Motorola Razr 50 Ultra’s significant advancements should make the foldable competition worried

The Razr 50 Ultra may not seem much different from its predecessor, but it improves in key areas such as cover screen technology, performance, camera capabilities, and, most importantly, AI, resulting in one of the more intriguing foldables to hit the market in recent months.

While I am not yet ready to share my final thoughts, having just used the Razr 50 Ultra for a few hours, here are my initial impressions of Motorola’s latest foldable.

MOTOROLA RAZR 50 ULTRA KEY FEATURES

The newest foldable Razr generation has been launched, with minor but significant improvements over the Razr 40 series. Today we’ll look at the Razr 50 Ultra, the most premium Razr 50 smartphone. It will be remembered as the first Razr that was truly water-resistant and had a telescopic camera.

The new Razr 50 Ultra looks quite similar to the Razr 40 Ultra, a tiny foldable with an aluminum frame, glass and leather exterior, and a stainless steel hinge. This year, the Ultra is designated IPX8 for suitable water resistance.

The exterior screen has enlarged to a 4-inch square-ish LTPO OLED with thinner bezels and three punch-holes for the two cameras and flash. It features a resolution of 1272 x 1080 pixels (421ppi) and supports a refresh rate of 165Hz, 1 billion colors, HDR10+, and even Dolby Vision.

The foldable 6.9-inch LTPO OLED is of comparable quality, with a dynamic 165Hz refresh rate, 1 billion colors, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision. The resolution is 2640 x 1080, or 413ppi. The Razr 50 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, an enhancement to the 8+ Gen 1, and has quicker UFS 4.0 storage.

The dual camera on the back is here to stay, but it uses entirely distinct images. There is now a 50MP OIS primary camera and a 50MP 2x OIS telephoto camera with up to 4x lossless zoom. However, the 32MP selfie camera is identical to the Razr 40 Ultra.

Finally, the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra features a 4,000mAh battery that supports 45W fast charging and 15W wireless charging. It runs vanilla Android 14 with a few proprietary Moto gimmicks, notably extensive use of the external screen.

MOTOROLA RAZR 50 ULTRA UNBOXING

The Motorola Razr 50 Ultra is packaged in a black paper box filled with goodies. When you open the package, you’ll be met by a refreshing aroma of wood and other nuances. This is Motorola’s trademark aroma, and it elevates the unpacking experience.

The kit includes a 68W power adapter and a USB-C connection for quick charging. There is also a protective case with a little leather lanyard in the same color. Unfortunately, you must use double-sided tape to stick the cover on the phone; otherwise, it will not stay firmly in place.

The case is lovely, as is the lanyard. With these two, the phone can be carried as a crossbody bag.

CAMERA

Motorola has made an unusual move regarding the camera offering of the Razr 50 Ultra, and it may not be what you anticipate. While most smartphone manufacturers appear to favor primary and ultrawide cameras on dual camera devices, Motorola has decided to replace last year’s 13MP ultrawide with a high-resolution 50MP 2x telephoto that sits alongside the 50MP main.

This implies that the Razr 50 Ultra should perform considerably better in portrait and general zoom photographs, but it also means that you won’t be able to take those stunning ultra-wide scenery shots that have become so popular in recent years due to the widespread adoption of ultrawide lenses.

In addition, the foldable screen houses an improved 32MP camera. With the ability to capture selfies using the cover display and high-resolution cameras, you’re unlikely to use it frequently, but it’s a useful enhancement for video calls and the like.

It certainly appears to be a significant upgrade for the Razr 50 Ultra, and the few test shots I’ve taken so far look promising, with plenty of detail and impressive dynamic range, but it’ll be interesting to see how it performs in low-light situations – especially with added AI smarts this year, but more on that later.

DESIGN AND SCREEN

The Motorola Razr 50 Ultra doesn’t seem much different from the Razr 40 Ultra from last year, but given that it was a very slender, elegant foldable with brilliant colors and a nice vegan leather back, that’s not a terrible thing.

There are a few important differences this year, the most notable of which is the cover screen. While the Razr 40 Ultra already featured the largest cover screen on the market at 3.6 inches, the Razr 50 Ultra increases it to 4 inches, taking up almost the whole cover of the phone. This may not appear to be a significant difference on paper, but it is dramatically different in reality.

The larger screen makes it simpler to view notifications, enjoy Motorola-designed cover screen widgets, and operate full Android apps without having to unfold the phone. It was already a strong point of the Razr 40 Ultra when compared to the somewhat limited Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, and it’s just getting better with the 50 Ultra this year.

And, as with last year, the dual cameras are embedded within the cover screen, giving it a sci-fi flair. I’ve noted that the cameras protrude significantly more than those on last year’s Razr 40 Ultra, but there’s a good reason for this – more on that later.

Continuing Motorola’s collaboration with color experts Pantone, the Razr 50 Ultra is available in four colors: green, blue, peach fuzz (Pantone’s color of the year), and a pink finish that pays homage to the original pink Razr that debuted 20 years ago. This is unquestionably a fashion-forward smartphone, especially when combined with AI-generated backgrounds that may match your clothing and accessories and transform it into a mini purse.

These all have vegan leather rears, although the texture varies depending on the color option. The blue finish, for example, features a faint race-strip motif on the vegan leather with two slightly different textures, whilst the green finish is more uniform.

Other enhancements include Gorilla Glass Victus screen protection on the cover screen and full IPX8 water resistance, which protects it from water damage in up to 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes, albeit dust-proofing has been sacrificed in the process.

However, Motorola has told me that, despite the lack of an official rating, the business has tried to reduce the locations – particularly around the hinge – where dust can enter.

This year, the hinge was also modified, making it easier to open and close the phone with one hand while also reducing the wrinkle on the inner 6.9-inch screen. Considering it was hardly apparent on the Razr 40 Ultra, it’s almost invisible on the 50 Ultra, and there’s no discernible difference in tactile feel as you swipe over it in use.

Speaking of the internal screen, it’s a massive 6.9-inch pOLED with a 165Hz refresh rate and 3000nits peak brightness, making it suitable for outdoor use.

I haven’t used it in any extremely bright conditions yet, but it appears to be quite bright, and when combined with the deep blacks and rich colors that OLED technology is known for, it should provide a fairly great viewing experience.

And that’s one of the benefits of the Razr 50 Ultra’s folding design; while a 6.9-inch screen would be too large for a standard candybar phone, the fact that it folds down into two pieces to fit neatly into a pocket or bag is a huge gain.

HOW’S THE PERFORMANCE?

The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset powers the Razr 50 Ultra, the same as it does the non-bendy Edge 50 Ultra. It has a 1+4+3 CPU configuration, which includes a Cortex-X4 prime core (up to 3.0GHz), a cluster of four Cortex-A720 cores (2.8GHz), and three Cortex-A520 cores. The GPU on board is the Adreno 735, and as the name says, it is lower than the Adreno 740 found in the Snapdragon 8 Generation 2 SoC.

The Razr 50 Ultra will only be available in one memory configuration: 12GB/512GB, however, China will also receive 8GB/256GB and 12GB/256GB variants.

In our benchmarks, the Razr 50 Ultra outperformed the Razr 40 Ultra somewhat, but it fell short of the Edge 50 Ultra’s performance. The Galaxy Z Flip5 is speedier overall.

Thermal design is never challenging in space-constrained foldable, and the Razr 50 Ultra does not shine under sustained load – we received 51% ratings in both the CPU Throttling and 3DMark Wild Life stress tests. The Edge 50 Ultra, which has the same processor, performs somewhat better, but clamshells rarely outperform this Razr in our experience.

Buy it if...

• Large, bright, high-resolution cover display.
• The internal display is nearly creaseless, and it performs well across all measures.
• IPX8 is a nice inclusion.
• The fastest-charging clamshell foldable we’ve tried.
• Great speakers.
• Hello UI is both clean and feature-rich, with extensive cover screen capability.
• Overall, a good camera system, maybe the greatest telephoto in this compact factor.

Don't buy it if…

• No ultrawide camera.
• There is no close-up shooting capability.
• Heavy thermal throttling.

FULL SPECIFICATION