Motorola Razr Ultra (2025) review: looking sharp

The Motorola Razr Ultra is something special, but it’s not quite Ultra.

It’s gorgeous. It’s a delight to use, and even after several generations of this revamped Razr flip format, checking bus arrival times on the outer screen still feels like getting away with something. This phone is a lot of things — but Ultra feels a bit too strong.

This is a new addition to the Razr lineup, sitting atop the trio of flip phones in features and price, starting at $1,299. You get a higher resolution inner screen, Qualcomm’s most powerful mobile processor, double the storage space, and an upgraded selfie cam. Oh, and a dedicated button to summon Motorola’s AI features, but more on that later.

Is it a cut above the rest of the Razr family? Sure. Is it a beautiful phone? Definitely. It’s just that Ultra is a loaded term, especially if you’re talking about Android phones. Samsung has set the tone for what makes a phone ultra, which presently means a lot of cameras and basically every high-end spec you can think of. This Razr has plenty of charm and a strong list of specs, but it still highlights the gap between the very best slab-style phones and flip phones — even Ultra ones.

Did I mention how nice this phone looks? I actually did a double take on at least one occasion when I saw it in my tote bag. My review unit’s side rails are a goldish, bronzy color that emphasizes the warm tones of the wooden back panel. It’s real wood, too, though a little bit of give when I press down on the center suggests it’s a thin layer on top of something else.

The 4-inch 1080p outer screen covers almost the entire front of the phone. It’s responsive and smooth, and Motorola’s cover screen software remains my favorite way to interact with a flip phone. You swipe between panes, including a new screen for widgets, and a familiar one dedicated to apps you can enable to run on the small screen. This is where things get interesting.

Opening Instagram on a tiny four-inch screen sounds terrible, and it is. That’s kind of the point. The screen is big enough to handle checking notifications, typing a response, and taking quick actions in apps like starting an activity in Strava. For everything else, you’ll want to use the inner screen. It helps me cut some of my mindless scrolling when I need to open the phone to check an Instagram notification.

The inner display measures 7 inches with a 1224p resolution — a hair bigger and sharper than the 6.9-inch 1080p screens on the other two Razr models. It’s a good display. I liked it much more once I changed the color setting to “natural” from its default “vivid,” which overdoes it with the reds, in my opinion. Outside, the screen was just a little dimmer than I’d like in bright conditions; even when peak brightness mode kicks in, it’s not quite enough to be comfortable to use in direct sunlight.

Motorola says the new hinge is more durable and reduces the crease when the screen is open. I don’t usually find the crease on a foldable distracting, but this one practically disappears when you unfold the phone. The previous hinge felt a little floppy once you opened the phone past 90 degrees; this one has better resistance.

The Razr Ultra has an IP48 rating, continuing to offer full water-resistance like last year’s models. This was reassuring when I watched my kid drool directly into the phone’s hinge. The “4” rating for particle resistance sure looks friendlier than the X of the previous models, but that doesn’t mean it’s dust-resistant. The internals are safe from debris as small as one millimeter, bigger than the grain of dust or sand that could wreak havoc on the phone’s inner screen. The Ultra has stood up to plenty of abuse so far, including exposure to the dusty interior of my tote bag and manhandling by my toddler. Long-term durability remains less certain than a slab-style phone, though.

Motorola is also debuting a set of AI features it’s been beta testing. “Catch Me Up” summarizes notifications from messaging apps, “Remember This” files away screenshots, text, and photos so you can ask about them later, and “Pay Attention” starts a voice recording with automatic transcription. The quick version of my experience during the week I’ve been using them? Meh.

I like “Remember This” as a repository for screenshots of things I would otherwise leave open in a Chrome tab for all time, but I didn’t find it as useful in a personal assistant. I added screenshots of details for some upcoming flights, and it got things right when I asked questions about them, like what time my flight was leaving. But it’s also a little slow to respond to a query since part of it runs in the cloud. In the time it takes to find the information, I could have just opened the Delta app and checked myself.

I’m reserving some judgment because these features are more useful the longer you live with them, and Motorola’s approach is smart. Everything relies on you manually adding information to the service — it requires a Motorola / Lenovo account — which avoids some of the ickiness of an always-listening or watching AI system. It also means you need to habituate to saving screenshots and information in a new location, and you will inevitably forget to do that.

Motorola has made every effort to get you to engage with its AI. There’s a dedicated AI key to launch two of these functions with a long press or double press. You can disable either, but you can’t assign non-AI functions to this key, which kind of sucks. There’s a prominent homescreen icon for the Moto AI app, a floating bubble, an option to have the screen wake up when you look at it, and more. Somehow, it feels overwhelming and forgettable at the same time. But I haven’t given up on it quite yet, I plan to keep testing these features.

All of the above describes a good flip phone, which I’ve come to expect from Motorola. But is it an Ultra? Some other hardware specs help make that case: a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a Gorilla Glass Ceramic layer on the outer screen. There’s up to 68W wired charging and up to 30W wireless charging. Nothing to sneeze at.

The Razr Ultra behaves like a top-shelf Android phone. It renders Pocket City 2’s 3D mode without a hiccup, and though it warms up with fast charging or extended gaming, I never saw a drop in performance. Battery life is a bright spot too, especially for a flip phone that has to give up some of its inner real estate to the hinge. Even on a day where I spent some time using the Razr propped up to stream a video of the Vatican on Pope Watch, tracked a 45-minute bike ride while streaming audio, and dialed into a meeting, I was only down to about 50 percent by bedtime. That’s slab phone battery performance from a flip phone, a real achievement.

It’s slated to receive three OS upgrades and four years of security updates. That’ll be enough for most people, but Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 6 offers seven years of OS and security updates. It’s easier to understand the shorter software longevity on a less expensive phone, but on this $1,300 Ultra? That’s harder to justify.

The story of using a Motorola phone camera goes like this: you can take some really nice photos with it, but you can’t be entirely sure which of your photos will turn out well and which will receive some questionable processing. It does well with flattering lighting, like indoors with your subject next to a big window. It can produce a decent portrait mode portrait. Other times, photos can look a little overbrightened, oversaturated, or a combination of the two. These things seem to happen more often in “meh” lighting — overcast and gray conditions, or a dimly lit room.

This Razr has a 50-megapixel wide camera and a 50-megapixel ultrawide, with a 2x crop zoom option via the main one. I wonder if a 50-megapixel selfie camera is overkill, since you can use those on the outer panel with the front screen for selfies. Maybe it’s there so you’ll look extra crisp on your Zoom meetings, or maybe it’s there to lend another air of Ultra. Hard to say.

There’s something intangible about the Razr that’s hard to explain without using it for a little while. I don’t even fully understand it myself. Why does it feel so good hailing an Uber from the front-facing screen instead of opening the phone? Why is it so satisfying to pull up my digital boarding pass on the cover screen using one hand while I’m wielding a coffee and a rolling suitcase with the other? Why does it feel so triumphant to snap the phone shut after firing off a zinger in the group chat? I don’t know, but it just does.

For all the flip phone benefits, it comes with some familiar flip phone drawbacks. The inner screen folds, sure, but it’s not as bright or sharp as those on the best slab-style phones. It’s reasonably durable, but dust is still a concern. You get an ultrawide and decent crop zoom to complement the main camera, but any other slab-style phone at this price comes with a dedicated telephoto lens. There are fewer tradeoffs than on previous flip phones, but they still exist.

“Ultra” is in the eye of the beholder, really. If a flip phone with a stacked spec sheet and a gorgeous exterior finish sounds Ultra enough, this Razr will delight you. It’s hard to argue that case for anyone who’s more casually interested in a flip phone, especially considering the caliber of slab-style phone you could get for $1,300. But this phone is awfully special as an object, a tool, and a thing of beauty.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge