The Closest to a Nonexistent Crease You’ll Get

We got our hands on the newly launched Moto Razrs at a private event in New York a few weeks ago. As expected, there’s the new Razr and its more premium counterpart, the Razr+. Apart from a few gripes I had with the base model, I was impressed with the value it provides within its modest $700 price tag. The Razr+ initially launched for a grand but is currently on sale for $900. 

The feature the Chicago-based company seems most proud of on the Razr+ is the “largest and most intelligent” external display on any flip phone and one that allows you to do everything without flipping the phone open. That’s not an exaggeration, or at least the first part. The 4-inch external screen on the Razr+ is as big as the iPhone 5 and larger than the third and fourth gen 3.5-inch iPhones. 

Moto Razr+ 2024 Review: Design

Negligible crease and an improved hinge, but still no dust resistance

Motorola kept up with its goodwill marketing and promised “vegan” suede on the Razr+. Not to be overly critical, but I will always reserve some skepticism for companies promising vegan versions of materials that are not animal-friendly. I am also not a fan of the switch from vegan leather on all its past Razrs to vegan suede on this one that Motorola made. Holding the leather-coated Razr and the suede Razr+ side by side, I much prefer the former. It offers a better grip, a nicer, textured look that gives it more detail and personality, and less susceptibility to attracting dust and other particles. My work desk dirtied the Razr+ much faster than the Razr. 

Motorola slapped the Pantone color of the year, Peach Fuzz, on the Razr+. Personally, I don’t like the shade but that’s as subjective an opinion can get. I’m still obsessed with the iconic, early 2000s-core Viva Magenta Razr which is also one of the color variants this year. There’s also a good old Midnight Blue and an absolutely stunning Spring Green. I don’t see bright, fun colors on phones anymore, and I appreciate Motorola for attempting to bring that back. 

The new Razr+ is 0.5 lbs heavier than last year’s model, which is a noticeable difference when it comes to phones. Comparing the two side by side, I definitely felt the bump in weight, but it isn’t serious enough to be a deal breaker. 

One of the most important areas to ace in a flip phone is the hinge and the crease. No one likes having to repeatedly run their finger over a massive dip smack in the middle of the screen and also have it ruin their viewing experience. Since we typically check our phones more than a hundred times a day, an overly tight hinge would feel uncomfortable and an excessively loose one could come off as flimsy. 

I spent time with all of Motorola and Samsung’s flip phone offerings from this year and in the past, and I believe this is the closest you’re going to come to a crease that’s barely noticeable. I was already very impressed with the crease on last year’s Razr+, but Motorola outdid itself with this one. You feel a slight dip on the sides, and, that too, gets almost non-existent in the center of the screen. I said this for 2023’s Razr+, but I feel more strongly about this one: it makes you forget you’re even using a foldable phone. 

An area Motorola greatly improved at is the hinge. Last year’s offering featured a much tighter hinge and it almost felt like you’re prying the phone open instead of flipping it open. The hinge on this Razr+ has been redesigned and requires far less effort. It has also finally gotten loose enough so you can flip it open with one hand, but not loose enough to feel badly built. 

A design change I would have loved to see is an improved dust resistance score. One of my two major complaints with this year’s Razr was the absence of dust resistance with poor low-light photography being the other. Owing to the crevices and hinges, a flip phone absolutely needs to feature at least some level of resistance to dust so it can hold up well over time. It’s confusing why Motorola decided to downgrade from an IP52 on last year’s Razr+ to an IPX8 on this one, which means it improved water resistance by a good margin but brought the dust resistance down to none. The new Razr+ should be able to withstand submersion in 1.5 meters of water for up to 30 minutes, but consistent usage for a few months will be able to tell how well it deals with dust. 

Moto Razr+ 2024 Review: Navigation

You can do everything on the external screen

Navigating the external screen on the Razr+ was so simple and intuitive that I didn’t feel the need to flip the phone open for a lot of my tasks. It’s a gorgeous 4-inch pOLED screen sporting a 1272 x 1080 resolution and 2400 nits of brightness. The 6.9-inch main screen raises the resolution to 2640 x 1080 and the brightness to 3000 nits. Both screens offer HDR10+ and a 165Hz refresh rate. Things were different on the Razr. The external screen featured a 90 Hz refresh rate and a higher 120 Hz was reserved for the main screen. With similar refresh rates on the Plus model, that’s one extra reason for you to not flip the phone open. 

I will not miss a single chance to critique Samsung Galaxy’s UI for its flip phones, but it genuinely merits the hate. And it makes Motorola’s UI for its foldable look so much better in comparison. Unlike on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, adding apps to the external screen is a breeze. You simply hit the pen icon on the top right of the screen and tap on the app you wish to add. You can also add a widgets page and then add any feature that you’d like to have quick access to.  

In Gizmodo’s review of last year’s Razr+, there was a mention that not every app wraps around the lenses on the cover screen. This led to some apps appearing in a small box in the middle of the screen with nearly not enough room to navigate on. That is no longer a concern on this year’s offering. Every single app wraps around the lenses now, regardless of whether it’s optimized to work on a 4-inch screen or not. The good thing is that if the downsized app looks terrible, you can always long-press the Recents button and switch from a full-screen view to a default view. Doing this reverts it back to a small square in the middle of your screen. 

I used the external screen on the Razr+ as a regular screen to handle quite a few tasks. I downloaded my most commonly used apps (Slack, Instagram, and Gmail) on it. Navigating Play Store on full-screen mode on the external screen did obstruct some content behind the lenses but that didn’t affect my experience since I don’t care about looking at everything on the page on an app like Play Store. Had I been on YouTube, I might have switched to the default view to not miss anything on the screen. 

I like the flexibility that this phone offers in terms of navigation. Every time I was using an app on the external screen that the Razr+ thought the main screen could do better, it suggested that to me. I liked that I could simply ignore its suggestion, and it let me continue in peace. When I did take its suggestion and flipped the phone open, it very seamlessly transferred my workflow to the main screen. 

Motorola did keep all of the old gestures–Three-finger screenshot, Lift to unlock, Flip for DND, Pick up to silence, Swipe to split–from its last Razr, but I didn’t really turn to those. I find gestures such as placing three fingers on the screen to take a screenshot or swiping across the screen twice to split it in half extremely unintuitive and I was bothered with how many mis-taps they led to. Long-pressing the power button still triggers Gemini AI, but there’s nothing new there, either. 

The external display added a couple of new tricks. It now offers an always-on display when you put the phone in tent, or stand mode. You can set a photo as your screensaver or simply have the clock show up. 

Moto Razr+ 2024 Review: Performance

Camera is excellent at low-light photography and motion shots

We went from a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip on last year’s Razr to a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 on this one. The RAM also saw an upgrade from 8GB to 12 GB. The storage tops out at the same 256GB though. One complaint about last year’s model was an outdated Android version. Motorola is notorious for being behind on software updates. I couldn’t update it beyond Android 13 even when we were a few months into getting Android 14. I checked and my Moto Razr+ from 2023 received Android 14 just 24 days ago. The Razr+ from this year comes up to date with the latest software installed. 

I used the Razr+ for pretty much everything from YouTube to Slack, Gmail, Netflix, light gaming, browsing, and Instagram, and it performed without a single stutter. The Geekbench results were extremely impressive, and much better than what the MediaTek processor on the Razr 2024 could manage. It scored a 1961 on single core and 5080 on the multi-core test. 

I was specifically disappointed with poor low-light photography on last year’s Razr+, but that significantly changed with this one. I took a couple of photos during my night stroll, and the difference between the two phones was stark. Last year’s results are washed out, skew grey, and feature much less detail than this year’s Razr. The 50MP AI-powered all-pixel focus camera along with the 50MP telephoto lens took well-saturated photos with rich colors, much more sharpness, and clarity. Thankfully, the saturation hasn’t been overdone to the point where it looks unpleasant. Upon zooming in, I am able to get much more detail out of the photos, whereas on the 2023 Razr+, zooming in leads to the photo getting completely pixelated. 

I wouldn’t say the zoom on the new Razr+ is very efficient, but it’s definitely an upgrade from last year, too. I felt the AI was kind of an overkill on the zoom; it overly smoothened objects out to the point where a car tire in the picture completely lost all its detail. Keep in mind, though, that this was a 4x zoom in low light, so some loss of detail is normal. Motorola specifically promises “outstanding low-light performance” on this Razr+, and I fully agree with their claim. 

There’s also a new action mode on this camera which promises to take motion shots without the blur. I was amazed at what a brilliant job the mode did. I’ve attached pictures with and without the mode enabled; you can see for yourself the difference between the shots. 

The lenses have also gotten a big redesign from last year and are much deeper now which is incredibly helpful at keeping away accidental scratches and fingerprints. 

The 4,000 mAh battery on the Razr+ is also an upgrade from last year’s 3,800 battery. It also sports 45W turbocharging compared to 30W on last year’s model. I am currently battery testing and will update this story when I have exact scores, but according to my current usage and some mental math that I did, it can last around 24 hours with constant usage. I put on a 6-hour-long YouTube video on 200 nits and 100% battery, and it went down to 76% by the end of the video. It fully charges in less than an hour and lasts all day. 

Moto Razr+ 2024 Review: Verdict

Apart from the absence of dust resistance, I didn’t find a single flaw in this phone. It aces the crease and hinge, features a battery that lasts all day, takes beautiful night shots, and very impressive action shots. More importantly, it offers the largest and most functional external screen with incredibly easy navigation and enough functionality to not make you want to flip your phone open for quick tasks. 

Motorola made two big claims on this phone: an external display that “allows you to do everything without flipping the phone open” and “outstanding low-light performance”, and it was successful at both. Last year’s Razr lacked both of these, so if you’re thinking about upgrading from that one, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. 

I’m pretty concerned about the lack of dust resistance though. The real test of a foldable phone is how it fares over time, so I’m pretty worried about how its dust resistance will hold up against the environment after a few months. For now, you should know better than to not opt for an IPX8 phone if your lifestyle involves a lot of dust or other environmental particles.