Moto's back, baby! Well, sort of. It’s delivered two new foldable smartphones for 2023 which - depending on where you live - will either be called the Razr 40 and Razr 40 Ultra, or Razr and Razr+. I’ve been testing the more powerful of the two - the Ultra/Razr+ model - and it's safe to say, I’ve not been this happy with a Motorola phone in a long time. In fact, it's one of the best foldable phones to launch so far.

Razr 40 Ultra
Motorola Razr 40 Ultra

Motorola may have finally cracked it with the Razr 40 Ultra (Razr+), delivering a phone with a great display, battery life and software. The secondary display on the outside is surprisingly useful too.

Pros
  • Great display and software
  • Strong battery performance
  • Competitive price for the spec
  • Cover/exterior display is really useful
Cons
  • Camera results could improve
  • Wireless charging is slow

Design

  • 170.8 x 74 x 7mm (open), 88.4 x 74 x 15.1 mm (closed), 184.5g or 188.5g
  • Gorilla Glass Victus cover, Gorilla Glass Victus or vegan leather rear, Aluminium frame
  • IP52 water and dust resistant
  • Infinite Black, Glacier Blue and Viva Magenta colours

Motorola gets a lot right with the latest Razr. It's a compact phone that turns a big smartphone screen into something portable that easily fits in a pocket. It's even got rounded edges to make it comfortable. It makes it nice to hold, but conversely, also means that it loses some of its Razr-ness.

The Motorola Razr - historically - has been a sharp, angled phone. It wasn't named after a razor for no reason. And yet, the 2023 versions don't have anything particularly sharp and angular about them at all. They're rounded, soft and friendly. While the very first model looked like it might cut you, this just wants to give you a cuddle.

It's a good-looking phone that snaps shut leaving no gap between the two halves of the phone. That means you're not likely to find dust and debris finding its way in there. At least, not as easily as you might on the Galaxy Z Flip 4, with its gap near the hinge.

Moto is launching the phone in three colours: Infinite Black, Glacier Blue and Viva Magenta. The last of those is the only one that features a soft vegan leather back rather than glass. That gives the pinkish-reddish model a softer feel on the palm, but the matte, frosted glass on the other two has a great, smooth texture too.

Cover screen

  • 3.6-inch AMOLED
  • 1056 x 1066 resolution

The revamped cover display on the Razr 40 Ultra is undoubtedly its highlight feature. It's the largest cover screen we've seen on a modern folding flip phone, and - crucially - massively bigger than Samsung's own Z Flip 4 display. It pushes all the way down to the edges, surrounding the dual cameras.

To make the most of it, Moto has refreshed the cover screen software to give you easy access to interactive elements like notifications, quick settings, weather, calendar and even a dedicated full-screen Spotify player interface.

What surprised me about the exterior display was how much I got to use it. Its position and size mean it's far more useful than any of the previous Razr cover screens. It became a really handy way to read notifications on the fly, read messages and even respond to those by typing on the keyboard.

I was expecting the keyboard to still be a bit cramped and hard to get used to, but that wasn't the case at all. It's large enough that it's comfortable to use and easy to type on. This added usefulness meant I didn't have to open the phone for every single task. For those times you just need to respond to something quickly, it gets the job done.

It can be used to load all manner of other apps too, so if you're navigating somewhere on Google Maps, particularly while walking, you don't need to open your phone to see the next turn - for instance.

moto razr 40 ultra cover screen maps

For a lot of those apps you can choose to have it expand to fill the entire surface area, or cropped to just above the display. The latter option can be useful for those apps that have interface elements that are blocked by the two cameras in the corner. Switching from full screen to cropped is simple too, all that's needed is a long press on the bar/line near the bottom of the screen.

Thanks to the revamped hinge on the phone you can set the cover to almost any angle, and that makes it convenient for taking selfies with the main camera too. Motorola has even loaded it with a handful of games designed to be played on the smaller screen, many of them are those addictive, casual games you'll play on a toilet break.

Internal screen and software

  • 6.9-inch flexible LTPO AMOLED display, 165Hz refresh rate
  • 1400 nits peaks brightness, 1 billion colours
  • 1080 x 2640 resolution, 413ppi
  • Android 13

Open it up and you get a large 6.9-inch pOLED flexible display with some impressive specs. It's an LTPO panel so it can ramp up and decrease refresh rates quickly and efficiently, from as low as 1Hz and 165Hz. It's HDR10+ compatible too.

It's a really great display, and yet there is a feeling that in saying that, I should probably lead with a caveat: for a foldable screen.

Foldable displays do have a couple of disadvantages over traditional smartphone displays, and that's almost entirely down to the materials used to make it a usable flexible display. The permanently attached screen protector is - essentially - a plastic film.

By its very nature it's not as oleophobic as glass screens, and so fingerprints collect quite easily. It soon becomes covered in smears and - when caught in light - those can become quite distracting.

Plastic film is also slightly less fluid and slippery under the finger, so you don't always get the same effortless fluidity as glass offers when swiping and interacting with the display. It's not bad, but it's worth knowing. If you're used to using plastic film protectors on your phone screens already, it's not an issue at all.

moto razr 40 ultra punchole camera

The other potential issue is longevity. I've not had nearly enough time with this brand-new phone to tell if it'll last the 2-3 years most buyers go with their phones. With it folding neatly in the middle and being opened and shut frequently, there's always that concern that it might suffer from wear and tear after prolonged usage.

Saying that, the benefit of Motorola's folding hinge design is that it doesn't create one distinct pressure point across the middle of the panel like Samsung's does and that - along with reducing the visibility of any crease - means it's not being subjected to as much punishment.

As displays go, though, it's very good. It's a bright panel that delivers plenty of light, colour and contrast to give good impact to videos and games of all kinds. And because the crease is almost invisible, there's no jarring distortion in the middle of the display. Once it's open, you can watch it and play on it just like you would a candy bar smartphone. It's nice and smooth too, thanks to the high refresh rates.

moto razr 40 ultra hands free selfie

One of the things I appreciate the most is the clean approach to the software. There are a couple of Motorola-created apps and features, like the clock and weather widget and gestures for launching the camera, but on the whole, it feels very similar to the software you'd get on a Pixel. This light touch makes it really easy and convenient to use and means it's not loaded with the tonnes of additional apps you'd find on the Samsung competitor.

The only thing it's missing is decent Flex Mode optimisation. In the camera app you'll see the camera view move up to the top of the display when the screen is folded at an angle, but it doesn't do that in any other app. Samsung has got the advantage here, especially in video apps where you can have video controls on the bottom half and video on the top.

Hardware and battery

  • Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 - 8GB RAM - 256GB storage
  • 3800mAh battery - 30W wired charging - Wireless charging
  • Android 13 - Flex Mode

It may seem unusual for a pretty expensive phone in 2023, but Motorola opted to fit the Razr 40 Ultra with last year's flagship chipset. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, because that chipset is the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. It's fast, powerful and battery friendly.

That was one of the reasons Motorola chose it, and our testing lead to surprisingly good performance from the 3800mAh battery inside. Most days, with my own typical usage - which is usually a mixture of social media, video watching, gaming and web browsing for about 2-3 hours a day - I’d get to bedtime with around 40 per cent left over.

moto razr 40 ultra gaming 2

In fact, despite having only 100mAh more than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4, there was never the sense that I had to be austere with my phone usage. It just didn’t seem troubled at all, and even on my busiest days, I didn’t come all that close to draining it. In fact, I only ever saw the dreaded 19 per cent mark on the second day when I’d forgotten to place it on charge.

When it needs to be refilled again there’s a 30W wired charging capability that’ll get you topped again fairly quickly. It’s not as fast as the fastest wired chargers out there, but given the relatively small-capacity battery, it’s quick enough to be convenient. A 30 minute charge delivering enough juice to comfortably get through an afternoon. It has the benefit of wireless charging too, but at 5W that’s laughably slow and definitely only worth using overnight on a bedside table.

As for overall speed and performance, it felt zippy and fast consistently. I put a solid chunk of time into Mario Kart Tour, and it kept up well with the fast-moving animations and reactions. The only thing I noticed was the phone got slightly warm after prolonged use, but never to the point where I was worried it was getting overheated. It's worth noting here that I was testing it during a particularly warm period - probably the hottest this year so far - and that undoubtedly has an impact.

Cameras

  • 12MP f/1.5 primary camera - PDAF
  • 13MP ultrawide and macro camera
  • 32MP selfie camera

It seems something of a default for folding clamshells to have a dual camera set up on the front cover, and the Razr 40 Ultra follows that template. The primary camera has a large 12-megapixel sensor, with an impressive f/1.5 aperture. It's joined by a 12-megapixel ultrawide that also doubles as a macro lens.

On the whole it's a strong system that I think will serve most buyers well. In strong outdoor daylight conditions, it would deliver images with vibrant colours that didn't border too far into the over-saturated look we see from Samsung. Photos didn't have that artificially sharpened, overly contrast-heavy look either.

My only criticism is around its handling of bright highlights and exposure. Often - in a lot of different scenarios - there was the sense that exposure might be a bit too high, delivering slightly muted colours but, more crucially, meaning that the bright highlights in the images were blown out and had no detail.

It was in those areas of the image where the light source caught parts of the subject or background, reflecting off them. Phones like the Z Flip 4 do a better job of evening out those highlights, still showing them as bright, but actually allowing you to see the texture of the object.

That really is quite a nit-picky complaint though, because the camera was actually really easy to use and easy to get good photos from. It seems particularly good at taking photos of faces and people.

The ultrawide camera is strong in daylight too, and - as mentioned - has a dual macro functionality. This allows you to get really close to small objects and get in-focus images. It does add a creative edge to the system, but for the most part, the images from the main camera looked better. That means when it came to shooting close up, I found it was better to hit the 2x zoom option, zoom in, and get a better image with better depth of field.

It's relatively strong in low light conditions too thanks to that f/1.5 aperture. There's a night mode for shooting in very low light scenarios which - for the most part - delivers strong, sharp images even at night time. It wasn't a perfect performer here though, often delivering images where there was some noticeably noise in the skies and clouds. Similarly, the ultrawide wasn't quite as strong in low light, and struggled to focus when using the night mode option. Images at times were blurry and noisy.

Still - again - this is getting quite picky, because on the whole the cameras are very good. They're great in daylight, strong at night time, and deliver portraits that make human skin look natural. There's loads to like here.

Verdict

The Razr 40 Ultra represents quite a big step forward for the foldable smartphone market. The big screen on the outside is surely hinting at what's to come from the market, and I'd be very surprised if it wasn't the start of a new trend of maximising that outer cover space and using it all for screen.

More importantly for here and now it adds an added layer of convenience to using this foldable phone, and when combined with the strong display, battery life and cameras, means a foldable phone that gets a heck of a lot more right than it gets wrong. Samsung's phone might be more waterproof, and feel more sturdy, but there's a joy to using Moto's Razr for 2023 thanks to a great combination of getting the basics just right.