Motorola Razr 50 Ultra Review: A Refined Foldable Experience?
Motorola is back with its yearly update for the Razr series, aiming to refine its foldable formula with the Razr 50 Ultra. While last year’s Razr 40 Ultra impressed with its radical and bold cover display design, it fell short in other areas, notably camera performance and heating issues. This year, the Razr 50 Ultra appears familiar at first glance, but a wave of hardware upgrades promise a significantly improved experience. Having used the phone for over a week, it’s clear that Motorola has made significant progress.
Read on to find out why the Razr 50 Ultra could be your first foldable, analyzing its impressive cover display, refined hinge, and potential shortcomings in camera performance.
Motorola Razr 50 Ultra Review: Design – You Win Some, You Lose Some
- Dimensions (closed): 73.99 x 88.09 x 15.32mm
- Dimensions (open): 73.99 x 171.42 x 7.09mm
- Weight: 189 grams
The Razr 50 Ultra maintains a similar design language to its predecessor, but subtle changes make a difference. When closed, the clamshell is now a few millimeters thinner, achieving a profile similar to many smartwatches. This achievement is thanks to the new, more compact hinge, which also promises greater reliability with fewer moving parts.
Motorola boasts that the hinge not only delivers a smoother opening and closing experience but also provides enhanced dust protection. However, despite the improvement, the phone now carries an IPX8 rating for water resistance, a step down from the Razr 40 Ultra’s IP52 rating and behind the new Galaxy Z Flip 6’s IP48 rating for dust and water resistance.
The new hinge allows the Razr 50 Ultra to lie perfectly flat when open, offering a more seamless visual experience.
While Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip series focuses on extreme hovering angles, requiring two hands to open, and Oppo’s Find N3 Flip offers a smooth, one-handed open hinge with a narrower hovering range (45-120 degrees), Motorola’s Razr has always emphasized single-handed operation with a small hovering range. This makes it one of the easiest foldables to open and close with one hand, further enhanced by its ability to hold the display confidently in the V-shaped position.
Motorola leans into these strengths with smart software features:
- Sleep Display: This feature activates the cover display’s Always-on Display (AOD) feature when the phone is angled at a 70-degree slant in the Stand position. It shows a black-and-white AOD with crucial information, activated by a tap or simply bringing your hand closer.
- Desk Display: This feature takes advantage of the cover display’s low refresh rate (LTPO), working in both Tent and Stand positions. It showcases preselected photos from your gallery or custom images from Motorola, creating a digital photo frame that consumes minimal power (1-2 percent per hour) and remains active continuously in Tent or Stand positions.
The rear panel now features a vegan leather finish across all colour options, providing enhanced grip. The Spring Green model, with its vertical grooves, offers excellent grip, even feeling like it supports Qi 2 wireless charging, though it doesn’t.
While a true Always-on Display mode for the Razr’s cover display (similar to the iPhone 14/15 Pro) would elevate its functionality, offering customisable front panel designs and more, this remains a possibility for future iterations.
Motorola Razr 50 Ultra Review: Displays – A Notch Above the Rest
- Cover display: 4.0-inch, 1,272 × 1,080 pixels, 165Hz
- Main display: 6.9-inch, 2,640 × 1,080 pixels, full-HD+, 165Hz
- Display type: pOLED (LTPO)
The Razr 50 Ultra’s larger 4.0-inch cover display features better cutouts for the floating cameras and LED flash unit, creating a more polished appearance. With a peak brightness of 3,000nits and HDR10+ certification, the cover display performs remarkably well for outdoor use and offers a fantastic experience for scrolling photos, capturing images, and even enjoying supported content in Tent mode.
The main display delivers impressive color reproduction, especially in Natural color mode. The bright, wide display (22:9 aspect ratio) may lead to slight letter-boxing when watching 16:9 format content but provides a seamless experience for wider cinema formats. The maximum 300Hz touch sampling rate (220Hz normal), exclusively available for gaming, is ideal for high-end FPS gaming.
Motorola Razr 50 Ultra Review: Software – A Fine Balance
- Software: Hello UI
- Version: Android 14
- Latest Security Patch: 01 May, 2024
Motorola’s recent Hello UI strikes a balance between usability and customization. It avoids feeling overwhelming while maintaining performance, offering a personalized user experience with themes, fonts, AI wallpapers, and more. While there are preinstalled third-party apps (which can be uninstalled), Motorola also includes its own set of apps, mostly useful (like Family Space) but not removable. The result is a less starkly stock feel compared to older Motorola devices, but the extensive customization options make it a unique and enjoyable experience.
The Razr 50 Ultra continues to lead the pack (with the new Galaxy Z Flip 6 now in the game) with its functional cover display capabilities. The larger size makes it significantly more versatile, often replacing the need to open the phone. Motorola even takes advantage of Google’s Gemini AI on the cover display, with results being easily transferable between apps via the full-width keyboard included on the cover display.
Motorola Razr 50 Ultra Review: Performance – A Bit of a Hothead
- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3
- RAM: 12GB, LPDDR5X
- Storage: 512GB, UFS 4.0
While the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor delivers impressive raw performance, it’s not as potent as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This puts it in line with the previous generation Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 (which used a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy SoC), but likely falls behind the new Z Flip 6, featuring a potentially more powerful processor.
Benchmark results demonstrate this:
| Benchmark | Razr 50 Ultra | Oppo Find N3 Flip | Galaxy Z Flip 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AnTuTu v10 | 1,283,736 | 1,027,655 | 1,287,359 |
| PCMark Work 3.0 | 18,011 | 9,824 | 15,150 |
| Geekbench 6 Single | 1,926 | 1,116 | 1,998 |
| Geekbench 6 Multi | 4,950 | 3,325 | 5,176 |
| GFXB T-rex | 120 | 60 | 120 |
| GFXB Manhattan 3.1 | 120 | 60 | 111 |
| GFXB Car Chase | 87 | 60 | 94 |
| 3DM Slingshot Extreme OpenGL | Maxed Out | Maxed Out | Maxed Out |
| 3DM Slingshot | Maxed Out | Maxed Out | Maxed Out |
| 3DM Wild Life | Maxed Out | Maxed Out | Maxed Out |
| 3DM Wild Life Unlimited | 12,050 | 12,769 | 12,923 |
Despite its slightly less powerful processor, the Razr 50 Ultra delivers smooth and seamless everyday usability, without any noticeable bugs. This seamless performance is consistent with Motorola’s history of creating devices with efficient and reliable hardware, even with the addition of more native apps. The transitions between the cover and main display, seamlessly integrating app usage between the two, remains one of Motorola’s defining strengths and a feature other manufacturers struggle to replicate.
One persistent concern is heating. While the phone doesn’t reach uncomfortable temperatures during regular use or while playing demanding games, it warms up significantly when using the camera. This warmth, felt on the inner folding display, is accompanied by camera interface lag after 5-10 minutes of mixed usage, most pronounced during video recording, leading to slower animations.
For gamers, the Razr 50 Ultra shines in both casual and serious scenarios. The cover display offers enjoyable, simple games with excellent haptic feedback, effectively utilizing the floating cameras. For more demanding experiences, the phone handles Call of Duty: Mobile without issues, even at Medium graphics and Ultra frame rates, and even at High graphics and Max frame rates. The UTG screen protection also seems to have improved significantly, resisting scratches during extended gaming sessions.
Motorola Razr 50 Ultra Review: Cameras – New Cameras, Old Problems
- Main Camera: 50MP (OIS), f/1.7 aperture, AF
- Telephoto Camera: 50MP, 2x optical zoom, f/2.0 aperture, AF
- Selfie camera: 32MP, f/2.4 aperture
Motorola ditches the traditional ultra-wide-angle camera in favor of a telephoto lens, a welcome change for most everyday shooting scenarios where the wide-angle primary camera is sufficient. The secondary telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom caters to those seeking closer-up shots.
The primary camera delivers slightly saturated colors, with good dynamic range, and detailed shadow and highlight areas, regardless of whether AI Shot optimization is enabled. Autofocus is snappy for photos but a bit slow during video recording. In low light, the performance is commendable, with minimal noise and excellent detail retention.
Daylight Camera Samples:
The new telephoto camera performs exceptionally well in daylight and indoor lighting, producing detailed and sharp images, particularly for portrait mode. It also provides usable 4x digital zoom, with adequate detail, in daylight. However, the lack of OIS in the telephoto lens leads to soft and blurry shots in low light.
Selfie Camera Samples:
The built-in selfie camera remains similar to last year’s model, with decent daylight selfies but soft and blurry low-light results. Fortunately, the cover display and primary camera combination allows for clear low-light selfies when folded shut, delivering natural bokeh and reducing the need for portrait mode, even at night.
Video recording at 4K 30fps or 4K 60fps shows good detail and limited dynamic range, with effective stabilization while walking or panning, provided the phone hasn’t overheated. However, stuttering during video recordings occurs once the phone heats up, exacerbated by the camera’s interface slowing down, indicating that the hardware struggles to keep pace with the camera’s demands.
Low Light Camera Sample:
Despite these struggles, the recorded footage looks good, though bitrate issues surface due to the phone’s rising temperature. In low light, 4K 30fps footage performs well, with good detail and stabilization. Recording at 1080p, especially in low light, produces noticeably soft, downscaled results, making it less ideal.
Motorola Razr 50 Ultra Review: Battery – As Good as it Gets
- Battery Capacity: 4,000mAh
- Wired Charging: 45W (68W in-box charger)
- Wireless Charging: 15W
The increase in cover display usability translates to improved battery life. Even with the Always-on Display (AOD, showcasing a black-and-white display) feature enabled, the Razr 50 Ultra easily lasts a full day with heavy usage (including camera and gaming sessions) and can be extended to the next afternoon with casual use. The phone scored an impressive 20 hours and 28 minutes in a video loop test. Fast charging from 0 to fully charged takes just 51 minutes, and wireless charging (15W) is supported via Motorola’s proprietary charging dock (sold separately).
Motorola Razr 50 Ultra Review: Verdict
Clamshell foldable smartphones have found their niche in the compact flagship segment, offering a compelling alternative in a market previously limited to plus-sized models. The Razr 50 Ultra emerges as a strong contender in this segment, addressing many previous shortcomings associated with this form factor.
The Razr 50 Ultra is a strong consideration for your first foldable. Motorola has significantly refined the Razr, delivering a package that ticks the boxes for most foldable users, including capable cameras, a compact form factor, a large display, excellent software, impressive battery life, and fast charging. The inclusion of premium Motorola Buds+ (Review) TWS earphones in the box sweetens the deal further.
Adding Google’s Gemini AI support on the cover display further distinguishes it from the competition. While Oppo’s Find N3 Flip (Review) offers a solid camera setup, and Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 (Review) and the new Galaxy Z Flip 6 (First Impressions) prioritize AI capabilities, Motorola’s integrated cover display and exceptional software optimization make it the clamshell champion.
