Motorola Razr 50 Ultra review: dramatic improvement signals hope for foldables

Motorola has drastically improved the new Razr 50 Ultra. In 2022, I got my first ever Motorola foldable smartphone. It was handy, and had some great gimmicks. Even so, it still had plenty of room for improvement. It could’ve used a larger cover display, and the cameras could’ve been better too. Motorola’s worked on this for its latest model.

In fact, the Razr 50 Ultra’s greatest strength is its cover display. Not only does the screen extend over the phone’s entire exterior, but it can also be used to its full extent. If you open the phone halfway, you can use it as a tripod. This, in turn, helps the cameras deliver better results.

Design, fold and main display: this is how it’s done, folks

Motorola has clearly put some thought into the design of its foldables in terms of colour and feel. I like it. In fact, I really, really like the Razr 50 Ultra’s look and texture. In addition to the Pantone colours Spring Green and Midnight Blue, Motorola’s also made the device available in the Pantone colour of the year, Peach Fuzz. My device is a soft orange, with metallic edges and a nice, rough back.

Motorola calls the material on the back of the phone «vegan leather». The device now comes with an IPX8 certification, meaning it’s protected for 30 minutes when submerged in fresh water to a depth of 1.5 metres.

But what about that notoriously tricky fold? While already pretty subtle on the Motorola Razr 2022 and its successor, the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra, I barely notice it on the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra during everyday use. It’s still slightly visible from the side, but only when the display’s switched off. Motorola’s achieved this by opting for a fairly wide hinge. The Razr 50 Ultra’s 1.5 centimetres thick. Its hinge looks robust, there’s no wobbliness and you can seamlessly position the handset upright at any angle up to 45 degrees. Doesn’t get much better than that, right? Wrong! Even for someone with hands as dainty as mine, it’s easy to open the foldable one-handed.

The 6.9-inch AMOLED internal display is quite something. It displays high-contrast colours and a dark black, hitting a peak brightness of 3,000 nits. As a result, you can see the screen clearly – even in strong sunlight. You can now also bump up the refresh rate to 165 hertz, an improvement on last year’s already decent 144 hertz.

Extremely well thought-out cover display

I gave readers a flavour of the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra’s external display in a previous article. Spanning almost all of the cover when closed, it measures four inches. Its refresh rate is 120 hertz. The brightness reaches peak values of 2,700 nits – more than good enough to handle bright sunshine.

Many of the external display’s features are gimmicks, and the large inner display is definitely nicer to use in some situations. Still, more often than not, I can use the device in its handy, miniature format.

Check the time and your messages

If you tap a button on the small screen, you can check the day, time and whether you have any new messages. When a new text comes in, you can reply on the little screen.

While the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 only displays your most recent message, you can see your entire chat history on the Razr 50 Ultra. You can also make use of text, emojis and GIFs in your replies. It’s just like using the internal display in regular format. And the keyboard doesn’t feel fiddly either.

Settings: little gimmicks are meant to keep the fun going

You can customise the external screen as need be. I put the apps I use often on the first page, positioning the rest on the second. If you want, you can add contacts, a calendar or Motorola’s sizeable collection of games for the external screen. The Motorola calendar app gives you an overview of your meetings, but you can’t interact with that particular screen. Still, at least you can put Google Calendar on the external screen as a widget (customised app) if you want to set up an appointment there and then.

My favourite widget is Motorola’s music player, which you can also switch to Spotify, Tidal or YouTube. It makes the Razr 50 Ultra feel like a mini MP3 player.

Swiping the external display shows you all the pages in the overview, so you don’t have to laboriously scroll through them to access the features on a page in the middle.

You can also adjust the wallpaper and font to your tastes. A white, pointy-eared mascot pre-installed on the device accompanies you through the day. On the lock screen, you can see it eating, brushing its teeth or working on its laptop, depending on what time you’re looking at it. You can adapt these animations to any time of day. I think the little guy’s super cute, even if he’s just a gimmick.

Speaking of gimmicks, Motorola now offers a whole host of games perfectly tailored to the external display. In 2022, three games were available, whereas now there are over a dozen. Some I like, some I’d never bother with again. I delete those from the game page right away. You can see a demonstration of various games in the video below:

Camera: selfie-centric

Motorola has two main cameras: one wide-angle (50 MP) and one telephoto (50 MP) with a 2x optical zoom. There’s also a selfie camera (32 MP) on the inside. Motorola hasn’t equipped the foldable with an ultra-wide-angle camera. This means the Razr 50 Ultra’s more of a selfie phone than a phone for landscape photography. Thanks to the software, the photos are generally a bit too gaudy and oversharpened for me – even with the «natural» setting turned on. Whether or not you’ll like them is a matter of taste. Besides, most manufacturers these days opt for that sort of look. Either way, the images are of good quality, especially the selfies taken by the front camera.

The zoom is good up to 3x magnification. The 10x zoom, on the other hand, is too flat and lacks detail.

Again, I like using it for selfies – both from the front and main cameras. The bokeh effect in portrait mode is too heavy and artificial-looking for fine details such as hair. Viewed on a phone screen, this is only noticeable if you look twice. Even so, I’d still stick to taking regular photos.

The Razr 50 Ultra boasts a macro function, but I’ve got to play around with it in order to get good results. You need to be the right distance away from the object in order to get a clear image.

I was surprised by the camera’s nighttime performance. I think the photos more than cut it, and depending on how the light’s falling, the images look quite atmospheric.

Hardware: runs smoothly with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3

Motorola’s gone for high-end Qualcomm hardware for the phone’s chip: the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The handset also has 12 gigabytes of RAM.

But here comes the kicker: in the Geekbench 6 benchmark, the foldable isn’t much better than its predecessor, the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra (Snapdragon 8 Gen 1). The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, which contains the same chip as my test device, performs significantly better.

The phone’s performance is absolutely fine for everyday use. Apps and animations run smoothly and load quickly. Even when two apps are open at the same time, the Razr 50 Ultra remains problem-free, and doesn’t throttle.

It’s also really good for gaming. The graphics-heavy smartphone game Genshin Impact runs smoothly in «medium» mode, and I can even set the graphics one level higher, i.e. to «balanced».

Although the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra only has a nano SIM slot, you do have the option of going for an eSIM. You can’t use a memory card, but in my view, the phone’s 512 GB of internal storage is more than enough.

Battery: turbo charge and staying power

The Razr 50 Ultra’s battery is only slightly bigger than its predecessor’s, with a capacity of 4,000 mAh instead of 3,800. But before you jump to conclusions, let me just say that the phone performs well in my PCMark battery test. That’s probably down to the efficient chip. It gives the Razr 50 Ultra a battery life of 13 hours when open. This is perfectly respectable in light of the battery size. It’s also enough to get me through a typical day of phone use, including gaming, listening to music, sending a few messages and taking photos. By the time evening rolls round, the battery level’s still at 20–30 per cent.

You charge the phone using an 86-watt adapter that – wait for it – comes included with the device. The foldable takes a maximum of 45 watts, but you could always use the adapter to charge your work laptop. With Motorola’s fast-charging function, the battery’s fully charged after about an hour. Top-notch. When charging wirelessly, the Razr 50 Ultra takes up to 50 watts.

Software: all Motorola

Motorola’s launched the Razr 50 Ultra with Android 14 and its own user interface. There are also three years of Android patches and four years of security updates. Given that Samsung and Google have been offering seven-year update periods lately, Motorola’s support is on the less generous side.

One thing the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra does have in common with Google and Samsung, however, is that it has Gemini, Google’s AI chat bot. The app can be downloaded to any Android device via the Google store, but Motorola’s already installed it and adapted it to the external display. Gemini runs smoothly on the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra – you only need to wait a few seconds for a response to your queries.

Accessories: extra goodies

As well as the adapter mentioned earlier (an item that stopped being included in standard smartphone inventory a long time ago), Motorola gives you a few extras with the handset. These include a USB-C cable and a case matching the colour of the phone. The phone doesn’t fold as elegantly inside the case as it does outside, but it’s still movable enough.

The case also has two buckles you can attach to a lanyard, which comes included in the box too. Plus, the displays have pre-fitted protective films.