Motorola Razr 2025 Review: Cool Design vs. AI Overload

Motorola’s latest 2025 foldables—the Razr and Razr Ultra—marry the nostalgia of the original Razr flip with modern engineering and a flood of on-device and cloud-based AI features. These Pocket-friendly marvels boast ultra-bright foldable OLED panels, a premium hinge design reinforced with aerospace-grade titanium, and a customizable array of materials ranging from vegan leather to real wood. But beneath the glossy exterior lies an overly ambitious AI layer that threatens to muddy the user experience.

An elegant tactile experience

Unlike most monolithic “glass sandwich” flagships, Motorola’s 2025 Razr series embraces variety. The base Razr uses a matte-textured polymer back, while the Ultra edition offers an optional natural wood veneer sourced from sustainable forests. Both variants employ color-matched anodized aluminum frames with a hard-coat finish rated at 9H hardness. Buttons are crisp and provide satisfying actuation, though early production units exhibit slight wobble in the power key assembly.

Motorola’s engineers refined the hinge mechanism with a multi-link suspension system and a titanium alloy insert. Lab tests conducted in partnership with SGS indicate the hinge can withstand over 300,000 open/close cycles at temperatures ranging from –20 °C to 50 °C, exceeding MIL-STD-810H shock and vibration standards. Dual neodymium magnets ensure the device snaps shut flush, protecting the internal foldable panel when closed and allowing tent or stand orientations without additional accessories.

Display and durability under the microscope

At the core of both Razrs is a high-contrast foldable OLED manufactured by BOE, utilizing a fourth-generation polymer substrate and an E5 quantum-dot color filter. The base Razr offers a 6.9″ 120 Hz panel with a peak brightness of 3,000 nits, while the Ultra pushes to a 7″ 165 Hz display and an astonishing 4,500 nits in HDR scenes. Motorola integrates an LTPO backplane for dynamically variable refresh rates, dropping to 1 Hz in always-on mode to conserve energy.

Both models front the foldable with a sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic—a chemically strengthened aluminosilicate that resists scratches from everyday objects like keys and coins. Beneath this protective layer, the plastic OLED still demands care: worst-case abrasion tests show the polymer cap scores a Mohs hardness around 2.5, meaning even grit or fingernails can leave marks.

AI features: powerful or overwhelming?

Motorola doubles down on AI, bundling Google’s Gemini 1.5, Meta’s Llama 3 (quantized 4-bit on Ultra), Perplexity’s knowledge graph search, and Microsoft Copilot via Azure. An “Ask & Search” bar permeates the UI—floating over the home screen, accessible in the app drawer, and even tied to a dedicated AI hardware key on the Ultra. While on-device LLama 3 inference offers latency under 15 ms per token, cloud-based Copilot and Gemini queries can incur 200–500 ms round trips.

Features like Pay Attention and Catch Me Up leverage transcription and summarization in the cloud. Motorola claims data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) and anonymized immediately, but routing private SMS, chat notifications, and meeting audio through remote servers raises legitimate privacy concerns—especially compared to end-to-end local processing on some competing devices.

Software support and security commitments

Out of the box, both Razrs run Android 15 with Motorola’s LightTouch UX overlay. The company promises three major OS updates and one additional year of security patches—totaling four years of support. This lags behind Samsung’s four OS updates plus five years of quarterly patches and Google’s seven-year security commitment on Pixel flagships. Motorola does include monthly security bundles, but users seeking longevity may find the policy insufficient for a $1,300 investment.

Connectivity and real-world performance

The Razr Ultra is the only flip to sport Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite in 2025, paired with 16 GB LPDDR5X RAM and up to 1 TB UFS 4.0 storage. Wireless connectivity includes Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) on the Ultra—delivering up to 5 Gbps link speeds in lab testing—while the base Razr uses Wi-Fi 6e. Both support sub-6 GHz 5G, NFC, Bluetooth 5.4 (with LE Audio and aptX Lossless), but neither offers mmWave 5G support in the US market.

In benchmark suites like Geekbench 6 and 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited, the Ultra trails the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered Galaxy Z Flip 6 by 5–8%, yet sustains peak performance longer thanks to a larger vapor-chamber cooling plate. Real-world gaming—with titles such as Genshin Impact—runs at 60 fps on high settings without notable thermal throttling, whereas the Mediatek Dimensity 7400X in the base Razr creaks under sustained load.

Alternatives and market positioning

If pocketability without case is your priority, these Motorola Razrs stand out for design flair and external display utility. However, Samsung’s Z Flip 6 offers five years of security updates, comparable performance, IPX8 water resistance, and a more mature software ecosystem—often at the same price. Oppo’s Find N2 Flip delivers a wider external panel with similar hinge durability and slightly better camera optics. Apple’s rumored foldable iPhone (2026) remains on the horizon, underscoring that the category is still in rapid flux.

Verdict

The 2025 Motorola Razr and Razr Ultra are among the coolest foldables available: sleek, pocket-friendly, and bristling with cutting-edge hardware. Yet the avalanche of on-device and cloud AI features can feel disjointed and overbearing, and Motorola’s update policy falls short of competitors. For early adopters enamored with bespoke materials and a vibrant external display, the Razrs shine. But if long-term support, camera prowess, or a more streamlined AI approach rank higher on your list, there are compelling alternatives.

• The good
  • Distinctive materials and refined hinge with 300k+ cycle rating
  • Ultra-bright, variable-refresh OLED panels (up to 4,500 nits)
  • One of the first flip phones with Wi-Fi 7 and Snapdragon 8 Elite
  • Versatile external display for notifications, widgets, and app use
• The bad
  • Overly aggressive AI layer with mixed on-device/cloud privacy trade-offs
  • Just three major Android updates and one year of security patches
  • Plastic foldable surface still vulnerable to scratches
  • Camera performance lags behind the best in class