Last week Motorola began shipping their newest flip phone, the razr 50 Ultra, and although it has a difficult act to follow after last year’s razr 40 Ultra was voted (by me) to be the best flip phone of the year, I think it’s going to be a roaring success.
The new Motorola razr 50 Ultra builds on what made the 40 Ultra so good last year, surpassing it in all the right places. Now that does not mean it is perfect, there are some issues but unfortunately, in my eyes, no phone is perfect and perfecting one would wind up being a Frankenstein’s monster type of phone (kind of like Homer Simpson’s The Homer).
The Motorola razr 50 Ultra flip phone is a great phone. It looks good, behaves how a flip/foldable phone should and is really well built with some impressive and useful software. It will fit in the smallest of pockets but open it up and you have a fully functional, full-sized phone.
Design improvements
At first look you could be mistaken for thinking that the Razr 50 Ultra looks the same as last year but upon closer inspection the external display is bigger and better. Last year it was the biggest and most useful external display on the flippable market and while Samsung tried to match it with the Z Flip5 it just wasn’t quite there.
This year the Razr 50 Ultra external display is a 4.0-inch pOLED display, up from last year’s 3.6-inch external display. The bezels are a lot smaller but also the display extends to cover the entire outer surface of the phone – no longer is there a wider bezel near the hinge.
If the external display was fully usable last year then this year’s means you may never have to open the phone!
The hinge is improved with a smaller crease and this year the hinge will hold the phone open anywhere from 0 degrees to the full 135 degrees. Sure, it’s not a use case for me, with very few apps making full use of the possibilities of the hinged, foldable display but it may well be for you. The main use I see for it is using the camera as a tripod-type of functionality.
The hinge is designed this year to be easier to open one handed but I’ve never ever wanted to open it with a single flick of the hand and to be honest I’d be worried of having it fly out of my hand to do that too often.
I’m not a fan of this added functionality of the hinge and I’m sure some may use it but it would only be sparingly and likely only to show off but I’d prefer it not to flip and close slightly when I’m trying to twist my wrist/phone to open the camera. Not a deal breaker and maybe I just have to learn to hold the phone better, that way we can all have what we want!
The razr 50 Ultra is 0.22mm thicker when folded than last year but that added thickness, as I am sure you are entirely shocked by, makes no difference at all to how well it fits in your pocket. I love the foldable design as it sits like a tiny device in your hand and pocket but can be opened to a full size smartphone at any time.
Motorola has once again included a case for the razr in the box but this time, instead of a cheap clear case it’s a softer, solid colour that matches the phone colour you buy. A nice addition and something very few phone manufacturers do these days – they get my two thumbs up for this gesture.
The Motorola razr 50 Ultra is available in Midnight Blue, Spring Green and Pantone Colour of the Year 2024, Peach Fuzz with them having a soft touch backing which makes it feel comfortable in the hand and not slippery like so many phones do. I’m not convinced of the Peach Fuzz colour we received but I’m sure there are many that will love the Peach Fuzz with rose gold accents. It’s not for me — if and when I buy one I will most likely go for the Midnight Blue.
External display is the biggest and best in the business
Let’s talk about this 4-inch external or cover display. It is bigger than last year and more functional. You can now run any app on it along with any widget. This is a nice increase in versatility of the cover display.
There is a front page for the clock up to four quick launch shortcuts for apps. There is a launcher page where you can put apps that you would like to use on your cover display at times. You don’t need to put all of your apps on there, just those you might want to launch from the cover display.
There is a widget panel where you can place a widget from any app on your phone. If the widget is too big it will add it so the page becomes a scrollable page to scroll to each included widget.
Spotify has once again collaborated with Motorola for their own panel. A weather panel is also an option, as is a calendar panel, Google News, and games. You can add or remove these panels as you wish from within the settings. Super easy and super flexible.
If you have an app open on the inner display and you close the display there are two ways to open it, depending on what you have set as your preference. If you want apps to open automatically you can easily set it to do that and they will open on the cover display without any intervention from you.
The other option is to swipe the notification that shows up on the cover display to open the app – this allows you to not have the app open on this outer display if you don’t want it to. I have some that open automatically and some that don’t.
I can’t see any reason to have apps not having an option to open on the cover display – you can set it to swipe and then if you decide not to open it on the outer display don’t swipe the icon and it will disappear after a few seconds without the app being opened.
Quick settings and notifications are also accessed on the cover display making a fully functional display. Whatever you can do on the inner display you can basically do on the outer display. Big win for Motorola and their software team.
Inner display
The inner display is once again a tall 22:9 ratio, 1080P 6.9-inch display. It’s tall and it’s super bright and, being a pOLED, super vibrant.
All apps I used stretched nicely to this display this year and the crease in the middle, although present, does not affect usage at all. I think we will eventually hit the spot where there is zero crease but we are not there yet.
Even the AFL app which didn’t look great last year is perfectly displayed. A lot of work has been done by Google and app developers to make apps work across this relatively new form factor and it’s great to see.
Viewing the inner display in direct sunlight was good, not as good as a standard OLED display but still acceptable. I did find that the adaptive brightness was a bit low – although that could be my old eyes. I often had to manually increase the brightness of the display to make it more easily readable.
The inner display once again has a high refresh rate at 165Hz and, as the display is an LTPO display, it can adjust its refresh rate anywhere from 1Hz to 165Hz depending on what the system requires at the time. You can also set the display to only reach a maximum of 60Hz, to save on battery life – something I would only do if I knew the phone would be struggling to reach until I could plug it in again or if the battery was running low.
Software
I have always loved Motorola software and while last year seemed to be a bit of a beta experience at first, this year they seem to have nailed it with their flip phone.
Not only is the foldable software on point but their inclusions into the standard Android operating system is excellent. From personalising the theme, icons, fonts etc to changing clocks on lock screens and the shortcuts there is so much you can do to make the Motorola Android experience your own.
Motorola excels with their gestures options. Hold the phone in your hand and twist your wrist and the camera opens (double tap power button can also be used), chop the phone twice and the flashlight turns on. Swipe the screen to split it into two, touch the screen with three fingers and hold to take a screenshot, slide the power button to zoom or show quick settings and notifications.
There are a lot of options and I use just about all of them. There is very little superfluous fluff (gimmicks) that you see in many phones these days.
Let’s talk about AI here. Gemini has been at the forefront of Google’s advertising for a while now and while it is there and it can do some cool things, as an everyday AI assistant it fails too often.
Motorola bill the razr 50 Ultra as being powered by moto ai (yes, all lowercase for some reason — marketing?) and if it is I haven’t noticed it – and that’s a good thing. I’ve used Gemini from Google for a while and it just doesn’t integrate well with the phone in my opinion. There are times you ask it to do something you know Google Assistant can do but it won’t/can’t do it. It also does not hand it off to Google Assistant to perform the task so you are out of luck.
When purchasing the motorola razr 50 ultra, users will receive Gemini Advanced for 3 months with access to Google’s most capable AI models, at no extra cost. Consumers can also access 2 TB of cloud storage and Gemini in their favourite Google apps like Gmail, Docs, and more—all included in the Google One AI Premium plan.
To get the most out of Gemini you really have to focus on what it can do and routinely get used to doing those things, such as summarising emails etc – I prefer to check them directly.
Motorola also includes their own AI, moto ai (yes, all lowercase again), which is functional in several places, including the wallpaper choices (ho-hum imo). The main place where the AI from moto is used is the camera software. The camera enhancements include:
- Photo Enhancement Engine – simultaneously applies settings from multiple shooting modes to a single image to deliver a single stunning photo (ideally)
- Adaptive Stabilisation – determines the speed of movement while filming and dynamically adjusts the stabilisation level for the best results, ideally to capture videos while running or riding a bike
- Action Shot – automatically increases and adjusts shutter speed and illumination based on different lighting conditions, perfect for sporting and jump in the air moments.
- Long Exposure – for capturing artistic light trails or smooth waterfalls with a single tap.
- Super zoom – takes photos even further away by enhancing the results through an AI-based machine learning algorithm, to capture details even when far away.
While you don’t see this actually occurring in real time, the photos are an improvement on last year’s photos so it must be?
Battery life
The battery has been beefed up this year from 3,800mAh to 4,000mAh and this time the phone can charge at 45W through the USB-C port, and 15W wireless (Qi charging), both an increase on last year. Both of these are really fast and a godsend if you are ever in need of a quick top up before taking off.
Battery life on the phone is really good and I dare say a lot of that is because of how large and functional the smaller, outer display is. You can do a lot on the cover display and as such you do not open the phone each and every time you need to interact with the phone. A smaller display uses less battery – makes sense.
I am able to easily get a full day of use out of this phone and that is enough. If I am worried about it running low on battery I just use the external display nearly exclusively to save battery. I never see any need to get more than a day of use – I just charge my devices overnight but being a power user, a full day of use is easier said than done with many smartphones.
The camera
The external cameras are:
- 50 MP, f/1.7, 24mm (wide), 1/1.95″, 0.8µm, dual pixel PDAF, OIS
- 50 MP, f/2.0, (telephoto), 1/2.76″, 0.64µm, PDAF, 2x optical zoom
Both of these are an improvement on last year and, combined with the new moto ai, the resultant photos show that.
One feature that is disappointingly lacking is an ultrawide camera. I never realised just how often I zoom out to less than 1X when taking a photo. Being unable to do it was incredibly frustrating.
The internal selfie camera is a 32MP f/2.4 camera, the same as last year but once again I cannot imagine a time when you would use this camera when you can easily use the MUCH better external cameras and the cover display as the viewfinder. Much better quality images, so much so, that they are better than the selfie images of most smartphones because they only have a single, fixed focus camera for selfies. You would hope a dual camera system would be better, and it is.
Motorola once again is pushing the use of the phone while holding as if it were an old school camcorder. I used it, and the functional start, stop etc of the videos was easy to use and very functional but by now we are all used to using a smartphone to take video, using it as a “camcorder” is no longer “natural.”
Other uses of the flip phone is having it sitting as a stand on the table etc, instead of having to use a tripod to take a selfie, record a video etc.
Why should you buy the Motorola razr 50 Ultra?
If you want a premium flip phone there are really only two viable options in Australia, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6 and the Motorola razr 50 Ultra (the OPPO is not up to their level due to its tiny external display unfortunately). The razr 50 Ultra has a bigger outer display and comes with one of the best versions of Android on the market.
The crease is minimal but if you want you could rarely even open the phone to see the crease, such is the size and functionality of the external cover display.
The camera is improved on last year with really good images being captured under all conditions — although I would have preferred them to include a camera with ultrawide functionality. Battery life is easily a day — the more you use the external display instead of the inner display, the longer the battery will last.
Although at this stage I cannot speak to the differences between the two main flip phones but I know that if you want a flip phone and buy the Motorola razr 50 Ultra you will not be disappointed. Last year the razr 40 Ultra was my phone of the year, such that I spent my own hard earned money on one for my personal use. This year’s iteration may well compel me to do the same, I am that impressed with it.
Keep an eye out for my comparison piece between this and the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6 in the coming weeks.
The Motorola razr 50 Ultra is available now in Midnight Blue, Spring Green and Pantone Colour of the Year 2024, Peach Fuzz:
- RRP $1,699 at JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, OfficeWorks, The Good Guys, Mobileciti,
Amazon, and motorola.com.au
Scott is our resident open technology expert. If you can mod it, or want to use it your way, Scott has probably done it. From Laptops to phones, headphones and game consoles, he’s played with it and wants to see the next generation.
