Motorola Razr+ smartphone review – The high-end foldable that charges wirelessly

At $1,200, the Motorola Razr+ is no cheap smartphone, but it is a special one: You can fold it open along its short edge, just as you would have the legendary Razr flip phones of the 2000s. The result is a 6. 9-inch screen that is about the same size as your usual phones.

If you fold it shut, then you still have access to a 3. 6-inch display and can neatly tuck the foldable away in your pocket. In countries outside of the US, the Razr+ is sold under the name Motorola Razr 40 Ultra.

Motorola are looking to attract a stylish audience through their multiple collaborations and color variant offerings. Its wireless charging capabilities and eSIM support make this phone a well-rounded concept. So, is this a smartphone that will make everyone happy? Let’s find out.

The case on the Razr+ is a great success: The phone sits in your pocket much more neatly than older devices, as it now only has a thickness of 1. 5 centimeters when it is folded together. And still, it remains stable when it is open and the phone’s hinge becomes almost invisible.

There is still quite a noticeable crease along the center of the device – but not nearly as bad as older models. The phone comes in black and light blue and both variants have a matte glass back. If you’re looking for something a little more extra, you can also get the phone in the color Viva Magenta, which is the color of our test device.

Its mix between light red and pink is a collaboration with the color experts of Pantone: Viva Magenta is the color of the year for 2023. Only this variation of the phone has a back made of faux leather. The Razr+ is only water and dust proof to a limited extent: The phone has an IP52 certification.

So still decent protection against dirt and water droplets. Weighing in at 188. 5 grams, the foldable is really quite lightweight.

A quirky design feature: The Razr+ has its very own distinct scent, which Motorola have developed in collaboration with the olfactory experts of Firmenich. In our opinion, the scent doesn’t have a very high-quality characteristic – if anything, it smells a bit like cheap shower gel. But regardless, it’s a matter of personal taste anyway.

For current foldables, 256 GB UFS 3. 1 storage and 8 GB RAM are pretty standard. At the same time, you can often find phones with more or faster storage for a price of $1,200.

The phone doesn’t feature a microSD card slot and it can only accommodate one Nano SIM. If you would like to use Dual-SIM, you still have the option to create an eSIM profile. The Motorola phone comes delivered with Android 13 and the manufacturer has promised three big version updates and four years of regular safety patches.

We contacted Motorola regarding other manufacturer’s abilities to release patches more promptly – we were told that they are currently working on improving this situation. On a positive note: At the time of testing, the latest security patch was from May 2023, meaning it was up-to-date. As always, Motorola have made sure to install a relatively pure version of Android and have only included a few of their own apps that offer features such as expanded gesture controls.

The manufacturer has also adopted quite a few of the safety functions from ThinkShield for Mobile, which can be found on the ThinkPhone . The Moto Secure app lets you block unsafe WLAN connections and create specially protected folders. Ready For is also available on the Razr+, which lets you easily connect the phone to your PC wirelessly.

You can then use your phone as a second screen or a webcam, and you can also easily send files via a shared clipboard. The Motorola Razr+ utilizes WiFi 6E, which means the phone can use the lesser occupied 6 GHz band. The phone unfortunately hasn’t yet mastered the cutting-edge WiFi 7.

The full extent of its WLAN signal is available within close proximity of the router – ten meters away with three walls in between, the signal strength becomes a little weaker. Loading pages on the internet still seems to work super-fast, though. Its speed is on quite a good level, with a maximum of 1.

3 Gbit/s. Although, the phone’s predecessor was cable of achieving slightly better values and in our test, the Razr+ appeared to be quite erratic at times – at least when it came to speeds. Thanks to the many 4G and 5G bands supported by the phone, you can use it pretty much anywhere on the globe.

In our test, the phone’s mobile signal was great – about on the same level as other high-end smartphones. If you take the foldable smartphone outside, its position is quickly determined within about 3 meters. Many satellite networks are used in order for the phone to be able to do this, but unfortunately, it isn’t able to utilize SBAS for even more accurate locating.

We jumped onto our bikes so we were able to gather some practical experiences using the Razr+’s positioning functions – we used a Garmin Venu 2 smartwatch as a comparison device. The smartphone seemed to show quite accurate locations – only sometimes did it deviate a little from our exact route. If you don’t need to rely on super precise location determination, then the Razr+ is absolutely sufficient for navigating in everyday use.

The Razr+ uses the standard Google telephone app and it supports both VoLTE and VoWiFi. Incoming calls can be heard quite clearly through the phone’s earpiece, although outgoing calls using the device’s microphone have a tendency to sound a little muffled. You also have to make sure not to talk too quietly.

The built-in speaker’s maximum volume is only just loud enough but you can still understand the person you are speaking to quite well. Here, we also had to make sure to speak loud enough in order to guarantee that our voice was transmitted clearly. Design-wise, Motorola have set out to make sure that the cover screen isn’t ruined by having two differently sized cameras placed on top of it.

So instead, two lenses which are the exact same size occupy the top left portion of the device: One is a 12-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization, the other is 13-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens which can also be used as a macro camera. The main camera takes nice, saturated pictures – although with a relatively cool white balance. When it comes to smaller details, the iPhone 14 and Honor Magic4 Pro ‘s cameras offer just a little more.

Images taken on the Apple smartphone tend to look a little more vivid, as they have stronger levels of contrast. Due to a missing periscope zoom, the Razr+ remains a little less flexible in its photographing abilities. In low light conditions, darker areas could do with being lightened a little more – but all-in-all, the photos are quite sharp.

The wide-angle lens generally does its job well and smaller, individual details remain clear. Videos can be recorded in a maximum of 4K and at 30 fps – here, quite a few other high-end phones have already started offering more, including video recording in 8K and at 60 fps. Thanks to its outer screen, you can choose which camera you would like to take selfies on.

There is also a generous 32-megapixel punch hole camera situated on the inside display – but it unfortunately isn’t all too light sensitive. Generally on these types of cameras, 4 pixels are combined using pixel binning, which results in 8-megapixel images with better lighting levels. Selfies taken in this way barely look any less high-quality than the ones taken on the phone’s main camera.

In the fully lit studio, the main camera delivered very sharp photos which managed to depict even the smallest of details. With a lighting strength of only 1 lux, the picture quality began to sank considerably – here, images didn’t show very much detail or have good levels of contrast. The phone comes with a 30-watt charger, a USB cable, a SIM tool and a two-part silicone case which protects both outer parts of the smartphone and is even color-coordinated.

Via Motorola’s website, you can find a matching car charger for around $25 – a replacement charger costs around $22. The manufacturer offers a standard 12-month warranty for devices purchased in the US which can be extended by an extra 12 months through their MotoCare service. There is also an option for extra protection against accidents – the best plan which includes 3 years of accident cover can cost up to $300.

The phone’s main screen adapts its refresh rate dynamically between 1 and 165 Hz, which allows you to navigate the system smoothly and saves energy when viewing static images. You can also get fast refresh rates of up to 144 Hz on the cover display. Both displays can be operated quickly and are sensitive right up to the corners thanks to the phone’s 360 Hz touchscreen sampling.

Apps that are run on the outer display are seamlessly transitioned to the inner display once the Razr+ is opened. This works the other way around as well – here, you just have to tap a button on the phone noting that you would like to continue using the app on the cover screen instead of putting the phone into standby mode. A nice feature is that the hinge is able to hold the phone in virtuality any position – meaning the Razr+ basically has a built-in tripod: You can set it up in tent mode in order to watch a film on the outer display, or you can use both screens as viewfinders for the cameras.

At the same time, the smartphone can also be used half opened to give you better stabilization – like a camcorder, basically. In turn, the tight hinge does mean that the phone isn’t very easy to fold open using one hand. The foldable main display has a diameter of 6.

9 inches and with a ratio of 22:9, it is a little longer and narrower than your usual smartphone screen – in everyday use, this shouldn’t be an issue. With a resolution of 2,640 x 1,080, it is about the same as other comparable foldables. Contents are shown nice and detailed and the crease in the middle is only visible if there is any backlight – however, you can definitely feel it.

The screen is a P-OLED display, meaning that individual pixels can be switched off entirely. Theoretically – with the exception of ambient light and light leaking in from the side – this means that the phone should be able to depict black perfectly. This also means its contrast ratio should be incredible, making colors glow nice and bright.

On the other hand, OLED screens don’t have any form of backlighting which you would be able to dim, so most OLED phones turn to using PWM – this means the screen is switched off and on in very quick succession in order to make the screen appear dimmer. This can sometimes lead to some problems in light-sensitive people. On the Razr+, we measured a relatively slow PWM frequency of 103 Hz, which could further exacerbate these problems.

Motorola offer a mode called “Flicker Prevention”, which reduces the signal considerably at lower brightness levels and corresponds with the refresh rate. We would still recommend that light-sensitive people test out the screen in-store before committing to buying the phone. Using a spectrophotometer, we first measured the phone’s maximum brightness with a fully white screen: The main display achieved a result of about 1,000 cd/m².

At APL 18, so only 18 % of the screen being white, we measured results up to 1,100 cd/m². The Razr+’s outer screen is about 100 – 150 cd/m² less bright. Then, we checked out the phone’s color reproduction.

The main screen showed minimal deviations compared to the color space’s optimal values. We used the image mode “natural”, which dampens bright colors ever so slightly. Brown tones deviated the most – and quite a few green tones, too.

The cover screen was a little less accurate, but it can still depict colors well. Outside, the main display reflects quite a bit, but content still remains pretty legible for the most part. Flat angles prove to be no problem for the phone: Colors stay relatively true to their original form and the image remains clear.

When it comes to graphics performance, our test device often fell behind compared to comparison devices which feature the same SoC. This might be due to its severe throttling under load – we will discuss this further in the “temperature” section of this review. Even so, it should still have enough graphics power to run pretty much any app without any issues.

Internet pages are loaded quickly and images are usually already loaded when you scroll. In the browser benchmarks, the Razr+ performed consistently well. UFS 3.

1 memory is fast – but not quite top-of-the-range anymore. However, due to foldable smartphones’ complex build, manufacturers often have to try to save some costs somewhere, meaning that this is pretty standard for this type of phone and should in no way slow down the system. Gaming on the Razr+ proves to be no problem – the screen can show up to 165 fps, after all.

However, you will also have to find a game which is optimized for this – most games will likely only be playable at 60 fps, for example, PUBG Mobile or Diablo Immortal. We measured the achievable frame rates using software from GameBench . It wasn’t always possible to run games at 60 fps – we could only run PUBG Mobile at 40 fps in Ultra HD.

There are surely better-optimized phones on the market, but gaming on the Razr+ is still a fun and enjoyable experience for the average gamer. Certain simpler games can even be played on the phone’s cover screen. The Motorola Razr+ has to make do with sharing a relatively slim case with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 , which is famous for its high temperatures under full load.

The case’s temperatures make this fact quickly known – during particularly long and intense computing processes, temperatures can rise up to 54. 6 °C (130. 28 °F).

Although you will be unlikely to encounter these extremely high temperatures during everyday use, the 3DMark stress test showed us what they can cause: Only 44 % of the phone’s initial performance remained after 20 runs of this benchmark. This means the CPU can be classed as a mid-range model after prolonged high-intensity computing – at least when it comes to performance. The Razr+ uses its earpiece as a second speaker, which can help produce a stereo effect.

Although, only 80 dB(A) could be achieved together with the speaker on the bottom of the phone – not a particularly impressive result. So, although the phone can’t get super loud, it can at least produce a clear sound with decent low mids. Depending on the singer’s voice, some music can still end up sounding a little uncomfortably shrill at full volume.

You can connect external audio devices via USB-C or Bluetooth. All the Bluetooth codecs you could possibly wish for (maybe apart from Samsung’s Scalable Codec) are available, whether it’s aptX (HD, Adaptive, TWS+), SBC, AAC, LHDC v4, LC3 or LDAC you are looking for. Under full load, the Motorola Razr+ isn’t the most frugal device, measuring a consumption of up to 10.

3 watts. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to consume much under minimal load. In total, the Razr+ left a mixed impression on us: It couldn’t quite achieve the same results as the super-frugal Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 5G , but there are definitely more power-hungry devices on the market, too.

You can charge the phone with a maximum of 33 watts using the supplied charger. As the phone’s battery isn’t the biggest, it only takes 1:10 h to reach a full charge. Finally, a Razr-series device which supports wireless charging: With up to 5 watts via the Qi standard.

The Razr+ has a 3,800 mAh battery. This is 300 mAh more than its predecessor and slightly more than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip4 . Its runtimes are decent – but of course, they still can’t keep up with conventional smartphones in any way.

If you’d like to surf the web using a relatively low screen brightness, then you can get 11:09 h out of the device. Under full load, the phone still manages 4:19 h. These are decent results for a foldable and should be more than sufficient for getting you through the day.

With the release of the Razr+, Motorola have tackled many weaknesses of foldable phones head on – and have actually managed to keep them in check for the most part: Its hinge seems very stable, is almost invisible when the phone is open and now only causes a minor crease along the middle of the screen. At the same time, its case is kept quite slim, meaning the phone should be able to fit into your pockets easily – bringing along with it that familiar sense of nostalgia from the good old days of foldable phones. The next model should really be a little easier to open – but for now, the tight hinge enables many different uses reminiscent of Lenovo’s Yoga laptops.

The cover screen has grown considerably and can now be used in even more ways – although not all apps are compatible with it. The phone’s notably bigger battery and wireless charging support round out its features well. On the flip side (and taking into account the phone’s complex construction), you can’t help but notice that Motorola seem to be offering a little outdated hardware for the pricy sum of about $1,200: The cameras are still missing a periscope zoom for even more flexibility and the phone’s video features are still suboptimal.

Its processor is quick but is also last year’s model – plus, it seems that cooling proves to be an issue in the Razr+’s slim case. The Motorola Razr+ is a stylish foldable that overcomes the concept’s past issues well in some areas. Its price, however, remains high.

After the launch of the Razr+, its predecessor – the Razr 2022 – has got a lot cheaper. Last year’s model features the same SoC but a considerably smaller cover screen. If you still remain undecided, you might want to hold off until the release of the Galaxy Z Flip5, which – according to some rumors – is still to come this summer.

At the time of testing, the Motorola Razr+ is not yet available to purchase in the US. However, you can sign up on Motorola’s website to be notified as soon as pre-orders begin. .