Motorola is trying something it hasn’t attempted in the modern smartphone era: creating a slab-style flagship phone.
Previous high-end Edge devices never really hit their mark and lacked features that would put them in the higher flagship tiers. The company has had a lot of success with its Razr clamshell foldables, tapping into the brand’s nostalgia and daring to make phones that actually look good. But it’s trying something different with its new Signature line, which until now hasn’t been available in the United States. The Signature 27 goes even further towards premium, daring to take on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. Motorola builds on a luxury aesthetic, offering a stacked feature set – with an equally luxurious price tag of $1,599.
That’s a lot to ask for a starting price, but it gets you 512GB of storage and 12GB of RAM, the same as the $1,599, 512GB variant of the S26 Ultra. Samsung does, however, offer a cheaper 256GB configuration for $1,399.
We got our first look at the Signature 27 when Motorola previewed it earlier this year, revealing that it would use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset. The company also dropped a few other details, like Bang & Olufsen-designed audio, 50-megapixel and 200-megapixel telephoto lenses, and two Pantone color options. Today’s full announcement fills in the gaps. It will come with a 7,000mAh silicon-carbon battery, a 6.8-inch tandem OLED display, IP68/IP69 ratings for full dust and water resistance, and 12GB of RAM. The Signature 27 will also support privacy-focused GrapheneOS, a first for Motorola and for a consumer phone sold in the US, for that matter.
It’s hard to find fault with the 27’s feature set, other than the lack of built-in Qi2 magnets, which is disappointing. The tandem OLED display uses two electroluminescent panels to achieve a peak brightness of 12,000 nits. The more battery-efficient dual layer could mean the phone can reach its highest brightness setting without consuming too much power and overheating the phone, but we’ll want to see if this comes to fruition in practice.
The camera array features a 50-megapixel Sony Lytia L910 sensor with LOFIC technology, meaning it should offer plenty of dynamic range. In addition to a 3x 200-megapixel camera and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide, there’s also an Event View Sensor, or EVS. It’s designed to identify motion at the pixel level, which Motorola says will help “capture fast-moving subjects with greater clarity and precision.”
This Bang & Olufsen sound system features a redesigned speaker architecture for sound “meant to be felt, not just heard,” according to Motorola’s press release. This would be quite a feat to achieve with a smartphone audio system and I’m not holding my breath. Elsewhere, the Signature 27 offers up to 90W wired charging and up to 50W wireless charging, although you’ll need to use Motorola’s proprietary wireless charger. But better news, Motorola is promising seven years of OS upgrades for the Signature 27, putting it among the best support policies from Samsung and Google.
Perhaps it was some unlucky timing that Motorola decided to take on Samsung’s high-end flagship, just as we were starting to prepare for RAMageddon: Year Two. Maybe in a few years, every flagship phone will cost well over $1,000. But right now, $1,600 is a steep hill to ask people to climb, and the Signature 27 will need to offer more than just an impressive spec sheet.
And just to prove a point, Motorola is also announcing updates to its broader ecosystem. The new Moto Watch Fit 27 claims up to 12 days of battery life, and the Moto Buds 27 offer Bose ANC with IP57 ratings for both earbuds and case. Motorola isn’t announcing pricing or an exact US release date, only that they will be available in the coming months. Both will arrive in the coming “weeks” in Europe and the UK, where the watch will start at £99.99 (around $134 USD) and the earbuds will cost £179.99 (around $242).
Signature 27 pre-sales begin November 19 in the United States; the phone will go on sale on November 26.
Gn tech
