Motorola makes some great phones, but I’ve often felt they stop just short of delivering a proper, no-compromise flagship experience. 

There’s usually plenty to like, particularly when it comes to design, but there’s usually something that makes it harder to recommend over the best from Samsung, Apple and co.

That’s where the new Signature 27 comes in. It pairs the distinctive styling I’ve come to expect from the brand with an ambitious camera setup, top-end power and a huge battery – and, after spending some time with it at the launch in Norway, I’m beginning to think this could be the Motorola flagship I’ve been waiting for.

There are still things to test, and its £1,299/$1,599 price tag means it has plenty to prove, but the early signs are promising.

The Signature 27 looks and feels the part

I think we all know at this point that Motorola how to make a good-looking phone. Its continued partnership with Pantone, even with its budget-level devices, paired with its unique use of rear materials, makes for phones that stand out from the crowd – and the Signature 27 is very much cut from the same cloth. 

It’s available in two finishes, Pantone Coal Smoke and Capulet Olive, with differing textures on the rear. Both are made from the same material, though the Coal Smoke finish offers more of a textured woven finish that Motorola says is inspired by automotive design, while the Capulet Olive offers a much smoother, softer finish. 

I will say, the green finish looks fantastic – I’m a sucker for a green phone – and I imagine that’ll be the one that most opt for. The Coal Smoke black model is very understated, if that’s your kind of thing. 

I’m also surprisingly keen on the odd shape of the phone; unlike most phones, the Signature 27 is thinner at the bottom and thicker at the top. That’s largely due to the camera housing, but with the design Motorola has employed, it looks more like the body of the phone than a separate module. 

Look a little closer, and you’ll begin noticing the little extras, like textured aluminium sides for better grip or the slightly (and it very much is slightly) curved screen – just curved enough to make side-swipes feel nice, without going as far as to have an effect on the screen performance. It’s also dual IP68/69 rated, with Corning’s brand new Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 screen protection, and boasts a military-grade durability rating. 

Again, this all just ties very nicely into the overall look of the phone; it’s premium, from top to bottom – and that continues with hardware powering it. 

A pretty solid camera setup

Motorola has slowly been upping its camera performance across its phone range over the past few years, and the Signature 27 is the culmination of that – at least according to Motorola, which claims it’s the “most advanced camera system to date”. 

That starts with the 50MP main camera, powered by a Sony LYTIA L910 sensor with LOFIC support, which the company claims can deliver brighter, more balanced photos and videos with more detail, especially in more complex lighting conditions. 

That’s paired with a beefy 200MP 3x periscope lens, offering 6x in-sensor zoom and up to 100x if you want to use the company’s AI-powered Super Zoom Pro tech, and a 50MP ultrawide camera, making for a pretty versatile system compared to most Motorola phones we get. ‘But Lewis’, I hear you cry, ‘there are four lenses on the back!’

There are indeed – though one doesn’t function like a normal camera. It’s actually an EVS action sensor, the first on any smartphone, which Motorola claims helps capture fast-moving subjects without the added blur. It’s designed to be paired with Motorola’s Action Shot feature, and is available on both the main and telephoto lenses – but oddly, not the ultrawide. 

The jury is still out as to whether it’s a useful addition, as Motorola already does better than most when it comes to capturing moving subjects, but it’s great to see Motorola being ambitious and experimental with its flagship camera hardware. 

That’s matched by a 50MP selfie camera with AF tech that, like the rear lenses, supports 4K video capture. 

Now I have been able to try the camera out during the launch in Norway, and I have been impressed with a lot of the shots I’ve taken – especially zoom shots up to around the 20x mark. I’ve included a few here:

That said, I think I’m going to hold my deeper thoughts for now, as it’s still running pre-release software and there are a few ISP-related bugs I’ve noticed during testing so far. Let’s hope Motorola can get those ironed out before it hits the shelves in early December. 

Plenty of other niceties

Of course, there’s more to a phone than being good-looking and having a versatile camera setup. While with most previous Motorola phones that weren’t flagship there would’ve been a compromise elsewhere, that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Case in point, it sports an upgraded AMOLED panel, utilising Motorola’s custom Extreme AMOLED Duo screen tech. It essentially utilises a similar tandem OLED system to Apple’s top-end iPad Pro, combining two layers into one to boost brightness and colours while draining less battery power.

And when I say bright, I mean – Motorola says it’s the ‘brightest display available in a smartphone’ with a peak brightness of an eye-melting 12,000nits. Of course, that doesn’t translate to everyday use – it’s measured when watching HDR content, and it’s only a very small part of the screen that gets that bright – but it has been plenty bright and vivid during my time with it so far. 

The Signature 27 also goes all-in on audio – and that’s not something you say about smartphones very often. The company teamed up with B&O to bring audio that’s not just loud for the sake of being loud, but something that actually sounds good. Well, as good as audio from a phone be anyway. 

It’s crisp and clear, and more than enough for a bit of casual listening if you don’t want to scramble for a pair of headphones – I’m using it to listen to music on Spotify in my hotel room as I write this. 

The Signature 27 is also among the first phones to market to sport Qualcomm’s latest and greatest chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. As the company’s first 5GHz-capable chipset, it’s safe to say it has plenty of power under the hood. I’ve not yet benchmarked it, but it feels slick in everyday use with no real waiting for apps to open or things to load. 

And, what would a phone like this be without a beefy battery to back it all up? Unlike Samsung, which seems terrified of expanding its phone line past the same 5000mAh mark it has sat at for years, the Signature 27 packs a 7000mAh silicon carbon cell that should get it through even demanding days. 

For context, I’ve been using the phone (with a SIM active) for the past eight hours to sporadically take photos, videos, reply to messages and listen to music, and it’s currently sat at 82%. It certainly bodes well for the proper testing that’ll commence once I get back to the UK, and 90W TurboCharge support should translate to snappy charge times too.  

It’s expensive – but that’s par for the course

Now, you don’t get all this hardware without spending a bit of cash – but the Signature 27’s £1,299/$1599 price tag may surprise some. It certainly surprised me when I first saw how much it’ll be going for in a few weeks’ time. 

But, now I’ve sat with it for a while, I think Motorola might’ve done enough here to justify that top-end price tag. It’s a much more well-rounded phone than anything we’ve seen from Motorola until this point – outside of the foldable space anyway – and packs all the hardware you’d expect from a truly premium phone. 

Yes, it’s undoubtedly expensive, but in the wider context of a world with skyrocketing RAM and storage prices, it’s not that big of a surprise. Oppo’s similarly-top-end Find X10 Pro Max costs £1499, and if rumours are true, phones like the Galaxy S27 Ultra and Honor Magic 9 Pro Max might cost similarly when they appear in the coming months.

This is essentially the ‘new normal’, and I don’t think brands should be chastised for price hikes that are out of control. If anything, blame Sam Altman and the other big AI bosses for creating this issue in the first place. But that’s another article entirely.

The Motorola Signature 27 costs £1299/$1599, and will be available to pre-order on 16 November before release on 3 December.