The Motorola Razr 2025 is the best foldable phone you can buy right now. But it doesn’t have the most powerful hardware, and it’s easy to find a better internal display on a foldable. Motorola’s disappointing software support is another strike against it, and let’s not forget the bloatware you have to wade through after booting up the phone for the first time. Nevertheless, Motorola took the time to create an exceptional experience that more than makes up for these drawbacks.
Foldable phones are starting to get less exciting each year. Samsung has settled on what it wants its Z Flip phones to look and feel like, and it shows no signs of changing its formula. This is frustrating, as foldable phones have featured the same issues year after year. Fortunately, the Motorola Razr 2025 fixes most of them.
4
The Razr 2025 is a midrange phone with a midrange price
The first foldable to offer perfect value
Motorola rebooted its Razr brand with the Motorola Razr (2020) in 2019. This phone cost a whopping $1500 and suffered from problems including weak performance, lackluster battery life, and durability. But even if it was perfect, $1,500 is an absurd amount of money to spend on a phone with midrange specs. It certainly wasn’t the last foldable to offer poor value. For many foldable phones, it’s clear that we’re paying a premium for the novelty of a flip phone. Once you get past the wow factor, you’re left with a phone that doesn’t offer a good experience for the price.
Samsung’s Z Flip phones offer good value, but at a $1000 entry point. On the other end of the scale, Motorola has repeatedly released flip phones that are affordable but frustrating to use. Until now, there has not been a flip phone that offers a good experience for a reasonable price.
You pay a premium for the foldable experience, but $700 is still a reasonable price for a flip phone. It’s the first flip phone I’ve seen that I would consider buying at full price. Motorola has cut the right corners and emphasised the right features. Compared to other similarly priced phones, it’s more than able to hold its own
3
The outer display works brilliantly out of the box
The Razr 2025 doesn’t impose arbitrary restrictions
Want to add an app to your Razr 2025’s outer display? Head to the apps panel and tap the apps you want to show. It sounds basic, but if you haven’t used another flip phone before, you might be surprised to know that this isn’t the standard experience.
Flip phones are quirky devices, but they need to be as easy to use as regular phones if they want to be anything more than a gimmick device you show off at parties. Samsung’s Z Flip phones are a perfect example of how overengineering can spoil the foldable experience. For example, you have to use Good Lock to add an app drawer to a Z Flip’s cover display, which is far too many steps for someone who just wants to start using their phone.
Critics could call Motorola’s straightforward approach to the cover screen oversimplistic, but it works. There’s no lengthy setup or awkward workaround; you just open an app and start using it. This isn’t to say the experience is perfect; the camera cutouts can obscure important information. But overall, Motorola has neatly avoided the overengineering problems that haunt other foldables.
2
Motorola knows you don’t need flagship performance in a foldable
Bigger numbers aren’t always necessary
If you want a phone capable of 4K filming, intensive gaming, and long photography sessions, you shouldn’t buy any foldable phone. All these features are better on a regular flagship phone as the manufacturers can focus on the hardware that powers these features without needing to spend resources on a foldable display, a hinge, and a secondary display. You can get top-of-the-line hardware in a flip phone; the Motorola Razr 2025 Ultra is proof of that, but at $1400, you’re much better off sticking with a flagship Galaxy S series device instead.
The reality is that the form factor of a flip phone isn’t suitable for these tasks. Gaming feels awkward thanks to the protective film on an inner screen, and there’s no space for a flagship-quality camera system. A flip phone is a stylish smartphone for everyday use. Most people won’t ever make use of the full power of a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. When was the last time you played a top-of-the-line game or filmed in 4K on your smartphone?
The Motorola Razr 2025 has a MediaTek Dimensity 7500X chipset and 8GB RAM. This hardware is more than enough for everyday tasks, but you’ll notice it slows down for the intensive tasks we mentioned above. However, it also brings efficiency gains to the table that make more sense for the hardware within.
1
The Razr 2025 doesn’t settle for a boring aesthetic
Fun colors are crucial for a flip phone
At the end of the day, a flip phone is not solving any major pain points in the smartphone industry. While the small screen is useful for displaying information at a glance, and the foldable factor makes photography easier, these aren’t features we felt were desperately needed on smartphones in the 2010s. A flip phone is a fun way to jazz up the smartphone for regular Android users, and this experience should extend to the phone’s appearance.
It’s impossible to take an objective stance on a phone’s aesthetic, but I would be willing to stand my ground and say that the Razr 2025 is the most eye-catching flip phone yet. The Razr 2025 Ultra makes a bolder statement with options for a wine and woodgrain cover, but every one of the Pantone color choices looks beautiful. While Samsung offers a yellow colour for the Galaxy Z Flip 6, it’s a muted tone that leans towards the refined color palette.
The Motorola Razr 2025’s vibrant colors and rounded design are eye-catching and enjoyable. It’s a phone designed for people who want a bit more fun in their lives. This isn’t the most important feature a foldable phone should have, but it’s great to see a manufacturer try and break free of the muted tones and identical designs that have marked the smartphone industry in recent years.
The Motorola Razr 2025 is the first foldable phone I would recommend to everyone
Previous foldable phones were either too expensive, too underpowered, suffered from serious durability issues, or just cut too many corners to make them a useful phone for your day-to-day life. The Motorola Razr 2025 is the first foldable phone that proves the form factor isn’t a gimmick. Sure, you can open and use the same apps on a regular Android phone, but the Razr 2025 changes the smartphone experience in a way that you’ll notice every time you use it, not just after the first week.
The Razr 2025 is a fantastic choice for anyone dipping their toe into foldable phones for the first time or those who have been buying flip phones since the beginning. It fixes the pain points we’ve found repeated on other foldable phones (including Motorola’s previous attempts) to create a foldable phone that’s better than the rest.
