3 days Ago
The outside front screen of the Razr+ 2024 while folded I’ve been a big fan of Motorola’s Razr line since the 2023 model. This year’s model is a nice improvement on that design, with some major upgrades to the display, processor and AI capabilities. When it launched Gemini Live AI chat earlier this year, Google demoed the latest Gemini AI capabilities using this Moto Razr+ alongside the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
People have also been taking note of the Razr+ since Moto recently disclosed that 20% of its Razr customers are switching from the iPhone, which is nearly unheard of in the Android landscape. So, let’s explore why this phone might be so compelling to iPhone users and younger users. Moto Razr+ Design And Specs On paper, the Moto Razr+ is nearly perfect.
However, some crucial design choices have been taken to make it affordable. Its launch price of $1,000 is competitive with Samsung’s Flip6 at $1,100, and the Razr+ is currently on sale for $749 at T-Mobile and $799 elsewhere, which is extremely competitive. The Razr+ is the higher spec of the Razr line, and it includes a bigger cover screen and faster processor.
It features an internal foldable 6.9-inch 2640 x 1080 (413 PPI) LTPO AMOLED Dolby Vision 165-hertz display capable of 3000-nit peak brightness. The cover screen external display complements this with a 4-inch 1272 x 1080 (417 PPI) Dolby Vision 165-hertz 2400-nit peak brightness display with Gorilla Glass Victus.
Moto excels against the competition with its cover screen specs, and here it has carefully matched refresh rates and pixel densities so that the user experience is the same regardless of the display used. Moto has also paid careful attention to the processor, giving the Razr+ a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, which is a slightly slower version of its flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that was popular in Android phones in 2024. I believe that this was mostly to save on cost without sacrificing too much on performance.
That said, Samsung did go for the full Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in its competing model, so there is a bit of a difference in performance there. Motorola also opted for a MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chip on the base-model 2024 Razr, which is a chip MediaTek specifically created for the foldable market. For the Razr+, Moto defaulted to 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM, which I believe pushed Samsung to match those specs in the last generation and this one.
Motorola also invested heavily in wireless tech with Wi-Fi 7 support and AptX Lossless Bluetooth. I believe that this sets up users for a better experience in the long term, since Wi-Fi 7 improves performance, latency and battery life. Google Chrome 2FA Bypass Attacks Confirmed—Millions Of Users At Risk An Update On The Surprisingly Close ‘Squid Game’ Season 3 Release Date Student Loans Set For Big Credit Reporting And Collections Changes As Soon As This Week The Moto Razr+ 2024 with the camera lenses sticking out of the screen The two companies differentiate the most in the camera department, because while Motorola went for a dual-50 MP camera configuration, Samsung went with a 50 MP main camera and a 12 MP ultrawide camera.
Motorola has a 50 MP main camera and a 50 MP 2x telephoto camera, which allows for better zoom performance. This comes from a fundamental difference in camera philosophy and what each company thinks is more important. I think that it would be better if flip-folds simply came with three cameras so people wouldn’t have to choose.
But I respect Moto’s decision because telephotos are very useful very often. Both the Flip6 and Razr+ have 4000 mAh batteries, but I believe battery life is a crucial area for innovation—and improvement—in foldables. That said, I do appreciate that the Razr+ supports 45-watt fast charging, which continues Moto’s lead in fast charging against Samsung’s 25-watt setup.
The Razr+ also comes in four fun colors: Midnight Blue, Hot Pink, Spring Green and Peach Fuzz. Moto Razr+ Software And User Experience Motorola’s software has matured considerably over the years, and I would say it provides a mostly enjoyable experience. This is especially true for the camera software, which feels like it is very rich in capabilities.
But realistically, a lot of the difficult software design work on foldables is done on the extra screen, whether it’s the inside screen on book foldables or the cover screen for flip foldables. Since you spend so much time on the outside screen of a flip foldable, it needs to be easy to use and capable of handling most of your apps. This is where Moto has done the most work and enables the class-leading 4-inch display to be useful without needing to open the large (and more power-hungry) main display.
That said, not all apps take full advantage of the 4-inch screen; for example, Google apps including Gmail, Photos and Messages use only about 80% of the screen. Moto does have some first-party apps including its camera, calendar, weather and some games that can take advantage of the full screen, but I believe there is room for improvement here in terms of user experience. The experience of switching an app such as Photos from the front screen to the main inner screen is quite seamless and allows you to appreciate going from a 4-inch screen to a 6.
9-inch screen. I also love the many camera features that are specific to using a flip-fold phone, for instance the ability to record photos and videos without holding the phone. I did this with my baby daughter, and it turned out to be a very fun time.
There is also a not particularly new but still fun camcorder mode that automatically records a video when you pick up the phone half-folded, turn it sideways, and hold it like a camcorder. The Razr+ has a feature that I also found useful on my Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold (review coming soon), which uses the outside screen to play a cartoon character to get a baby to look at the camera. It also uses this screen to give the subject of the photo a chance to preview the shot before it’s taken.
This isn’t a particularly new feature, but I know there are a lot of people who could benefit from it, and I believe it is one of those features that could persuade someone to switch to this phone. I also think that Moto did a better job of integrating Google Lens into its camera than Google did; it’s much easier to access and faster to use than on the Pixel, in my experience. All in all, I’ve been pretty satisfied with the camera quality and low-light performance of the Moto Razr+, although it’s still not quite a flagship-class camera when compared to the S24 Ultra, Pixel 9 or iPhone 16 Pro.
Connectivity And Performance I was quite impressed with the Moto Razr+’s 5G performance considering that it’s foldable—and space is precious. On a T-Mobile-branded Razr+ (the pink one), I was able to get comparable speeds on its 5G UC network that I was getting on my Pixel 9 Pro Fold—in excess of 1,200 Mbps down and 60 Mbps up. These are impressive speeds considering they were measured inside a hotel lobby without line-of-sight for the cell tower.
A great wireless front-end paired with a fast 5G network means better app experiences and better battery life, which I believe a lot of people forget when choosing their next phone. For comparison, my iPhone 16 Pro on Verizon’s 5G network got only 100 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up in the same spot. In terms of processor performance, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 falls somewhere between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Gen 3.
This gives it pretty competitive performance in benchmarks and still has it beating out Google’s latest Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9 Pro, though it doesn’t beat out the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the Flip6 or the A18 Pro in the latest iPhones. That said, I don’t think many iPhone users care much about which processor is inside their phones as long as it is fast enough and gets the job done. In fact, I believe that better 5G and Wi-Fi performance is more important to users than processor benchmarks.
How Moto Razr+ Stacks Up To The iPhone I have been enjoying using the Moto Razr+ 2024 since its launch in July, and it has stood the test of time and traveled with me quite a lot as my third smartphone. While it hasn’t quite elevated itself to the point of being my primary or secondary device, that’s mostly because the camera isn’t quite flagship-tier, and I am very picky about camera performance. Even so, it is so compact that it really is not difficult to carry around with me anywhere I go, so much so that sometimes I forget I have it on me.
For iPhone users looking to switch to Android, the flip features and external camera are so different and enjoyable compared to a traditional candybar phone that I can fully understand someone wanting to switch. Additionally, I believe that phones like the Razr+ satisfy a lot of people’s desire to have a smaller phone while still offering the ability to open the phone to a larger screen when that’s what you need. I don’t think Apple is going to ship a foldable for quite some time, so I believe that if you’re an iPhone user looking for something new and exciting in a foldable, the Moto Razr+ 2024 is indeed the right move.
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