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Motorola One Hyper is official with pop-up selfie camera, Hyper Charging, and surprisingly low price

By Adrian Diaconescu

Updated: Dec 04, 2019, 9:30 AM

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Motorola One Hyper is official with pop-up selfie camera, Hyper Charging, and surprisingly low price

Motorola is almost ready to make a high-end smartphone market comeback with a Snapdragon 865-powered flagship supporting 5G speeds without having to pair to a Moto Mod, but before that thing arrives at some point next year, the company continues to pump out interesting mid-rangers.

After the One Macro, One Zoom, One Action, and One Vision, the time has finally come today to officially meet yet another oft-rumored and rigorously leaked One-series handset. The key selling point and standout feature of the Motorola One Hyper is not as obvious as, say, the dedicated macro camera or action shooter of two of its forerunners from their names, but you only need to take one look at this affordable bad boy to understand exactly what's special about it.

A pop-up selfie camera and "edge-to-edge" screen on a budget

You probably don't remember this, but we've know for a pretty long time about Motorola's plans to release a phone without a notch or hole punch, helping achieve what the company is advertising as a super-premium design with an "uninterrupted 6.5-inch Full HD+ edge to edge display." In order to pull that off, the One Hyper naturally comes with a pop-up front-facing shooter in tow, which isn't always the best choice for durability.

Of course, this is far from the world's first handset to adopt a hidden selfie camera purportedly capable of popping up in "less than a second" when you need to use it, and devices like the OnePlus 7 Pro have proven exceptionally reliable. Just like that significantly pricier and faster phone, the Motorola One Hyper is equipped with a "drop protection mechanism" automatically retracting the front-facing camera when imminent danger is detected.

The One Hyper is certainly no pushover in terms of actual imaging specs either, with an ultra-high-resolution 64MP primary camera paired with an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens at the back and that pop-up selfie shooter sporting a high-res 32-megapixel sensor of its own. Both the rear and front cameras are capable of seeing in the dark thanks to Night Vision technology, although something tells us this functionality will not be as impressive as Google's Night Sight or iPhone's Night Mode.

As far as the "uninterrupted" LCD screen is concerned, it's important to point out its bezels are not exactly invisible (especially the "chin") and its resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels makes it pretty clear we're not dealing with a high-end product here.

Big battery with blazing fast charging, clean software, and other standout features

Before going into everything else that makes the Motorola One Hyper special, let's highlight the slightly-less-impressive stuff. Powered by a Snapdragon 675 processor and 4GB RAM, this thing can definitely handle most routine tasks, but it's probably wise not to expect the same performance in heavy gaming scenarios as you'd get from a Snapdragon 855 flagship nowadays.

That being said, the Motorola One Hyper actually does one thing better and faster than most of today's ultra-high-end smartphones. Its name is in fact meant to bring attention to an "industry-leading" 45W Hyper Charging technology allowing its sizable 4,000mAh battery to go from 0 to 75 percent capacity in just 30 minutes and provide an estimated 12 hours of juice after 10 minutes spent hugging a wall.

In case you're wondering, that matches the 45W charging capabilities of Samsung's state-of-the-art Galaxy Note 10+, but predictably enough, you'll have to settle for a 15W TurboPower charger in the box or separately buy the "Hyper" power brick at an unspecified price.

Another feature that helps the One Hyper shine in today's mid-range segment is pre-installed Android 10 with no bloatware. That means the software experience will be silky smooth right off the bat, and hopefully, major OS updates will be delivered in a swift and timely manner down the line.

The rest of the specs are nothing special, although it's definitely nice to see both a headphone jack and microSD card slot included. Motorola probably made the wise call playing things safe in the biometric recognition department with a conventional rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, while the design is billed as water resistant, but with no accompanying IP rating it might be smart to keep the handset nice and dry at all times.

Available now in the US

Yes, we saved the best news for last. Unlike the One Vision, One Macro, Moto G8 Play, or G8 Plus, the Motorola One Hyper is already up for grabs stateside. Priced at a very reasonable $400, the 6.5-incher can be exclusively purchased from its manufacturer's official US e-store in a GSM unlocked variant compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile but not Sprint or Verizon. There's only one storage configuration, accommodating 128 gigs of data internally, as well as one color option - Deep Sea Blue.

It's hard to pinpoint this phone's direct US competition, but while we don't expect its dual camera system to match the stunning performance of the single shooter on the back of the Pixel 3a and 3a XL, all the other standout features and the arguably attractive design could make the One Hyper a great holiday purchase at 400 bucks.

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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.