Great Cameras With PANTONE-Validated Precision

Since Motorola first introduced its flip phone in 2019 with the nostalgic “Razr” name, we’ve been waiting for a truly flagship device. The first couple of Razrs were using Snapdragon’s 700-series chipsets, and once Motorola ditched the old iconic style of the Razr, it moved up to Snapdragon 8-series chipsets, but generally an older or slower version. This year, however, Motorola did not cut any corners on performance. The Razr Ultra has the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset inside, and it is not the 7-core version either. It’s the full 8-core up to 4.32GHz with 16GB of RAM. Meaning we finally have that flagship performance.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve really liked the Razr devices from Motorola. They’ve done a lot of things that its main competitor in this space – Samsung – hasn’t. Like allowing users to run any app on the cover display, and offering a huge cover display. Samsung offers a larger cover display, but Motorola’s is still the largest at 4-inches.

The real question is, whether that’s enough to justify the price of the Razr Ultra? It starts at $1,299. And it’s somewhat hard to compare it to last year’s model, since there was no “Ultra” for the Razr previously. But considering we have the Snapdragon 8 Elite, double the storage, and double the RAM, along with the economic factors like tariffs and inflation, the increase to $1,299 seems very plausible. But is the Razr Ultra worth that price? Let’s find out.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 Ultimate Review: Hardware and Design

For the most part, the design of the Motorola Razr Ultra did not change, compared to previous Razrs. The biggest change is likely the inner display. It’s not sporting slimmer bezels, bringing the screen size to 7-inches, while sticking with the same physical size. It does still sport a 4-inch cover display too, with both having refresh rates of up to 165Hz.

The sides are more flat this year, with the frame around the bezels being a bit more rounded. This helps keep the screen from folding so flat, and adding onto the crease. The speaker is also integrated into the frame as usual, and it sounds pretty good on phone calls.

What you’ll really notice with the Razr Ultra this year is the different materials. Last year, Motorola did fake leather and fake seude materials for the Razr Plus. This year, Motorola has added on Alcantara and real wood. It really gives you Moto Maker vibes from well over a decade ago with the Moto Maker. When Motorola asked which color I preferred for my review unit, I had a hard time deciding between the Rio Red faux leather model and the Mountain Trail wood option. I ultimately went with the wood, because how often do you get a wood smartphone?

Some think that the wood is a bit slick, and it’s true. It is a bit slicker than the leather, suede, and Alcantara options, but it’s not as slippery as a lot of other phones. The Razr Ultra is one of the few phones that you do not want a case for. Though Motorola does have a few cases available.

I’m not a huge fan of flip phones, mostly, because I need to keep opening and closing the phone to get anything done. But with the Razr, that’s not a problem. This is because I can do virtually everything on that cover display. In fact, I find myself playing games on that cover display way more than I probably should.

The other new edition to the Razr Ultra this year (and only the Razr Ultra) is the AI Key. This is a new key on the left side of the phone, which will trigger moto ai. It’s a good idea, but it’s not something I’ve used all that often. I’ve really only used it a handful of times. What Motorola is doing with AI is pretty smart and cool, I’m just not sure a dedicated AI key was needed.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 Ultimate Review: Display

Both of the displays on the Razr Ultra 2025 are simply amazing. The main display is a 7-inch display that can dynamically refresh at up to 165Hz and it also has HDR with a peak brightness of 4,500 nits. This is actually very important on that main display, since it is plastic. And naturally, plastic is a lot more reflective than glass. So having more brightness is very much needed here. I’m happy to report that, I’ve not had any issues with brightness outdoors on either display.

The cover display itself is a 4-inch display, that uses Gorilla Glass Ceramic, and also is LTPO up to 165Hz. This display is a slightly lower peak brightness of just 3,000 nits. That’s still plenty bright, especially since this is not a plastic display. With a resolution of 1272 x 1080, this is almost a square display, which does make it a bit difficult to use some apps on that display, but a lot of apps work just as they should.

Watching content on either display is a joy. That’s thanks to both being HDR displays with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ available. This year, both displays are AMOLED instead pOLED like in previous years, so it is a pretty big display upgrade. If you’re wanting to use the Razr Ultra for watching content, you won’t be disappointed.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 Ultimate Review: Performance

I will say, I was pretty shocked when I found out that the Razr Ultra used the Snapdragon 8 Elite and the 8-core model at that. I was able to check out the Razr Ultra ahead of the announcement, during a small briefing in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress. So I knew for a few months that Motorola was using the Snapdragon 8 Elite, but I thought for sure it would be the 7-core model, like what the OPPO Find N5 is using. But nope, it’s the full 8-core Snapdragon 8 Elite. Making this a pretty powerful device. Especially combined with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.

Seeing the Razr Ultra come with 16GB of RAM and so much storage is really great to see, especially at this price. And it does mean that the Razr Ultra is anything but slow. It has not slowed down once while I’ve been using it. However, I will say it did crash during a benchmark, but we’ll talk more about that in a second. In day-to-day usage, and even playing some games, the Razr Ultra chugged through with ease.

The extra RAM and storage likely mean that there’s going to be a lot of AI models and features coming to the Razr Ultra over the next few years. But keep in mind, that Motorola is not promising 7 years of updates like Google and Samsung. It’s more like 3 years. So it’ll be interesting to see how this hardware holds up, come 2027 or 2028.

Benchmarks

Benchmarks are a bit of a mixed bag on the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025. We’re noticing that Motorola is being a bit conservative when it comes to throttling. In fact, the Geekbench 6 scores are lower than the Razr Plus 2024, at least in the single-core. And one of our benchmarks we run on every device – 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test – could not finish because the phone was getting too hot.

Let’s start with Geekbench. As mentioned, the single-core score is lower than the Razr Plus 2024. Which I thought was wrong, because its also roughly half of what we’ve seen on other Snapdragon 8 Elite devices. So, we ran it a few times, and each time it had relatively the same score.

Above, we are comparing the Razr Ultra 2025 to the Razr Plus 2024, as well as the Galaxy S25 Ultra and OPPO Find N5. We chose those two devices as they are both Snapdragon 8 Elite, with the Find N5 using the 7-core model.

Moving onto 3D Mark, there’s not much to talk about here. We attempted to run the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test multiple times, and each time it did not even get halfway through the test before crashing due to the heat. Which is why we believe that Motorola is being very conservative when it comes to throttling here. Which is not a surprise, since the Snapdragon 8 Elite is known to be a very hot chip. That’s also why it was a surprise that Motorola went with the 8-core instead of the 7-core version.

Finally, we do a video export test for the Razr Ultra. This consists of loading up the same 60-second video and exporting it in Capcut with no changes, and exporting it at 4K60 resolution. We then time how long it took to export the video, and the timing was pretty respectable here. to quite as fast as some other Snapdragon 8 Elite devices, but half the time of the Razr Plus 2024 took to do this same test.

So what do these benchmarks tell us? Well, thermal throttle is a real thing on the Razr Ultra. Though, I will still say, in most day-to-day usage, it should not be a problem. Other than in hot environments and playing games for a long period of time.

Thermals

We all know that the Snapdragon 8 Elite runs hotter than some of Qualcomm’s previous chipsets. And in a body like the Razr Ultra where it’s actually a smaller amount of space, heat can be an issue. As we’ve already mentioned, it seems like Motorola is thermal throttling the Razr Ultra a bit. It’s mostly only affecting benchmark testing, however.

In our thermal testing, we play Genshin Impact at max brightness and at max graphics settings for an hour and then record the temperature. Here’s how the Razr Ultra stacked up to other devices we’ve tested recently.

As you can see here, the Razr Ultra does run a tad hotter than last year’s Razr Plus. And quite a bit warmer than the OPPO Find N5, though that is a bit unfair seeing as the Find N5 is the 7-core Snapdragon 8 Elite, and it also has a much larger surface area to dissipate heat.

Moving onto our next thermal test, which is video recording. We record video at 4K60 for 10 minutes, recording the temperature at 5 minutes and again at 10 minutes.

We can see more of the same here with video recording. The Razr Ultra does run the hottest, but in all honesty, this is not that hot. Surprisingly, it does run cooler than the Razr Plus 2024 at the 10-minute mark, however. As well as the OPPO Find N5.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 Ultimate Review: Battery life and Charging

This year, Motorola has equipped the Razr Ultra with a pretty large 4,700mAh capacity battery. That makes it one of the largest in a flip phone. And battery life is quite good. I’ve had trouble killing this battery in a day, unless I’m out of the house and not on WiFi at all during the day.

Typically, I wake up around 7am and unplug the phone. Use it throughout the day, before putting it back on the charger around 11pm. That’s about 16 hours off the charger, typically with about 30% left. Now unfortunately, Motorola does not give you screen-on time, so I have to rely on Digital Wellbeing here, which gives me an average of around 5-6 hours of screen on time per day. That’s not too shabby. Of course, there are phones with better battery life, but they aren’t flip phones.

Charging is a breeze with 68W USB-C charging included. Meaning you can easily top up in just a few minutes. Motorola claims that you can get a day’s worth of power in just 8 minutes, which is pretty accurate, to be quite honest.

Benchmarks

For our battery life benchmark, we charge the phone to 100%. Then load up a YouTube video that is over 24 hours long, and play it at the same brightness level as every other phone we review. That is around 200 lux. We used to do this at max brightness, but since some phones are much, much brighter than others, we had to bring it down to about 200 lux, which is still quite bright. Here’s how the Razr Ultra 2025 stacked up.

As you can see from the table above, it is longer lasting than the Razr Plus 2024, but it still has a ways to go to match slab phones.

On the charging front, we plug the phone into a charger that is able to max out the charging speed. Which is 68W on the Razr Ultra 2025. We charge it from about 1% to 100%, timing how long it takes. And as you can see in that table, that’s a quite large change in charging time. About a third of the time was shaved off, and that’s on a battery that is 17% larger.

I also believe this is the fastest charging USB-C PD phone in the US now. As OnePlus uses USB-A for its fast charging.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 Ultimate Review: Software

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Motorola is not following Samsung and Google’s lead here, and providing 7 years of updates. In fact, Motorola has not actually guaranteed a number of updates this time around. However, in the past it was 3 years of OS and 4 years of security updates. So we expect similar for the 2025 Razr series. Unfortunately, Motorola has been a bit slow on updates, but they have been improving. Rolling out Android 15 much faster than Android 14, so we’re hoping that continues.

Now that, that is out of the way, let’s talk about the software. Motorola is still sticking with a relatively clean software experience. It does remind me a lot of the Pixel Experience, but with a few changes to make it distinctly Motorola. Like the notification shade, it’s translucent, like the new Material 3 Expressive will be. I honestly really like Motorola’s software, after the Pixel Experience, it’s right up there with OnePlus’ OxygenOS as far as my favorite Android skins go.

But what’s really new here is the AI. Motorola included an AI button this year on the left side of the phone. Which is cool, however, I rarely used it. But I can see why it is going to be very popular for Motorola.

moto ai is quickly becoming my favorite AI suite. Why? Because it’s not in the way. You could use your Razr Ultra for months without even knowing about moto ai, unless you accidentally hit the AI Key. This is great because not everyone wants to use AI for everything. But when you do want to use it, Motorola has everything you could want.

The name of the game for Motorola is partnerships. They are partnering with Perplexity, Meta and Google for AI. So when you ask moto ai something, it will direct you to the best AI tool to accomplish your task. On top of that, you can do all of this from the Cover Display.

Motorola has also included a few features that are very useful, like Pay Attention. This is a command you give to moto ai and it’ll start an audio recording. This is good for briefings and meetings, in fact I used this in a pre-briefing just last week. I still think that the Google Recorder is better, but Motorola can handle it in a pinch.

The software on the Razr Ultra is smooth, and fluid. Of course, you expect that given the fact that it has a Snapdragon 8 Elite and 16GB of RAM inside.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 Ultimate Review: Camera

Now, let’s talk about Motorola’s achilles heel. For years, Motorola’s cameras have struggled. Not because they’re bad, they just aren’t as good as the competition. It still doesn’t match up with he competition out of China, but when it comes to Google, Samsung and Apple, I think it matches up quite well. Motorola also ditched the telephoto camera this year and went back to an ultrawide, making it better for recording vlogs.

Motorola was quite proud to announce that this is the first flip phone with triple 50-megapixel sensors. That includes the front-facing camera, which is also 50 megapixels. But to be honest, how often will you use that camera? Especially since you can use the rear cameras on a flip.

The camera quality here is pretty good. It does really well with the colors, the PANTONE Validated Color and Skin Tones on these cameras work very well. The camera actually produces some very natural colors for the pictures, instead of being oversaturated like some other cameras. And if you don’t like the natural colors, Motorola does have another style you can choose called “Signature”. This is a unique Moto color style, which was created by AI, and you can also adjust it to your liking. It’s a lot like photo styles on the iPhone.

One area where the camera does fall apart though, is with motion. I took my dog over to the dog park and attempted to take some photos of her running at full speed, and the Razr Ultra produced a fairly blurry shot. Now to be fair here, most cameras would have trouble. Except for those with zero shutter lag like the OPPO Find X8 series.

On the plus side, it did very well taking photos of my dog. She is one of my favorite test subjects for phone cameras, because so many of them struggle with pictures of her. Since she’s a black, brown and white dog, many cameras tend to smooth out her fur, instead of keeping it nice and sharp. The Razr Ultra did a great job with her fur, I was actually pretty impressed.

Motorola does offer a 2x optical zoom on the Razr Ultra, via sensor cropping the main sensor. With 2x, I didn’t notice any real issues with the photos. You can even go up to 4x, and still get sharp photos, with accurate colors. Even though part of that is from AI.

Honestly, my complaints with the cameras here are more nitpicking than anything. And it also comes down to the fact that I’ve been spoiled with so many great camera phones out of China, like the OPPO Find X8 Ultra. The Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 has a really great camera system, and I think Motorola has finally done it.

Should you buy the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025?

Let’s face it, flip phones aren’t for everyone. I’m not a huge fan of flip phones myself, as I’d rather have a book-style foldable. Where I can have a full-size phone, and then open it and get more of a tablet-sized display. But the Razr is a flip phone I could definitely use as my daily driver, largely because of everything they’ve done with that Cover Display. Allowing you to use any Android app on the Cover Display is really nice, and it means I don’t have to open the phone every time I want to use it, or doom scroll on X.

You should buy the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 if:

• You want a flip phone that can rival a slab phone.
• You want a high-end Motorola phone.
• You want a unique smartphone.

You should not buy the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 if:

• You have a 2024 Razr.
• You don’t like flip phones, or use your phone a lot.

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