Motorola Razr 50 Ultra review: A clamshell bombshell

The summer of foldable phones is here and we’re kicking off with the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra. This is the high-end clamshell from one of the most iconic names in the foldable game, replacing last year’s Motorola Razr 40 Ultra, which I awarded a full five stars, calling it the closest challenger yet to Samsung’s foldable supremacy.

With the follow-up to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 not due for another week or so – at the time of writing – we’ll have to wait to see who rules the foldable roost for 2024. As a successor to the Razr 40 Ultra, however, this is an easy recommendation: the Razr 50 Ultra cuts the price while making several big changes, including being the first flip phone available in the UK to offer a telephoto camera. Regardless of whether or not it unseats Samsung, this is easily Motorola’s most accomplished flip phone to date.

Motorola Razr 50 Ultra review: What you need to know

Most notable of the improvements is that the Razr 40 Ultra’s secondary ultrawide camera has been replaced by a 50MP (f/2.0) 2x telephoto camera. It joins the new 50MP (f/1.7) main camera on the outer display, while opening the phone reveals the same 32MP (f/2.4) selfie camera as last year.

Said internal display is once again a 6.9in LTPO AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2,640 x 1,080 and a swift 165Hz refresh rate. That’s the same as the 40 Ultra’s, but there are some fairly big changes on the outer display. Now a 4in LTPO AMOLED – the largest on any flip phone – this external panel has an increased resolution of 1,272 x 1,080 and the same blisteringly fast 165Hz refresh rate as the main screen.

Keeping the whole thing running is the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, backed up by a hefty 12GB of RAM and either 256GB or, in another first for this year, 512GB of non-expandable storage space. Rounding out the specs is a 4,000mAh battery (slightly up from the 40 Ultra’s 3,800mAh) that supports 45W wired charging via the bundled plug or 15W wireless charging.

Also included in the box is the “premium protective case”, which comes with a detachable leather cord, allowing you to carry the phone like a bag. This is a fun enough gimmick but walking around like that doesn’t feel all that secure and you have to glue the case onto the phone via the sticky strips, making it a chore to take off again.

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Motorola Razr 50 Ultra review: Price and competition

Pleasingly, Motorola is offering all this for a slightly lower price. The 256GB model retails for £999 – £50 less than the Razr 40 Ultra – while the new 512GB version is £1,070. Compared to Samsung, which is expected either to maintain or increase the price of its foldables for this year, that’s an impressive feat.

With neither Oppo’s Find N3 Flip nor Honor’s Magic V Flip currently available in the UK, this remains a two-horse race, with the upcoming Z Flip 6 being the most direct competitor. Rumours point to it using a faster chipset than the Razr 50 Ultra but lacking a telephoto camera and retailing for a higher price.

If you’re happy to look at last year’s selection, that also puts the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Razr 40 Ultra in the frame. Both earned five-star reviews from us and are now healthily discounted from their original prices: the 256GB Z Flip 5 has dropped out of the market but you can get a 512GB model for just £660, while the 256GB Razr 40 Ultra is £649.

Motorola Razr 50 Ultra review: Design and key features

The design was a high point of the Razr 40 Ultra, and I’m happy to see the best bits carried over here. The build is once again slim and fairly lightweight, weighing 189g and measuring 74 x 7.1 x 171mm (WDH) unfolded or 74 x 15 x 88mm folded. Gorilla Glass Victus covers the exterior display, and water resistance is upgraded from IP52 to the same IPX8 as the Galaxy Z Flip 5 – that means it can survive a ten-second dunk in 1.5m of water but is no longer officially dustproof.

There’s a fresh selection of eye-catching colours, with the Spring Green option reviewed here joined by Midnight Blue and Pantone’s colour of the year, Peach Fuzz. The polished aluminium edges and sturdy stainless steel hinge feel nicely premium and the vegan leather coating on the rear gives a decent grip. Moreover, the rounded edges make it easier to tuck a thumb between the two halves and flip the phone open one-handed.

On the connectivity front, there’s 5G, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 compatibility, while biometrics are covered by a fingerprint sensor in the power button on the right edge and facial recognition in both the selfie and rear cameras, enabling you to use it with the phone open or closed.

Optimisation of apps for the folding format is still frustratingly undercooked but otherwise, the software is decent enough. The Razr 50 Ultra ships with Android 14 and Motorola promises three years of OS updates and four years of security patches. That’s slightly fewer than the Samsung Z Flip 5 – due four and five, respectively – and that’s before we even get into the possibility of the Z Flip 6 getting seven years apiece, like the Galaxy S24 series. That could spell trouble for Motorola.

Still, I prefer the software here to Samsung’s heavily customised UI. This is as close to stock Android as you can get outside of Google phones, with barely any bloatware, and support for Google’s Gemini AI out of the box. We’re also expecting several “Moto AI” features in the coming months: asking the phone to “pay attention”, for instance, will make it start recording conversations, offering up a transcription and summary when you’re finished.

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Motorola Razr 50 Ultra review: Displays

The main display is mostly the same as the previous generation – including a wonderfully discreet hinge crease – but, bizarrely, peak brightness is notably lower, measuring just 366cd/m², compared to the Razr 40 Ultra’s 482cd/m². That’s a weird backstep but not a complete dealbreaker; adaptive brightness will see you through glaring sunlight well enough, hitting a peak of 1,128cd/m² with a torch on the light sensor, and HDR content goes even higher, with an outstanding maximum brightness of 1,420cd/m².

More of a concern is the colour accuracy. There’s a selection of colour profiles available, with Vivid and Radiant both boosting the colour saturation and Natural ostensibly offering more realistic shades. The sRGB gamut coverage of 92.8% and volume of 94.7% aren’t terrible, but the average Delta E colour variance score of 2.05 is a fairly big downgrade from the Razr 40 Ultra’s 1.3 result (closer to 1 is the target). Colours still looked normal in use but anyone concerned about strict accuracy will want to take note.

Thankfully, it’s all positive news from the 4in external display. The 165Hz refresh rate is overkill here – 120Hz would have performed the same – but otherwise it’s a crisp and bright panel with plenty of functionality. That includes a selection of format-friendly mobile games, the ability to choose which apps you want to use on the external screen and the new always-on display mode, which is great for propping the phone up and using it as a bedside clock.

Motorola Razr 50 Ultra review: Performance and battery life

The octa-core 3.0GHz Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is a solid platform, but with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 tipped to use the full-fat Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 it’s unlikely that the Razr 50 Ultra will be able to keep up. While we wait for the Z Flip 6, I’ll be comparing the Razr with the Z Flip 5 and the Honor Magic 6 Pro, which is roughly the same price and uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

Unsurprisingly, the Razr 50 Ultra doesn’t surpass the Magic 6 Pro, or even the Z Flip 5, but it does at least show some improvement over its predecessor, with a 7% bump in the single-core benchmarks and 6% in the multicore tests.

We saw an even bigger jump in the GFXBench test, with the Razr 50 Ultra drawing level with the Z Flip 5 – although the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 runs away with the off-screen results, pushing well over 100fps. Even so, I found gaming on the Razr 50 Ultra to be smooth enough, running Genshin: Impact on medium graphics settings with no dramatic dips in frame rates.

Battery life is decent, too, with the result of just over 23 hours beating both the Razr 40 Ultra and Galaxy Z Flip 5. Once depleted, the 45W charger brought the battery back up to 50% in 25 minutes during testing, and to full in under an hour.

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Motorola Razr 50 Ultra review: Cameras

The loss of the ultrawide may be a sore spot for some but I’ve never encountered one that I like more than a dedicated telephoto, so I’m still chalking this up as a positive. It helps that the 50MP (f/2.4) 2x telephoto camera produces terrific shots, whether that be capturing crisp detail in a church spire…

…or taking portrait shots. Here, the foldable form comes into its own, allowing you to take higher-quality selfie portraits with the rear lenses, while still seeing your shot clearly in the external display. Portraits produced are quite good, too, with realistic skin tones and a selection of apertures to cycle between, adjusting the background blur and focus.

This lens also offers a solid 4x hybrid zoom, which essentially crops into the 50MP 2x optical zoom shot, retaining a good deal of vibrancy and contrast.

The new main camera has a higher pixel count than its predecessor (50MP vs 12MP) but a narrower aperture (f/1.7 vs f/1.5). This doesn’t prove to be an issue in good lighting, with the camera still capturing plenty of detail and reproducing a broad dynamic range.

Even after dark, things still look pretty good – in fact, this may actually be better than last year’s night mode. The sky is a little smudgy but the definition in the boat masts is nice and crisp and the colouring is well maintained throughout.

Motorola Razr 50 Ultra review: Verdict

With the starting prices of the Razr 50 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Flip 6 drifting further apart, I’m less concerned about their performance differences. The Razr is still a nippy handset and I think that dipping back under four figures is more valuable than the extra horsepower. Add in the effective telephoto camera, improved water resistance and upgraded external display, and we’ve got a strong contender for the best clamshell of 2024.

Software support could prove to be an issue, especially if Samsung prolongs the Z Flip 6 for seven years, and I still feel that both of the Razr 50 Ultra’s displays could have just been 120Hz, with that effort instead going into maintaining strong brightness and colour accuracy. Regardless, this is a fantastic foldable phone with very few drawbacks. I can’t declare a winner just yet, but I don’t envy Samsung having to follow the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra.