Motorola Razr Plus (2024) hands-on review: bigger and better in every way (2024)

Early Verdict

After several valiant attempts, Motorola finally got it right with last year’s Razr Plus (2023). I was most shocked by how the flip phone style foldable managed to supplant Samsung, briefly earning the status of the best foldable phone around. Now that its successor is official, the Motorola Razr Plus (2024) takes everything I loved about last year’s model and improves on it in every way imaginable.

I’m astounded that it’s been 20 years since the original Razr’s release, but its legacy lives on with the Razr Plus (2024). Since it’s technically the first new foldable phone announced for the US this year, Moto has a prime opportunity to give consumers yet more reasons to choose foldable phones versus your typical slates.

So far, it seems like a worthy upgrade that packs in a larger external screen, bigger battery, faster processor and a new telephoto camera to get you closer than ever before with photos. And, oh yeah, it follows the trend we've been seeing this year of offering AI features that expands its utility. In my Motorola Razr Plus (2024) hands-on review, you'll find out if it's worth the 20 years of refining.

And for readers across the pond, please be aware that the Motorola Razr Plus (2024) is known as the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra in the UK and Australia.

Motorola Razr Plus (2024) Specs

Motorola Razr Plus (2024): Price and availability

Higher prices can seem inevitable, but I’m glad that Moto is keeping the price of the Razr Plus (2024) unchanged at $999 / AU$1,699. That matches the same price as before, which is a welcome relief given how we’ve seen many other big name phones get price increases.

In the US, preorders for the Motorola Razr Plus 2024 begin on July 10 at T-Mobile, AT&T, Best Buy, Amazon, and Motorola directly — with general availability set for July 24. It’s worth mentioning that there’s only a single storage option available, but it’s a generous 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage paired with 12GB LPDDR5X RAM. For the price, I think this is pretty fair.

In Australia, the phone will go by the name Motorola Razr 50 Ultra, and will be available to preorder between July 2 and July 16 (with an on-sale date of July 17) at JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, OfficeWorks, The Good Guys, Mobileciti, Amazon, andMotorola's online store.

Motorola Razr Plus (2024): Design

From a cursory look, it’s almost hard to tell the differences Motorola has done with the design of the Razr Plus (2024) — but they’re all there when I look at it meticulously. What’s apparent yet again is the stylish looks of the phone, accentuated by how gentle it feels thanks to its contoured edges, the grippy feel of its soft vegan leather, and all of the striking colors it’s available in. This is the kind of phone that craves attention, which emanates from its stylish design.

Motorola also mentions that the Razr Plus (2024) has improved durability, not only with a better IPX8 rating and Gorilla Victus Glass protecting the outer screen, but I feel especially in the way it opens. That’s because it’s much more snappy with its folding mechanism, giving it that satisfying snap when I close and open it — much like the feeling of the original Razr. This is due to the hinge being 30% smaller, which interestingly enough, also minimizes the crease along the middle of the display.

Best of all, the Motorola Razr Plus is available in more colors than ever before right from the onset with a total of four colorful options. They include midnight blue, spring green, peach fuzz, and hot pink. These options remind me of the time when Motorola released a slew of vibrant colors with the Razr V3 during the mid 2000s.

Motorola Razr Plus (2024): Display

Motorola certainly hit it on the mark last year with the Razr’s outer screen, since it was the first to bring a sizable display that unlocked new utility I haven’t seen in other flip style foldables before. With the Razr Plus (2024), it gets a proper upgrade by moving up to a larger 4-inch pOLED display that, more importantly, now features an always-on display. You can even customize it to mimic the iPhone’s StandBy Mode when the Razr’s in a tent position, which allows for some neat customizations.

Just as before, there’s a number of widgets to choose from, with the ability to punch the screen to see all the panels at once. And of course, it has the extra utility of running full apps natively — unlike the Galaxy Z Flip 5. Thanks to the larger screen, the Razr Plus (2024) is even more suitable for capturing selfies with the better main camera.

Opening up the phone reveals its 6.9-inch FHD+ pOLED display. I played a couple of YouTube videos and so far I like the punch tones it’s able to produce, along with wide viewing angles that don't distort the screen that much. Moto claims that it can reach a peak brightness of 3,000 nits, which I’m a little skeptical of because last year’s model pulled out 1,084 nits in Tom’s Guide’s benchmark testing.

It also features a display refresh rate up to 165 Hz, which gives all the navigational animations of the interface look extra smooth in my short time so far.

Motorola Razr Plus (2024): Cameras

Everyone (including myself) has been clamoring for more telephoto cameras in flip style foldable phones, and while I’m happy to report that’s the case here, I’m somewhat bummed by the compromise the Razr’s making to bring it. On one hand, I’m stoked that it’s been upgraded to a beefier 50MP main camera, but Motorola ditches the ultrawide camera in favor of a 50MP telephoto with 2x optical zoom.

So what’s the big deal? Well, I really found the ultrawide camera of last year’s Razr Plus handy for vlogging and self recordings because of its wider field of view — but that’s gone now replaced by a new telephoto camera. I think it would’ve made for a more compelling arrangement if Moto kept the ultrawide and uses pixel binning with the main camera to deliver 2x optical quality zoom. In theory, it would deliver the same package as the triple camera systems we get in many flagship phones.

I tried using the outer screen and main camera to shoot video of myself at 4K 30fps and 60fps, but it’s quite clear that the main camera can’t compare at capturing more of my torso. Meanwhile, folding the phone halfway puts it into a new camcorder mode that instantly starts recording video — with a new option to shoot vertical or horizontal videos while in this mode. Another change pertains to Photo Booth, which now works on both the internal and external cameras.

I’m hopeful that Motorola made all the proper improvements to the camera’s performance, particularly around its low light shooting because that was its weakest area. Furthermore, I want to put its telephoto camera to the test against its own main camera by comparing the results of its 50MP full sized snapshots and then cropping it to match its 50MP telephoto’s framing.

Much like its rivals, Motorola’s using AI in its cameras. Albeit, the AI features are more behind the scenes that enhance the quality, rather than the AI photo editing tools we’ve been seeing in other phones. These AI features include a photo enhancement engine that fine tunes photos for better clarity, adaptive stabilization to clear out the jitter in videos, action shot that will adjust the shutter speed and illumination of the camera based on the scene, long expose for artistic light trails, and super zoom that uses an AI-based machine learning algorithm to get better de

Motorola Razr Plus (2024): Performance

Rather than employing a previous generation chipset, the Razr Plus (2024) leans on the new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC for its muscle power, which is often classified as a lower-cost version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that powers most of today’s flagships. In just my short hands-on time, I can see its fluid responses running different apps and navigating around the interface. Although, Qualcomm has built the chipset to handle on-device generative AI features — so that’s where I suspect to see a big difference in its performance against its sibling in the standard Razr (2024).

Motorola Razr Plus (2024): Software and AI

Breezing quickly through the software in the Razr Plus (2024), it’s very similar to its predecessor in the way it preserves features that I’ve grown to love about Motorola’s phones. The motion gestures from before are still here, like a double chopping motion to turn on the flashlight or twisting the phone to instantly launch the camera.

Moto’s Hello UX software running on top of Android 14 looks fresh and modern, complete with new features powered by AI. Magic Canvas leverages generative AI to create custom wallpapers by using a textbox for me to describe what I want it to produce. I tried it out and it produced a legit wallpaper based on my request — which took about 7 to 10 seconds to do once I entered my description.

Google Gemini is on board with the Razr Plus (2024), which can be accessed directly from the external display (and internal one) by either long pressing the power button or saying the usual “Hey, Google” voice command. It works just like on other phones to help out by giving me travel tips and recommendations, but it’s made better here because you get 3 months of Gemini Advanced at no additional cost for even greater functionality by handling several instructions in one sentence. This also includes 2TB of cloud storage.

Where the Razr Plus (2024) really shines is in the new Moto AI features it’s going to be offering when it comes to the phone later this fall. It’s accessed by double tapping the back of the phone, which can then do interesting things. For example, Moto showed off how Moto AI can summarize all of the notifications on the Razr Plus (2024) and give you a personal summary that highlights the most important stuff by using the“Catch me up” prompt. I suffer from ignoring many of my notifications, so I can see how this can be helpful in giving me a top level oversight of what’s important.

The “pay attention” prompt works similarly like other AI-assisted voice recorders I’ve tested on the Pixel 8 Pro and Galaxy S24 Ultra by automatically transcribing voice recordings and summarizing them. Meanwhile, the “remember this” prompt will let Moto AI to capture and remember live moments or on-screen information, which is helpful when you want to recall a moment. I’m excited to try out more of these Moto AI features, but they will be available post launch sometime in the fall.

And finally, Motorola’s software support is a bit lax compared to everyone else — with 3 years of major Android updates and 4 years of security updates. That’s far from the more generous 7 years of support that Google has with its current generation of Pixel 8 phones.

Motorola Razr Plus (2024): Battery life

Motorola somehow manages to stuff a slightly larger 4,000 mAh battery into the svelte chassis of the Razr Plus (2024), so I suspect it’ll deliver a bigger boost to its battery life — especially when last year’s Razr Plus was still a battery champ against other flip style foldable phones with its 10+ hours on Tom’s Guide’s battery benchmark test. I think it can do even better with the battery optimizations of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.

The upgrade also extends to the charging abilities of the Razr Plus (2024), which now offers speedier 40W TurboPower charging (up from last year’s 30W charging) and 15W wireless charging (up from 5W). All of these features really make for a compelling upgrade.

Motorola Razr Plus (2024): Outlook

I think the Motorola Razr Plus (2024) is in a good position because there are iterative improvements everywhere throughout the phone. From its bigger outer screen, larger battery, faster charging, and AI features, it’s a superb upgrade that should give Samsung something to worry about — more so when its price remains unchanged at $999.

The only area I’m curious about is whether or not Motorola’s decision to drop the ultrawide camera for a telephoto one is the right move. I know there are people who find better utility out of a telephoto camera, but I think Moto could’ve still kept the ultrawide while giving it better zoom by leaning on pixel binning with the main camera. Nevertheless, it’s a fantastic foldable that should be on your radar.

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