Motorola’s $1,600 Signature 27 Is Throwing Every Ultra-Level Phone Feature Together

Motorola’s Signature 27 will cost $1,600, with preorders starting Nov. 19.Motorola After teasing it during Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in September, Motorola’s $1,600 Signature 27 phone will be unveiled on Thursday, and it clearly wants to make a big impression for that high starting price. Even with the ongoing RAM shortage leading to higher prices for most phones, it would be understandable to think a $1,600 candybar-style phone sounds extravagant. It is. But it’s actually priced competitively against the 512GB model of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra (also now $1,600 following its own fall price increase). The Signature 27’s biggest feature could be its 200-megapixel periscope telephoto camera, which is capable of a 3x optical zoom and what Motorola calls a 100x Super Zoom Pro. That camera is joined by a 50-megapixel wide camera, a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera and a 50-megapixel front camera. An Event-Based Vision action sensor will also be included to assist with photographing fast-moving subjects. But particularly eye-opening to me — as someone who’s constantly tracking how quickly phones can recharge — is that the Signature 27 will have 90-watt wired charging. For context, the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the iPhone 18 Pro Max charge at 60-watt speeds, with both phones being among the fastest we’ve tested. The Signature includes a 7,000-mAh silicon carbon battery, which is a newer battery technology that’s able to pack more capacity into less space. The phone will have a 6.8-inch 1.5K-resolution display that runs at a 120Hz refresh rate, but has an absurdly high 12,000-nit peak brightness. By comparison, many phones we’ve tested lately have included 2,000- and 3,000-nit brightness levels that make it easy to see the screen in sunny environments. Motorola’s Signature 27 in Pantone coal smoke.Motorola Powering it will be Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 processor, which Qualcomm says will be particularly helpful for gaming at high-graphics settings, recording video at 8K resolution as well as 4K at 60 frames per second and for on-device AI tasks. The phone’s audio system is created with a partnership with Bang and Olufsen, which we’ll have to hear but should help tune the phone well for music and movies. The Signature also gets several Android 17 features that debuted on Google’s Pixel 11 series, including Rambler for voice transcription that uses AI to remove “umm”s from the text as well as understanding commands. There will also be a Create My Widget feature for having Gemini create personalized homescreen widgets, and the ability to use American Sign Language for texting. Motorola’s own Qira AI assistant will also be available on the Signature 27, which Motorola says will work across Lenovo devices. Like the Razr Fold, the Signature 27 will get seven years of software and security updates — which brings Motorola firmly in line with what Google and Samsung provide to their flagship Pixel and Galaxy phones. The Signature will come in two Pantone colors: the dark coal smoke and the green capulet olive. I am interested in feeling both phones because the coal smoke model is described as having a “tactical weave finish” akin to materials used for cars while the olive is said to have a textile-inspired finish that may be closer to the vegan leather backings we’ve seen on the Razr line. The Signature 27 may be expensive, but I do see where there may be an audience. With the recent retreat of OnePlus from the US phone market, fans of that brand may be looking for a new gamer-friendly phone alternative with both a high-end processor and fast phone charging. The Signature 27 is also arriving after years of growth for Motorola’s Razr line of foldable phones, which itself has included a number of luxury-minded variants such as Razr phones that include Swarovski crystals. The Signature 27 will release first in the US, going on preorder on Nov. 19 before going on open sale Nov. 26. Both the coal smoke and capulet olive models will come with 512GB of storage and 12GB of memory.