5 Cheaper Android Phones You Should Try Instead of the Motorola Edge 70 Max

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The Motorola Edge 70 Max is one of the latest additions to the company’s smartphone portfolio and its current flagship. It has a lot of great features, especially on the battery and charging fronts. For example, it packs a massive 7,100mAh silicon-carbon battery and supports up to 90W wired charging. The phone also supports 25W Qi2 wireless charging, a fairly rare feature on most Android phones.

As Motorola has yet to launch the phone in the US, there is no official way to purchase it at the moment. However, if you don’t want to wait for a phone that may or may not come to the US, you can consider several notable alternatives, which cost less than £700 (~$940). Major Android manufacturers like Samsung, Google, and Nothing all make competitive smartphones in this price point. We’ve chosen a few alternatives to Motorola’s flagship after comparing raw specs, initial reviews, and expert opinions for each phone on the list.

If you want an alternative to the Motorola Edge 70 Max with an impressive battery capacity, the RedMagic 11S Pro is worth considering. The phone packs a massive 7,500mAh silicon-carbon battery that supports 80W wired charging and equally fast wireless charging. More importantly, the battery isn’t the only interesting thing about this gaming phone. It also houses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which should easily handle gaming, multitasking, and other everyday tasks. The company has paired the processor with 12GB of RAM in the base model, which should be enough for most use cases.

Other highlights of the RedMagic 11S Pro include a 6.85-inch OLED display with 1216 x 2688 resolution, Wi-Fi 7 support, and an under-display fingerprint sensor. You also get Android 16 with the company’s UI layer on top. The company promised two Android updates and three years of security updates, which isn’t as good as some other brands.

Experts mostly have good things to say about the phone and appreciate the phone’s liquid cooling which allows it to make the most of the Qualcomm chip. However, the camera performance is one of the downsides of the phone and it captures average quality photos. It’s also important to keep in mind that the phone has a gamer aesthetic that not everyone will appreciate. The RedMagic 11S Pro will cost you $799 for the base model and can be purchased from the company’s website in two color options.

If you can live without the Edge 70 Max’s big screen and huge battery, the Galaxy S26 is one of the best alternatives to the Edge 70 Max, and it will cost you less. Although its list price is $900 for the base model, you can often find it for under $800. The Galaxy S26 comes with a 6.3-inch LTPO OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and 12GB of RAM. You also get an under-display fingerprint sensor, a 4,300mAh battery with 25W fast charging, and a triple rear camera setup.

Not only does the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 have higher clock speeds and a more powerful Adreno 840 GPU than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip in the Edge 70 Max, but the Galaxy S26 also has a telephoto lens, which you don’t get in the Motorola phone. Samsung is also shipping the S26 with Android 16 and seven years of promised OS updates; The Edge 70 Max will only receive three operating system updates.

We found Samsung’s compact flagship to be a great phone in our Galaxy S26 review, thanks to its good design, great screen, and solid build quality. Other experts have similar sentiments, but point out that it has relatively slow charging and doesn’t have any major upgrades over its predecessor, the Galaxy S25.

Another great Android phone that you can consider is Google’s Pixel 10. Again, it doesn’t have a big screen or battery like the Edge 70 Max, but it certainly does a lot of things better than the Motorola phone. For example, it is expected to receive seven years of operating system updates and contains a triple rear camera setup with a telephoto lens. The Pixel 10’s overall camera performance is also a major strong point.

Other features of the Pixel 10 include a 6.3-inch OLED display, the Tensor G5 chip, 12GB of RAM, and a 4,970mAh battery. We liked the phone’s overall performance as well as Pixelsnap support in our review of the Pixel 10. Similar sentiments are echoed by several other experts, with the only drawbacks cited being the Tensor G5’s inability to catch up to Qualcomm’s flagship chips and slow loading speeds. The Pixel 10 currently starts at $799 on Amazon for the 128GB storage variant.

The Nothing Phone (3) has gotten a little old, but if you want a full-featured high-end smartphone, it still has a lot to offer. Like other products from the Nothing brand, the design is the strong point of the phone (3); However, as we noted in our review of the Nothing Phone 3, it’s a bit dumber than its predecessor. Beyond the design, the phone (3) has a lot of what you’d expect from a mid-range phone, like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 4 chip, up to 16GB of RAM, a 6.67-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, and an under-display fingerprint sensor.

The phone also comes with Android 15; However, it has already received the Android 16 update and will receive four more major OS updates. Connectivity options are solid, with support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. While it doesn’t have a battery capacity comparable to the Motorola Edge 70 Max, the phone houses a decent 5,150mAh silicon-carbon battery that supports 65W wired charging and 15W wireless charging. Nothing also includes a triple rear camera setup, which does a good job, and even includes a 50 MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom, something you don’t get on the Motorola Edge 70 Max.

Experts are satisfied with its software and overall performance. They say it’s a very good option for its price, but Glyph Matrix seems gimmicky and Verizon support is limited. Its starting list price is $799 for the base variant; however, it is often discounted to under $699.

Motorola may not have revealed whether it plans to bring the Edge 70 Max to the United States, but it does have the 2026 model of the Edge. Not only is the phone significantly cheaper than the Edge 70 Max, but it’s also more compact, lighter, and has at least one added benefit in the form of the built-in telephoto lens. The phone features a 6.3-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and is powered by a Mediatek Dimensity 7450 SoC. It also houses 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and has a 5,000mAh battery that supports up to 68W fast wired charging and 15W wireless charging. Additionally, the camera setup includes a set of 50 MP main shooter, a 10 MP telephoto lens, and a 50 MP ultra-wide shooter.

Experts gave positive feedback on the Edge (2026), with its design being one of the strong points. It is also said to offer solid battery life. Unfortunately, it will only get two major OS updates and three years of security patches. The phone will cost you $600.

When selecting alternatives to the Motorola Edge 70 Max, we looked at the top-rated Android phones you can actually buy in the US. We’ve narrowed our search to focus on phones that offer one or more features better than Motorola’s offering but cost less. We looked at our own reviews as well as the opinions of other experts to choose the final recommendations, which provide generally comprehensive performance.