THE CRUNCH
Motorola has announced the Signature 27, its most premium conventional smartphone to date, with a starting price of $1,599 for 512GB of storage and 12GB of RAM. That matches the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra's $1,599 512GB variant, though Samsung also sells a cheaper 256GB model at $1,399. Pre-sales in the US begin on November 19th, with the phone on sale from November 26th.
The specs are suitably flagship-grade: a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset, a 6.8-inch tandem OLED screen reaching a peak 12,000 nits, a 7,000mAh silicon-carbon battery, IP68/IP69 dust and water resistance, and up to 90W wired or 50W wireless charging, the latter requiring Motorola's own charger. The camera array includes a 50-megapixel Sony Lytia L910 main sensor, a 3x 200-megapixel telephoto, a 50-megapixel ultrawide and an Event Vision Sensor designed to track fast-moving subjects at pixel level. Bang & Olufsen tuned the audio, and two Pantone colour options are offered.
One notable first: the Signature 27 will support the privacy-focused GrapheneOS, which Motorola says is a first both for the company and for a mainstream phone sold in the US. Motorola is also promising seven years of OS upgrades, putting it alongside the best support policies from Samsung and Google.
The main spec-sheet gap is the absence of built-in Qi2 magnets. Motorola is also refreshing its ecosystem with the Moto Watch Fit 27, claiming up to 12 days of battery life, and the Moto Buds 27 with Bose ANC and IP57 ratings. Both arrive in Europe and the UK in the coming weeks at £99.99 and £179.99 respectively, with US pricing and dates still unannounced.