Signature 27: Motorola's top smartphone for next year
Motorola's Signature 27 features a super-bright display, an excellent camera system, and a larger battery. Furthermore, it is the manufacturer's first smartphone suitable for the privacy-focused Android version GrapheneOS.
Motorola announced the Signature 27 back in September, but did not reveal all the details regarding its specifications. These are now following and are attracting attention. For the first time, the manufacturer is using an EVS action sensor, increasing the battery capacity by 35 percent, and installing the currently most powerful chipset from Qualcomm.
The following key data was already known:
- The Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 as the processor and a 40 percent larger cooling chamber.
- A main camera with a Sony Lytia 910 sensor and a telephoto camera with 200-megapixel resolution.
- Two color variants (black and olive) with different textures.
- Bose as the new audio partner.
- Seven years of operating system updates.
The following information has been added:
Award-winning cameras
Motorola has collected 173 points on DXOmark for the Signature 27's camera system. This makes it the smartphone with the best cameras in this rating.
Source: Motorola
Motorola complements the 50-megapixel main camera and the telephoto camera with 3x zoom with an ultra-wide-angle camera and a front camera, each of which has a resolution of 50 megapixels.
Motorola describes the built-in «EVS action sensor» as a world first. It is intended to capture fast movements precisely and freeze them together with the «Action Shot function».
Display with a superlative
The 6.78-inch AMOLED display continues with innovations. Under certain conditions, the screen is said to reach a peak brightness of 12,000 nits. In everyday use, the display will rarely get that bright, but the typical brightness should also be high. Unfortunately, Motorola does not reveal it.
For display protection, Motorola uses Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3. The frame of the Signature 27 is made of aluminum. The smartphone is dust and water-resistant according to IP69 and is protected against water jets.
35 percent larger battery
Compared to its predecessor, Motorola is increasing the battery capacity by 35 percent to 7000 mAh. The manufacturer roughly states the battery life as one day. The battery is charged with up to 90 watts via a USB-C cable or wirelessly with up to 50 watts.
Source: Motorola
Motorola offers various storage options: the data storage includes 256 or 512 gigabytes, and the RAM 12 or 16 gigabytes.
Ready for GrapheneOS
The Signature 27 is the first smartphone from Motorola that meets the requirements of GrapheneOS. The Google-free Android variant was created with a focus on security and data protection.
The goal of the collaboration with the GrapheneOS Foundation is to «make state-of-the-art security technologies accessible to smartphone users worldwide». For this reason, the Signature 27 is specifically designed to meet the requirements of GrapheneOS, which has previously only been available for Pixel devices. In addition to long software support, this also includes various hardware specifications.
However, the sentence «Motorola will announce further details on these security features in the coming months.» suggests that it will still take some time before GrapheneOS can actually be installed on the Signature 27.
Price and availability
According to Motorola, the Signature 27 is expected to be available «in the coming weeks». It will likely be ready by the end of November or the beginning of December. The recommended retail price starts at 1399 Swiss francs in Switzerland and 1899 euros in Germany.
As a primary school pupil, I used to sit in a friend's living room with many of my classmates to play the Super NES. Now I get my hands on the latest technology and test it for you. In recent years at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, now at Digitec and Galaxus.
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