Two things were glaringly clear to me after sitting through a 2.5-hour event yesterday where Motorola pre-briefed press on its new trio of Razr Android phones. The company really believes in the flip-style foldable form factor popularized by Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip and it thinks more AI, shoved ever deeper into the software, will rescue us from the cruelty of pecking on apps and buttons with our fingers.
Debuting today are three Razr flip-style phones: Razr, Razr+, and Razr Ultra. You can think of them as good, better, and best. Motorola claims the Razr Ultra is the most powerful flip-style smartphone with the best camera system available. We’ll be the judge of that when we get a device in for review. But the specs—including the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset—at least backs that up on paper.
They all look pretty similar, but here’s how you can spot the difference without pulling up a comparison chart. As the most premium model, the Razr Ultra sports the largest internal screen (7 inches), a dedicated Moto AI button on the left side, and fancier finishes such as Italian-made Alcantara, satin, faux leather, and wood. Upgrades over the other Razrs that you can’t eyeball right away: 50 megapixels for the main, ultra-wide, and selfie cameras; a large 4,700mAh battery; 68W wired charging; 30W wireless charging; and 5W reverse wireless charging.
The Razr+ looks nearly identical to the Razr Ultra, but comes with a slightly smaller 6.9-inch internal screen, no physical AI button, a smaller 4,000mAh battery, slower charging (45W wired and 15W wireless), and a lower-resolution selfie camera (32 megapixels). It also has a less powerful Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset.
Sitting at the entry-level, the plainly named Razr has a smaller 3.6-inch external display (there’s a “forehead” bezel not present on the Razr+ and Razr Ultra), lower-resolution cameras (50-megapixel main, 13-megapixel ultra-wide, and 32-megapixel selfie), and a mid-range MediaTek Dimensity 7400X chipset. However, the Razr does have a larger 4,500mAh battery than the Razr+.
I got to play with all three briefly and they all felt well-built to me, with the only major physical quality difference being the materials and finishes. I really liked the luxurious Alcantara on the Razr Ultra, but the polished aluminum and plastic Razr didn’t feel cheap in my opinion.
Motorola boasted other quality-of-life upgrades for the new Razrs. The hinges are titanium, which the company says is four time stronger than before and can handle “up to 35% more folds” compared to previous generation Razr flip phones. Motorola also says the crease on the internal folding display is 30% less visible (unclear how Motorola arrived at that number but it does seem less visible), and the Razr Ultra supposedly has the strongest external screen thanks to it being Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic.
Gadget nerds might be salivating over the specs, especially the ones on the Razr Ultra, but the real appeal to these new flip-style phones might be Moto AI. Rather than develop its own AI—and risk embarrassing itself like a certain fruit-named tech giant—Motorola is partnering up with AI leaders and using their large language models and logic reasoning in the background for various tasks. Perplexity, the AI “answer engine” that’s been chipping away at Google’s search relevance, is deeply integrated into the Android 15 operating system. Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, Microsoft’s Copilot, also power different aspects of Moto AI, assisting with general AI features like tasks suggestions (i.e. calling an Uber on your behalf or drafting an email), summarization, memory recall (think surfacing information from notes and screenshots), and more. Missing is any integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT (and there’s probably a reason for that) and Anthropic’s Claude.
The cameras also have Moto AI baked in with a feature called Signature Style. The phones use AI to automatically adjust tone and colors and then learns based on how you edit your shots. It sounds neat, but that also diminishes the whole point of photos which is that they usually don’t have the same uninspired look to them. I want to mix it up with my photos! Not have a specific look.
Fact is, every phone maker is promising game-changing AI features that they’re touting as more convenient or efficient. AI crammed deeper into your phone will help anticipate your needs! AI will save you from hundreds of taps every day. AI will finally fulfill the “intelligent” promises that voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and the Google Assistant failed at.
That’s the AI dream everyone (including Motorola) is selling. The AI in these new Razr phones is better and more useful, but also not quite capable enough to fully offload everything to just yet. And who even knows when that’ll be, if that ever happens. (Naturally, Motorola didn’t address AI hallucinations.)
All three Razrs will be available for preorder on May 7 and available unlocked on May 15. The Razr costs $699.99, the Razr+ is $999.99, and the Razr Ultra is $1,299.99.
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