For the past two years, Motorola has launched two new flip-style folding phones. The entry-level Razr was joined by the flagship Razr Plus, but this year, the company is expanding the lineup with the new Razr Ultra 2025.
The Razr Plus has been my favorite flip phone for the past two years, but the new Razr Ultra 2025 means that the Razr Plus is no longer Motorola’s flagship. What does this mean for the Razr Plus 2025, and what’s new with this year’s middle flip phone?
At an exclusive preview event in New York City yesterday, I had the opportunity to spend some time with the new Razr Plus 2025. Is it just a refresh, or is there something new that helps it stand out? Here’s our hands-on preview of the new Razr Plus 2025.
If you look at the Razr Plus 2024 next to the Razr Plus 2025, you’ll be hard pressed to find a single noticeable difference. That’s because these are essentially the same phone, albeit with subtle changes to the color and finish choices.
This means you get the same 4-inch Cover Display complete with a 22:9 aspect ratio, a dynamic refresh rate of up to 165Hz, HDR 10+ support, and a peak brightness of 2,400 nits. Unfolded, the Razr Plus 2025 also features the same 6.9-inch foldable pOLED display with HDR10+ support, a refresh rate of up to 165Hz, and a peak brightness of 3,000 nits.
Under the hood, the Razr Plus 2025 utilizes the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor as last year, paired with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage. This means it also features Wi-Fi 7 support, Bluetooth 5.4, and support for 5G sub-6 networks. Like last year, there is no mmWave 5G support; however, this is consistent with other phone makers who have also dropped the fastest 5G speeds.
Under the hood, there’s the same 4,000 mAh battery as last year’s Razr Plus, with Motorola opting not to increase the battery size like it did with the Razr 2025 and Razr Ultra 2025. There’s also 45W charging, 15W wireless charging, and 5W reverse wireless charging; however, like most phones in the US, no charger is included in the box.
To the right is the same side-mounted fingerprint reader that works extremely well on the Razr Plus 2024. On the back, there are subtle changes to the durability and color choices for what is otherwise an identical phone to last year’s.
Like the rest of the Razr 2025 series, the Razr Plus 2025 features a new titanium hinge that you won’t immediately notice. This upgraded hinge is four times stronger than the surgical-grade stainless steel hinge used in the Razr Plus 2025, and it helps ensure that the phone itself can handle up to 35% more folds.
Beyond this, the Razr Plus 2025 also features a new, improved ultra-thin glass that is designed to make the display and crease up to 30% smoother. There’s also Gorilla Glass Victus protection, similar to last year’s model, which should ensure it’s protected against scratches and wear and tear.
After a year of use, my Razr Plus 2024 has held up extremely well. However, I’m looking forward to seeing how the new titanium hinge improves durability over time, especially since Motorola has also adjusted the angle at which the display folds to enhance durability further.
One of the reasons to buy the Moto Razr lineup is always Motorola’s dedication to striking colors that are unlike anything offered by the competition, and the Razr Plus 2025 continues this trend.
However, while the Razr Ultra 2025 offers a range of color choices and finishes, including a beautiful wood finish, the Razr Plus is available in fewer colors than the Razr Plus 2024, and they all appear very similar.
The Razr Plus 2025 is available in three color choices: Midnight Blue, Hot Pink (my favorite), and Mocha Mousse. The first two were also available at launch for the Razr Plus 2024, while the latter is the Pantone color of the year, and the Razr Plus 2024 was launched in this color earlier this year. There are subtle changes to the finish on the rear, but essentially, these are the same colors you can find on the Razr Plus 2024.
Also identical is the dual camera setup. The Razr Plus 2025 features the same 50MP main camera with an f/1.7 aperture and quad pixel technology, paired with the same 50MP telephoto camera that offers 2x optical zoom. The selfie camera above the main display is also the same 32MP sensor found in last year’s model.
The Razr Plus 2024 camera proved to be capable in most lighting conditions, and there’s little reason to suspect that this year’s model will be any different.
Moto AI
Like every phone maker, Motorola has also invested heavily in bringing a suite of AI features to the Razr Plus 2025. It runs the same suite of original Moto AI features that launched in January for the Razr Plus 2024, but also adds a few new Moto AI 2.0 features designed to further blend productivity and creativity tools into a single, useful suite of AI tools.
The Razr Plus 2025 ships with Gemini pre-installed and usable on the front screen, making it the first smartphone to feature this capability. It is also the first Android phone to feature Perplexity out of the box, and the first to have support for Microsoft CoPilot. Motorola is committed to ensuring that whichever AI platform you prefer, the Razr Plus 2025 can support it.
Beyond this, the Razr Plus 2025 also comes with enhanced versions of the original Moto AI features: Catch Me Up to summarize personal notifications, Pay Attention to quickly start and save voice recordings, and Remember This to help you easily store and recall screenshots.
The Razr Plus 2025 also features the new Moto AI 2.0. Next Move recognizes what’s on your screen and suggests next steps. These include saving important details to make them easy to recall later, creating an image, avatar, wallpaper, or sticker with Image Studio, or generating a musical playlist with Playlist Studio.
The Razr Plus 2025 also features a few enhancements to Motorola’s already excellent front-screen software, which has made the Razr Plus 2024 my favorite compact phone. There is support for directly launching app features, such as a new Instagram post or email, from the communications panel, as well as the ability to add up to two additional app and widget panels. Motorola already has the best software for a front-facing display on a flip phone, and these tweaks make it even better.
Razr Plus 2025
If you’re interested in the new Razr Plus 2025, you can pre-order it starting May 7 for $999.99 at Best Buy, Motorola.com, and Amazon, with it officially available on May 15.
It’s exclusive to North America, so there is no European model, unlike in previous years. The Razr Plus 2025 will also be available from T-Mobile and AT&T starting May 15.
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.
iPhone vs 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.
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.
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.
