Motorola Wants to Sell You a $1,600 Phone That Doesn’t Fold

Most notable is the 6.8-inch screen. Motorola claims its “Extreme AMOLED Duo” panel is the brightest smartphone display on the market, peaking at an eye-searing 12,000 nits. Underneath, it uses tandem OLED tech—stacking two panels on top of each other—similar to what Apple debuted on its iPad Pro and touchscreen MacBook.

Even so, Apple’s new display peaks at around 2,000 nits, and most smartphones today top out around 3,600 nits, which is more than enough nits to read the screen in harsh sunlight. Chinese phone brands like Honor and Huawei have recently touted 10,000-plus max nits of brightness, but those ratings rarely apply outside of tiny slivers of the display during HDR playback. Treat Moto’s brightness statement as pure spec-sheet marketing.

The tech does deliver better energy efficiency, meaning the display uses less power and could improve battery life, plus a 121 percent longer lifespan than normal AMOLED panels. The screen also has a 1.5K resolution, Dolby Vision support, and “Pantone Validated” color calibration for accurate colors.

Once a handicap, the company’s camera tech has become more competitive in recent years, and Motorola hopes the Signature 27 will stand out with its top-end image sensors. There’s a 50-megapixel Sony Lytia L910 main camera—Sony’s first sensor with LOFIC (Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor) technology, which can dramatically improve dynamic range in a single exposure. Basically, it should perform better in challenging lighting conditions, with fewer crushed blacks and blown-out skies.

Next up is a 200-megapixel periscope 3X telephoto camera with up to 100X digital zoom, enhanced with generative AI, similar to what Google and Samsung offer on their respective devices. Rounding things out is a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera and a 50-megapixel selfie camera with 4K video support. Speaking of video, Motorola says its new video enhancement engine uses AI to optimize color, contrast, and dynamic range, and improved stabilization should make footage look smoother.

But wait, isn’t there a fourth camera on the back? No, that’s actually a dedicated “Event-Based Vision Sensor” (EVS), which Motorola claims is a first on a smartphone. It works with Motorola’s Action Shot mode, freezing motion so photos of moving subjects look perfectly crisp and sharp with no motion blur.

The Signature 27 is among the first phones to use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip, announced in September, the top-end processor you can expect to see in most flagship Android smartphones in 2027. Motorola cites better cooling performance with a 40 percent larger thermal chamber to keep the processor running longer. It comes with 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage.