Last year, I said Motorola’s Edge 2022 felt like the “first good Motorola phone in a while.” Well, the company’s two for two now. Except this isn’t your usual Motorola smartphone—the Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is a collaborative effort between the smartphone company and its parent, specifically the Lenovo division with a cult-like following for its ThinkPad business laptops.
The guts feel the same as last year’s Motorola Edge, with improvements here and there, like an IP68 water-resistance rating to protect it from spills, pool dips, and rain and a flagship-grade processor to keep it running smoothly. It looks a whole lot smarter—classy, as Jim Halpert would put it—and there’s even a little red configurable button on the edge of the handset to synergize with the iconic red nub on Lenovo’s PCs. The ThinkPhone isn’t my first or second Android phone choice for most people. Still, if you don’t want a Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel, it’s a nice alternative, especially for anyone already rocking a ThinkPad.
I’m currently testing the ThinkPhone while using a ThinkPad, and although you don’t get any exclusive features when you pair the devices, it sure as heck feels nice to have a shared aesthetic. The ThinkPhone has Gorilla Glass Victus protecting the screen and an aluminum frame with an aramid fiber rear inlay that matches the weave design and soft-touch texture on the back of the ThinkPad. I'll keep saying synergy because I’m pretty sure that’s what the designers repeated in the drawing room.
There’s a red button on the top-left edge of the phone, and you can set a single press to whatever you want. I use mine to open Google Wallet. The downside is that you can’t configure the double-press. It forces open Motorola’s Ready For service, which you can use to cast your phone’s apps to nearby displays (along with some other functions). I will elaborate below. Naturally, the gestures you’ll find on every other Motorola phone are also present, so you can make a chopping action twice to turn on the flashlight or a double twist to launch the camera. They’re super handy, and I use them every day.
The Ready For feature is available on other Motorola phones, but it lets you pair the ThinkPhone with a PC to unlock perks like using your smartphone as a webcam, running Android apps in a virtual space on your laptop, responding to notifications, and sharing files. I mostly use it for universal copy and paste—like MacBooks and iPhones, you can copy something on your laptop and paste it on your phone (and vice versa). You don’t need a ThinkPad for this to work, just a Windows machine.
ThinkPads are known for their plethora of ports. The one I’m using has two USB-C ports, a headphone jack, an HDMI, and two USB-A ports. Weirdly, the ThinkPhone just has a single USB-C port and … nothing else. Not including a headphone jack or even a microSD card slot feels like a missed opportunity. At least you get 256 gigabytes of built-in storage, which is more than most phones at this price. Oh, and although it’s not always the case on Motorola phones, yes, there is an NFC sensor so you can make contactless payments.