Motorola Razr+ review: Phones are fun again

We’ve talked a lot about Motorola’s new $999 Razr+ over the last few weeks. First we went hands-on for the phone’s announcement, and then we offered up some first impressions when you could start preordering it. And now, we have a full review just a day before orders start to arrive and in-store availability kicks off.

The verdict? Well, I don’t want to spoil the entire review, but the Razr+ and its large external display, strong performance and all-day battery life have set the bar for what a foldable flip phone should be.

What we liked about it

The external display is 3.6 inches of pure fun

If you look at the spec sheet of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 and the Motorola Razr+ side by side, you’d start to think that Motorola straight up copied Samsung’s homework. And in a lot of ways, that’s exactly what happened. That is, until you get to the external display on the Razr+.

The 3.6-inch external display is easy to spot the moment the phone is woken up. In comparison, the Z Flip 4’s cover screen is 1.9 inches.

The added screen real estate on the Razr+ means that you can do more than just quickly glance at notifications, music controls or answer a phone call. You effectively have all of the same features and capabilities you have on the internal 6.9-inch display, but on a smaller scale.

But instead of giving you the stock Android home screen and app drawer on the front display, Motorola did something I think is really smart. It built a custom interface optimized for the smaller screen, with various wallpapers (some of which highlight the two very large cameras) and shortcuts to common apps or information.

When you wake up the phone while it’s closed, you’ll see a small clock, the weather and then some shortcuts. I currently have mine set to show an app-drawer-like icon and then a calendar, weather, news and games shortcut. You can have up to six shortcuts on the screen, each of which takes you directly to a panel that shows you the respective information.

The app drawer on the front screen doesn’t show you every app you have installed on the Razr+. Instead, you can add just the apps you want to use on the smaller display.

To start testing, I added a bunch of different apps just to try and get a feel for what made the most sense to use. Ultimately, I’ve found myself most often using Reddit, Mastodon, Fastmail, OpenWeather and the Calculator app from the front screen. All of those apps provide information in a quick fashion, and don’t require a large screen.

By default, apps only take up a portion of the screen that ends just above the cameras. However, you can long-press on the multitasking button if you have button navigation enabled, or long-press on the bar that’s at the bottom of the screen for gesture navigation to expand the app to take up the entire display. You’ll see more information this way, but the cameras will cover up some of it.

For the most part, I’ve toggled all apps I use on the front screen to full-screen mode.

The external display has completely changed how I use the phone on a daily basis in one important way: When using the Razr+, I can quickly and easily access small bits of information — like look at my inbox, check the weather or view text messages — without having to open the phone. And because of that, I’m no longer sucked down the rabbit hole of then checking every social network and mindlessly scrolling while I forget what it was I originally picked up my phone for.

Every time I have to make the decision to open the Razr+, it’s with intent. There’s a reason I need the full display. And for the most part, I can accomplish a lot of basic tasks from the front screen.

Last year’s processor? It doesn’t matter

Powering the Razr+ are Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage. There are surely going to be some people that discount the performance of the Razr+ because its processor was released over a year ago. In fact, it’s the same chip that’s used in Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 4, which itself is nearly a year old.

Over the last two weeks, there hasn’t been a single instance where I felt as if the Razr+ was slow or suffered from any sort of performance issues. It’s been responsive regardless of what I’m doing on it, be it moving between multiple apps, playing a game, using two apps on the inside display at the same time or messing around with the various camera modes.

The Razr+ has kept up with anything and everything I could throw at it.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the Razr+’s benchmark performance in Geekbench 6 compared to the some of the best phones on the market, including the Z Flip 4, Pixel 7 Pro and iPhone 14.

The iPhone 14 outshining all other models, and the Pixel 7 Pro coming in last, were no surprise. The surprising result to me here is that the Razr+ scored higher than the Z Flip 4. They have virtually the same internals, and yet the Razr+ squeaks out a better score.

Now, keep in mind, benchmark scores are objective ways of measuring performance. Subjectively, all of these phones feel the same in daily use — fast and proficient.

So, if you’re looking at the spec sheet and thinking that performance is going to suffer because Motorola opted for the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and not the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, rest assured, that performance is just fine.

All-day battery life

The Razr+ has a 3,800mAh battery that can be charged at up to 30W via a wired connection or up to 5W wirelessly. Motorola doesn’t provide a hard number of hours for total battery life, but does estimate the Razr+’s battery will last “all day and night on a single charge.”

Over the last two weeks, that’s the exact experience I’ve had with the battery life of the Razr+. At the end of a 15-hour day, I’d often have 40% of battery left when it came time to go to bed. That’s more than enough to go through the rest of the night.

When benchmarking the battery life of the Razr+ by playing a 4K video on loop with the display set to 50% brightness, the Razr+ powered through 14 hours and 42 minutes of constant playback. That’s longer than the Z Flip 4’s 14 hours of playback, but falls short of phones like the Galaxy S23+ (20 hours and 47 minutes) or the OnePlus 11 (21 hours and 36 minutes).

But don’t let those comparisons fool you — the battery life has been exactly what Motorola promises it to be. That is, good enough for all-day use (and likely into the night).

What we didn’t like about it

The camera is just okay

Jason Cipriani/CNN Underscored

Jason Cipriani/CNN Underscored

The Razr+ has two rear-facing cameras and one front-facing hole-punch camera that’s near the top of the internal display. The rear-facing cameras that are clearly visible on the external display are a 12MP main camera and a 13MP ultra-wide camera that also takes macro photos. The internal camera is 32MP.

The rear cameras can be used in all kinds of scenarios thanks to the foldable display. You can use them to take a selfie while the phone is closed, using the external screen as a viewfinder. You can partially open the Razr+’s screen, leaving the bottom of the phone on a flat surface to act as a tripod and, again, use the screen to frame your shot. There’s also a Photo Booth mode you select and then, when you’re ready, you raise the palm of your hand and the camera app takes four pictures, three seconds apart.

All of these features, plus many I didn’t even mention, change the way you think of and approach taking a photo. Group shots are easier and look better, for example.

But the actual picture quality of what I’ve captured on the Razr+ during testing has left me wanting more. When framing the photo and previewing it before hitting the shutter button, the picture looks good. Great, even. But after the photo is actually captured and processed, more often than not, the end result looks off.

A lot of pictures, like the ones above, look slightly washed-out. There were an occasional few pictures — mostly those taken in a restaurant with low light — that looked like an Instagram photo that you cranked up the Lux slider on just before posting (and not in a good way).

The camera isn’t a complete wash; I have captured some photos in well-lit environments, mostly outside, that’d compete with pics captured on an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.

I just wish the camera were more consistent.

The external display is cramped at times

Even though the external display is big and offers a lot of features we’vee yet to see in a foldable flip phone, it’s not perfect. If an app isn’t optimized for it, it’s hit or miss if the app is even usable on it.

Look at these screenshots of Instagram:

The screenshot on the left and in the middle are without the display expanded to take up the full screen, and the screen on the far right is with it expanded.

Other apps, like Google Maps, Messages or even Reddit are usable on the external display. My general advice: You’ll want to stick to using apps that are mostly text-based on the front screen.

And while it’s possible to use the keyboard on the front screen, I’ve yet to feel like it was a smooth experience, even when typing a short message.

I’m not sure exactly what Motorola can do to help with this experience beyond software tweaks similar to what’s done with TikTok to make it usable. So, more of that Motorola, okay?

Flex View needs to be expanded to more apps

I’ve only seen two apps adapt to the display being partially folded on the Razr+: the camera app and YouTube. The camera app’s Flex Mode gives you all sorts of shooting options as it acts like a tripod, or takes on the same form factor as a video camera. If you start playing a video in YouTube with the display flat and then partially bend the screen towards you, the video moves down and takes up the top half of the screen.

The Razr+ needs more of that across more apps.

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 4 has a dedicated Flex Mode toggle that triggers when you partially close the Flip 4, forcing the app to work on the top half of the screen, while the bottom half provides miscellaneous controls and settings.

To be fair, the Flex Mode controls that are presented aren’t always useful and have to be enabled on an app-by-app basis, but they add another layer of usability to the Flip 4. It’s something I felt was missing while attempting to use the Razr+ with the display partially bent.

How it compares

Bottom line

I’m happy to admit that I like the Motorola Razr+ a lot more than I thought I would. Its smooth performance, long battery life and ability to do pretty much whatever I want on the front display have made it the compact foldable phone to beat so far in 2023. The camera’s performance is the only real downside to the Razr+, but it’s not a deal breaker.

Indeed, Samsung will hold its next Unpacked event in about a month, where we should see the Flip 5, which is rumored to have a larger front display as well.

If you need to buy a phone today and you’re debating between the Z Flip 4 and the Razr+, it’s a close call. Get the Flip 4 if you prioritize better camera performance over a large external display; otherwise, the Razr+ is a safe bet.