It’s been quite the week for Lenovo-owned Motorola, with the company announcing four smartphones, a return to smartwatches and possibly some of the most daring headphones I’ve seen. There’s plenty to say on all of those launches but despite the Bose-tuned headphones being covered in crystals, it’s the Razr Ultra that’s captured my attention.
On the surface, the Razr Ultra doesn’t look all that different to the Razr+ from 2024, but looks can be deceiving. The Razr+ remains in Motorola’s line up for 2025, but this Ultra model sits above it offering some upgrades under the hood that are well worth getting excited about.
What is actually different?
The Motorola Razr 60 Ultra (as it’s called in Europe) is virtually identical to the Razr+ 2024, except for the color offerings, but that is by no means a bad thing. The rounded edges are lovely to hold; the external display makes great use of the space available; and Motorola has once again nailed it with the color options.
In fact, I think the color options this year might be the best yet, with the Pantone Rio Red featuring a leather-like finish, the Pantone Scarab offering a soft suede-like finish, the Pantone Mountain Trail featuring a wood effect and the Pantone Caberet a satin-like finish.
In case you hadn’t guessed from those names, Pantone consulted on the color range and it’s also been involved in the display and camera, but I’ll go into those in a second. I saw all of the Razr Ultra’s colors and the Pantone Scarab, which is a deep green and the result of a collaboration with Italian-brand Alcantara, was my number one. The soft finish is wonderfully tactile, and a refreshing change from the glass and aluminium offered on so many phones these days.
Motorola has redesigned the hinge of the Razr Ultra for this year as well, reinforcing it with titanium to help with durability and there’s also an official IP48 rating for all those beach days that would have previously crucified the Razr+. It’s also the first phone to feature Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic, said to be 10 times better for drop performance and apparently the strongest external display ever, which can surely only be a good thing?
Elsewhere, the Razr Ultra’s internal display has expanded slightly to 7-inches, while its brightness has increased to 4,500 nits from the 3,000 nits brightness on the Razr+, and the result is gorgeous. Colours offer serious punch and vibrancy, and the same is true of the external display that whilst its size remains at 4-inches, has also had a brightness boost from 2,400 nits to 3,500 nits. Both are “Pantone-approved” displays, as are the displays on the 2025 Edge devices.
Learning from iPhone and Pixel
I haven’t had time to test the cameras on the new Razr Ultra yet, but there have been some changes to the make up. There’s a 50-megapixel main sensor with f/1.8 aperture, coupled with what Motorola is calling an “Ultrawide + Macro Vision camera”, also offering a 50-megapixel resolution. The Razr+ – for those who aren’t familiar – has a 50-megapixel telephoto sensor so this move may not be seen favourably by everyone, though 2x optical zoom is still offered.
Motorola has learned a couple of tricks from the smartphone camera masters – iPhone and Pixel – too. There are a couple of new features that will be interesting to test when we come to review in full with Signature Styles allowing you to adjust color and tone, as you can on iPhone, and Group Shot snapping multiple frames to then stitch together the best group shot.
There is also a new Action Shot feature, an Advanced Long Exposure feature and a Pantone Validated Skintone and Pantone Validated Color features. I did say Pantone featured heavily this year. I’ll probably still enjoy the old school Camcorder mode and gesture controls the most – features the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 also offers in its own way – but I do enjoy new camera features to try out.
Big performance gains
Move under the hood and the Motorola Razr Ultra really makes its move. Previously, the Razr+ opted for a sub-flagship chipset, but the Razr Ultra has opted for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, putting this flip phone up there with some some of the best phones of 2025 in terms of power. Motorola claims it’s the most powerful flip phone ever, and that’s probably true, at least for now.
My brief hands on saw this delightful device deliver a slick experience opening apps and switching between tasks but this is an area that needs proper testing before it can really be known if this is the flip phone to beat this year. What I am excited about – and you should be too – is the battery capacity has increased from 4,000mAh in the Razr+ to 4,700mAh in the Razr Ultra.
Charging speeds have increased too – and I’m always happy to see this. The Razr Ultra has support for 67W fast charging, which according to Motorola will give you a day of power in 8 minutes. 8 minutes! That’s barely enough time to make a decent cup of coffee.
There’s more AI
Of course, it wouldn’t be a smartphone launch in 2025 without the mention of AI and Moto is very much running with this for the Razr Ultra – especially when you consider there’s a new AI button too. While it’s difficult to comment on how much use these features are actually going to make in real-world use, there are plenty of promises being made.
Many of those promises suggest the Razr Ultra will be more contextually aware, being able to see what is on your screen and figure out what you might want. That’s a feature Motorola is aptly calling Next Move, while collaborations with Microsoft’s Co-Pilot, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama 3 and Perplexity pretty much put most of the popular AI models at your fingertips (though notably missing out ChatGPT).
It’s too early to tell how much of Moto’s AI will be beneficial but even without it, the display improvements, color options, and battery and power upgrades see the Razr Ultra shaping up to be the flip phone to be reckoned with this year.
