The 2024 Motorola Razr and Razr+ are two of the best foldable phones yet

Motorola managed to delight us last year with its revamped Razr phones, which offered refreshed designs, better specs and better prices. The company is building on that momentum with this year’s Razr and Razr+ smartphones, and while the changes may seem small on paper, they’re more significant than you think.

The $1,000 Razr+, Motorola’s flagship foldable phone, gets an even bigger cover display, a revamped camera system and updated internals for 2024. Meanwhile, the $700 Razr gets a massive display upgrade, faster performance and a new suede-like finish on the outside. The phones are Moto’s latest attempt at taking on Samsung in the fight for foldable dominance in the United States, and if you’re going to buy a folding phone, chances are they’ll pop up during your search.

But the question is: Are either of these Razrs worth the title of best foldable phone? Let’s take a look.

What we liked about them

Tougher designs with unique ‘fabric’ finishes

Both of the new Razrs look a lot like their 2023 predecessors. They’re roughly the same size and weight, and they have the same 6.9-inch folding displays. The difference is in the details: Motorola has tested both phones for IPX8 water resistance, which means you can dunk them in 1.5 meters of water for up to 30 minutes. Their hinges are also 30% stronger than before, and the crease in the middle of the screen is less pronounced (you can still see and feel it, but it’s noticeably flatter this time around).

Instead of all-glass exteriors, Moto is using both vegan leather and vegan suede for the new Razrs. The colors and associated finishes are as follows:

Moto Razr+ (2024)

Moto Razr (2024)

Motorola gave me the Razr+ in Midnight Blue and the Razr in Koala Grey for testing, so I was able to spend some time with both kinds of materials. I like the vegan leather a bit more since it feels more durable and premium, but the suede is so different on a phone that I think a lot of people will really like it. Obviously, long-term durability is still a question for the suede finish, but Motorola told me it held up really well in its tests, so there’s that.

The Razr+ sticks with glossy sides, while the Razr has matte sides, and they each come with a power button/fingerprint sensor on the right, volume keys and a USB-C port on the bottom. When closed, these phones get so compact that you can practically toss them in anything, whether it’s a small purse or a tight pocket in your jeans. This is the biggest reason why folding phones are awesome; you can shut them when you’re done and they get smaller as a result.

The outer displays are even more versatile, and still a lot of fun

The biggest hardware difference on the new Razrs are their larger cover displays, which are significantly larger than last year’s.

The regular Razr is getting the biggest upgrade, going from 1.9 inches to 3.6 inches — the same size as last year’s Razr+. Meanwhile, this year’s Razr+ goes from 3.6 inches to 4 inches, adding a bit more vertical room for viewing content. It looks like one of those out-of-reach concept phones from back in the day, but it’s totally real and looks totally awesome.

Moto’s new cover displays are both larger than the 3.4-inch display on the Galaxy Z Flip 5, and they can do far more with the extra screen real estate. You can run any app you want on their cover displays, whether it be social media like Instagram, your email inbox, Google Maps, games, banking apps, messaging apps and more. There’s also a slew of minigames designed to run on the cover screens as well as a selection of widgets and panels to show you timely information at a glance.

New on this year’s Razrs are an updated Spotify panel with easier access to playlists, a Moto Buds panel for tweaking your headphone’s settings and a Bose panel for adjusting the settings of your Bose headphones. Widgets have also received a bit of a makeover to look more appealing, and the entire interface looks and feels a bit fresher.

You can also move between the cover display and inner display with ease; when you’re using an app on either, you’ll have the option to move to the next screen when you open or close the Razr, which is especially useful when you run into an app that doesn’t play nicely with the cover screen. Moto is also finally including an always-on display with both phones, so you can quickly glance at the time on the outer display.

By and large, these are the best cover displays on any flip phone. In the United States, their only competition is Samsung, and both the Razr and Razr+ beat the company by a country mile. I love these screens so much.

Solid displays, now even brighter

Both the Razr+ and Razr have beautiful screens. Their cover displays use OLED panels with sharp resolutions and fast refresh rates, while the 6.9-inch screen on both phones is practically identical.

They each get P-OLED panels, Full HD+ resolutions and 3,000 nits of peak brightness, which makes them significantly brighter than last year’s models. You’ll notice this right away too; I took these phones for a stroll along the Ocean City boardwalk in the blazing-hot sun, and I could see each of their displays easily through my sunglasses.

The Razr ships with a 120Hz refresh rate, while the Razr+ gets a 165Hz refresh rate, and the difference is negligible. I suppose the Razr+ feels a tiny bit smoother, but you’d have to have the phones side by side to notice it. Either way, both phones’ displays are plenty smooth and responsive.

Motorola also includes water-touch technology, which lets you use the displays even if they’re wet. We saw OnePlus add this feature to the OnePlus 12 earlier this year, so it looks like more phone companies could be adding it to their devices in the future.

Reliably fast performance

In the Razr+, Motorola includes the latest Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor from Qualcomm, which delivers exceptional performance. Paired with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, this phone is an absolute screamer. I haven’t experienced any performance issues during my time testing it, and it’s been able to handle everything I’ve thrown at it with grace. You won’t have any problems with the Razr+ keeping up.

The same can be said for the normal Razr, which ships with a slightly less powerful chip called the MediaTek Dimensity 7300X. While it isn’t quite as speedy as the Snapdragon, I found it to be reliable enough to keep up with all the apps, games and multitasking I threw at it. By default, it ships with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but you can configure it with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. I’ve been testing the model with 8GB of RAM, and it’s served me well.

I ran some tests with Geekbench to see how the Razr+ and Razr would perform, and as expected, they sit comfortably in the realm of “upper midranger” to “flagship level.” The Razr+ can bench almost as high as the Galaxy S24 Ultra, while the Razr is more akin to the scores we see in other midrange phones. Of course, you’ll still get the best performance from an iPhone, but in the world of foldables, these new Razrs are quite powerful.

Battery life that lasts all day

Both of the new Razr phones can last a full day on a charge. The Razr+ ships with a 4,000mAh battery, which is 200mAh bigger than what was in last year’s model, while the Razr has a 4,200mAh cell.

Throughout a 16-hour day with mixed usage, these devices can easily hold up and have anywhere from 10% to 30% left in the tank when I go to bed. That’s pretty good for ultrathin folding phones. Of course, I experienced better performance with the regular Razr given its bigger battery capacity, but if you have your heart set on the Razr+, you won’t be disappointed by its endurance.

In our battery test where we loop a 4K video at 50% screen brightness with Airplane mode on, the Razr+ lasted 18 hours and 40 minutes, while the Razr lasted 19 hours and 10 minutes. This doesn’t mean you’ll get this kind of endurance from normal usage; instead, it’s more representative of the peak of what these batteries are capable of. And clearly, their ceilings are both below 24 hours, so don’t expect multiday battery life from either Razr.

When it’s time to recharge, the Razr+ is capable of 45W wired charging, while the Razr gets 30W charging. They each also have 15W wireless charging. What’s more, the Razr+ has reverse wireless charging so you can give some power to your earbuds while on the go.

A nice software experience with all the Moto tricks and features

The Razr and Razr+ each come with Android 14 out of the box with Moto’s Hello UX on top. The customizations Motorola has made to the interface are a bit heavier than in years past, with tweaked versions of things like the notification center and lock screen. But overall, these phones offer a simple, inviting software experience that’s rare on phones not named “Google Pixel.”

From the home screen launcher that feels like stock Android to all the deep customization options to make your Razr feel like your own, Motorola has delivered an experience that’s familiar, friendly and far from overwhelming. That’s despite all the neat tricks the software has up its sleeve; thanks to the Moto app, you have access to all of Moto’s actions like a double-chop to trigger the flashlight, a double-twist to open the camera and a three-finger swipe to take a screenshot.

There’s also much more on the way in the form of Motorola’s AI called Moto Assistant. It’s meant to help you record your conversations with ease, recall what photos are in your gallery, manage your notifications easier and more. However, none of that was available to test since it isn’t coming out for a while. In the meantime, Motorola includes an AI wallpaper generator and a feature called Style Sync that generates a wallpaper based on what outfit you’re wearing. Just take a picture of your clothes and it’ll create something unique to your look so your phone can match your aesthetic on the fly. The phone also comes preloaded with the Google Gemini app, which is Google’s own AI chatbot that you can ask for help with everything from custom images to recipe ideas.

What we didn’t like about them

Unreliable camera quality

It’s an age-old tale with Motorola phones: They can never seem to deliver on camera quality. Unfortunately, that carries over to the new Razr+ and regular Razr.

On the former, there’s a brand-new 50-megapixel main camera that offers 14% larger pixels to capture more light and provide better focus and image stabilization. My expectations weren’t particularly high for the sensor, but I was still disappointed by its performance. You can get some nice photos in broad daylight, and if the scene is simple enough, low-light photos can come out OK. But for anything complex like street art in Brooklyn or the sunset over the water, the Razr+ can’t consistently deliver a good photo. Details can get soft, contrasts are processed in a weird way and color reproduction is oftentimes too bland.

In place of an ultrawide camera is a new 50-megapixel telephoto that comes with 2x optical zoom. It kicks out roughly the same image quality, although things tend to get worse at night than they do with the regular camera. It’s also an odd choice to go with telephoto instead of an ultrawide; while smartphone snobs like myself may prefer a telephoto for zooming in without losing detail, many folks I speak to love using their ultrawide cameras to fit more of a scene into a photo. It’s simply not available on the Razr+, which is a shame.

On the regular Razr, it’s a similarly disappointing story. The main 50-megapixel camera is fine during the day, but results are completely unreliable when the lights get low or you’re in a dim room in your home. Meanwhile, the accompanying 13-megapixel ultrawide camera is nice to have, but it’s a lot worse than the main shooter with poor detail and light capture.

You can shoot 4K videos with both of these phones, but results are often over-processed with artifacts around the edges of your subjects. In addition, the 32-megapixel selfie cameras are mediocre at best.

It’s disappointing that the cameras on both of the Razrs are so underwhelming, because taking pictures and videos with the phones is a lot of fun. You can prop them up on a table for a makeshift tripod, bend them in half and hold them sideways like an old-school camcorder or use the cover display as a viewfinder for a group selfie. There’s so much versatility built into the shooting experience, it’s just a shame that it’s tarnished by poor image and video quality.

They can get pretty hot

Call it the physics of a foldable phone, the fact that they’re super thin or perhaps the hot summer weather I’ve been testing them in, but I’ve noticed that the Razr and Razr+ have a tendency to get pretty warm under normal usage. Whether I’m scrolling through Instagram or playing Asphalt 8, the phones start to heat up quicker than other phones in my arsenal and stay that way until I stop using them.

This is something I’ll be looking at long term, but out the gate, for them to get this warm is a bit unusual.

Three years of software upgrades is unacceptable

In this day and age, it’s common to find smartphones from midrangers to flagships with at least four or five years of software support. At the high end, phones like the Pixel 8 and Galaxy S24 are promised seven years of updates, and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

But if you ask Motorola, promising just three years of software support is enough to keep customers happy. Why? I have no idea. Perhaps the company thinks no one will be using these phones for more than three years, and it might be right. But at least give your customers the option of using them longer by keeping them updated.

At the very least, you’ll get four years of bimonthly security patches, which is fine. But only three major Android upgrades? C’mon, Moto.

Bottom line

The Razr and Razr+ are incredibly solid smartphones with nice designs, fast performance and the best cover screens on any flip phone. We’ll have to see how the Galaxy Z Flip 6 turns out in our final review, but as of now, these are some of the best folding phones you can get.

Sure, you’ll be left with mediocre cameras and battery life, and neither phone is quite as durable as a normal brick-shaped phone, but if you’re looking to dive headfirst into the world of foldables, the Razr series is a great place to start.