Motorola's Next Flagship Said to Come With a 105Hz Refresh Rate

Motorola’s next flagship phone is said to be in development with a 105Hz refresh rate. The Lenovo-owned company already has phones including the Motorola Edge and Edge+ with 90Hz displays. However, it may have plans to bring some distinction by bringing the odd refresh rate. The new development comes just days after the key specifications of the Motorola flagship surfaced online, including a Snapdragon 865 SoC. The new smartphone, which is said to be codenamed ‘Nio,’ is also expected to come with up to 12GB of RAM and offer dual selfie cameras.

Mishaal Rahman of XDA Developers on Twitter reported that the default peak refresh rate of the rumoured Motorola ‘Nio’ has been set at 105Hz. This sounds a little odd as the refresh rate of displays are normally the least common multiple of 24 and 30 frames per second. However, Asus reportedly took a similar move and was spotted testing a 160Hz refresh rate mode for its gaming-focussed ROG Phone 3. Asus didn’t bring that mode to the public, though.

XDA Developers’ Adam Conway speculates that Motorola might have just been testing the 105Hz refresh rate during development and would cap it at 90Hz at the time of its official launch. Alternatively, the company may offer the unique refresh rate specifically for scrolling through the UI or apps and keep the more commonly used 90Hz for video playback.

Motorola has notably not yet provided any official confirmation to the reported refresh rate finding. The company, however, did expand the adoption of the 90Hz rate on its smartphone portfolio by bringing it to not just flagships including the Motorola Edge and Edge+ but also to the Moto G 5G Plus earlier this year.

Motorola Nio specifications (expected)

The Motorola ‘Nio’ is said to have a full-HD+ (1,080×2,520 pixels) display and two distinct configurations: 8GB RAM + 128GB storage as well as 12GB RAM + 256GB storage. The phone is also rumoured to have triple rear cameras, with a 64-megapixel primary OmniVision OV64B sensor. In terms of capturing selfies, the Motorola smartphone is said to have dual cameras at the front, with a 16-megapixel primary sensor and an 8-megapixel secondary sensor.

Motorola may bring the new phone to the market with an out-of-the-box Android 11 experience. Furthermore, the phone is rumoured to launch sometime in the first quarter of next year.

Is Android One holding back Nokia smartphones in India? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.