comes with a USB-C cable, a protective cover, a SIM tool and a quick start guide. The touchscreen is scanned up to 360 times per second. At the same time, it displays up to 165 Hz, resulting in very fast and precise operation. This also applies to the fingerprint sensor under the display. Pressing the left button on the housing activates Moto AI. The button can also be deactivated, but cannot be assigned other functions.

You can expect a lot from the display, because according to the specification, it should shine at up to 6200 nits. We did not achieve this in our measurements, but with up to 4500 nits in HDR, the screen still delivers a very high level of brightness. It also displays content very sharply. For PWM-sensitive users, there is a Prevent Flicker switch in the display settings, which then uses DC-like dimming that works at 120 Hz in all brightness levels.

The frequency of 120.2 Hz is very low, so the flickering may cause eyestrain and headaches after extended use. In comparison: 53 % of all tested devices do not use PWM to dim the display. If PWM was detected, an average of 7999 (minimum: 5 – maximum: 343500) Hz was measured. Measurement series with fixed zoom level and different brightness settings (The amplitude curve at minimum brightness looks flat, but this is due to the scaling.

The info box shows the enlarged version of the amplitude at minimum brightness) The analysis of the AMOLED screen with the photospectrometer and Calman software shows only very small average DeltaE deviations. The color display can be set using three profiles. The color temperature can also be adjusted. The brightness and viewing angles are stable, so the screen can really come into its own outdoors.

Even in sunny weather, there are no problems reading content. In the Motorola Signature, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5. This does not give you absolute top performance, but performance within sight of the high-end range. A MediaTek Dimensity 9500 or a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 develops significantly more performance. The UFS 4.1 memory keeps loading times short with its excellent data throughput. The duet of Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and the Adreno 826 is responsible for the graphics calculations.

With 42 frames per second in the GFXBench 4K Aztec Ruins benchmarks, the GPU proves that it can also run very graphically complex games smoothly. However, as in the CPU tests, it is not enough for a top spot here either. The Signature can get quite warm during operation. Surface temperatures of up to 49.8 °C are reached when the smartphone is under full load for an extended period. As the 3DMark stress tests show, the performance drops by up to a third.

The Motorola Signature supports Dolby Atmos and Hi-Res audio. It delivers the best sound when external audio devices such as headphones are connected via USB-C or Bluetooth. In contrast, the stereo loudspeakers are clearly inferior in sound quality but still perform quite well given their limited capabilities. (+) | speakers can play relatively loud (88.2 dB)Bass 100 – 315 Hz(-) | nearly no bass – on average 19.2% lower than median(±) | linearity of bass is average (11.9% delta to prev.

frequency)Mids 400 – 2000 Hz(±) | reduced mids – on average 6.3% lower than median(±) | linearity of mids is average (7.9% delta to prev. frequency)Highs 2 – 16 kHz(±) | higher highs – on average 7.4% higher than median(±) | linearity of highs is average (7.9% delta to prev. frequency)Overall 100 – 16.000 Hz(±) | linearity of overall sound is average (22.9% difference to median)Compared to same class» 51% of all tested devices in this class were better, 7% similar, 42% worse» The best had a delta of 11%, average was 35%, worst was 134%Compared to all devices tested» 68% of all tested devices were better, 6% similar, 27% worse» The best had a delta of 4%, average was 24%, worst was 134% (+) | speakers can play relatively loud (93 dB)Bass 100 – 315 Hz(-) | nearly no bass – on average 21.5% lower than median(+) | bass is linear (4.8% delta to prev.

frequency)Mids 400 – 2000 Hz(+) | balanced mids – only 4.3% away from median(+) | mids are linear (4.4% delta to prev. frequency)Highs 2 – 16 kHz(+) | balanced highs – only 3.3% away from median(+) | highs are linear (1.4% delta to prev. frequency)Overall 100 – 16.000 Hz(+) | overall sound is linear (14.6% difference to median)Compared to same class» 2% of all tested devices in this class were better, 2% similar, 96% worse» The best had a delta of 11%, average was 35%, worst was 134%Compared to all devices tested» 18% of all tested devices were better, 4% similar, 78% worse» The best had a delta of 4%, average was 24%, worst was 134% The 5200 mAh lithium battery with silicon-carbon anode can be charged with up to 90 watts, which only takes just under an hour in the test.

The Motorola Signature supports wireless charging with 50 watts and can, in turn, charge other devices with up to 10 watts via reverse wireless charging. A long battery life is guaranteed with the Motorola smartphone, but on the other hand, it does not reach new peak regions. In our WLAN test, it managed just under 20 hours. The Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra last significantly longer.

The Motorola Signature scores with many advantages, including excellent cameras, a bright display, 7 years of updates, and a very slim and lightweight body. However, other flagship smartphones offer more in terms of battery life and processor performance. The selection of devices to be reviewed is made by our editorial team. The test sample was provided to the author as a loan by the manufacturer or retailer for the purpose of this review.

The lender had no influence on this review, nor did the manufacturer receive a copy of this review before publication. There was no obligation to publish this review. As an independent media company, Notebookcheck is not subjected to the authority of manufacturers, retailers or publishers. Every year, Notebookcheck independently reviews hundreds of laptops and smartphones using standardized procedures to ensure that all results are comparable.

We have continuously developed our test methods for around 20 years and set industry standards in the process. In our test labs, high-quality measuring equipment is utilized by experienced technicians and editors. These tests involve a multi-stage validation process. Our complex rating system is based on hundreds of well-founded measurements and benchmarks, which maintains objectivity. Further information on our test methods can be found here.

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