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Moto Razr 50 Ultra review: A multipurpose party trick with the right gimmicks
Summary
The Moto Razr 50 Ultra does enough to bring the fun back into a world of smartphones that is starved of innovation
There are few names in the consumer technology-verse that are as iconic as the Moto Razr. Way before Steve Jobs changed the mobile phone industry with the Apple iPhone, and Nokia and BlackBerry ran what essentially was a duopoly, the Moto Razr was like a symbol of irreverence—in a good way. The now-96-year-old name got its branding campaigns spot-on and all through the early 2000s, the likes of the Moto Razr, Rokr and Slvr became the flag-bearers of youth and resistance.
The equation was simple. BlackBerry phones were meant for austere suits and tough-worded emails. Nokia, meanwhile, served half the world that was just now waking up to the idea of games on mass-scale handheld entertainment tools. Motorola, an American icon, made phones that were fun, and more importantly, cool. In what feels like a rather pleasant surprise, its 2024 rendition, now called Moto Razr 50 Ultra, gets quite a bit of it right.
Retro Razr
Straight up, one of the coolest bits of the rebirth of the Razr—this time with touchscreens and the Android app marketplace—is Retro Razr. This, to be sure, is a simple skin, so it doesn’t necessarily change everything about the smartphone.
What it does do is create just the right kind of gimmick that the present has-been world of smartphones so desperately needs. This Retro Razr mode, thanks to the folding touchscreen, emulates the original Razr’s vibration-backed plastic T9 keyboard and the 2.2-inch display that is thankfully now much bigger.
Of course, there’s not much you can do here, and any tap of the five-way navigation buttons take you back from the retro space to the modern, boring, Android one. But what’s cool is that you can keep this mode on for long spans and still not be entirely bored by it.
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The Retro Razr mode isn’t the only feature that’s cool about this Moto Razr 50 Ultra smartphone. If you grew up through the last two decades prior to Y2K, chances are that you have at least seen, used, or had an aspiration of one day owning a camcorder. With the new Razr, you can open the flip clamshell by 90 degrees (or half, if you will), turn on the camera app, switch to video mode, turn the phone sideways, and voila! Here’s a camcorder that feels as close to the old Sony Handycams, or the super-innovative erstwhile sign of affluence, the Nokia N93i.
As a result of this feature where tilting the half-folded phone sideways with the camera open automatically starts video recording, you end up with many impromptu videos. From a user experience design standpoint too, this feels intuitive and works very well.
AI and all that’s new
That aside, Motorola’s continued with the trend of smartphones onboarding artificial intelligence (AI) features. On the Moto Razr 50 Ultra, you get the ability to generate wallpapers based on any command you please—and the results, thanks to its ‘Magic Canvas’ application, are reasonably impressive for the most part. You can, for instance, have a newly purchased suit turned into a Rembrandt-style abstract wallpaper. Even if this sounds wildly conflicting as a study of art, this is what generative AI is capable of.
For this, Motorola uses a version of Google’s Gemini model, and you need a working internet connection and a registered Motorola account to access the feature—thus denoting that some degree of data is collected from your usage of the generative feature.
There’s also Smart Sync: a feature that Moto claims can convert any photograph of your latest couture into moody fractals and other varying forms of art. However, Smart Sync appeared to be very inconsistent during our usage. On overall terms, Magic Canvas seems much more usable. What’s also commendable is that the AI features on the Moto Razr 50 Ultra do not feel force-fitted or pushed to the limelight without any good reason. Instead, the features do what good user interface design should—offer a novel usage experience to the users, without drawing much attention or needing an extra learning curve.
Motorola is expected to also introduce three more AI features in future—’Catch me up’ to prioritize notifications, ‘Pay attention’ to start automatic recording and live transcription, and ‘Remember this’ to capture details of what’s on the screen at that moment, along with AI-generated footnotes. While the features sound good, and the transcription feature is already mainstream today, features such as ‘remember this’ sound like issues that could leave us with concerns around data collection and privacy.
Design, cameras and more
Beyond AI, Moto’s design team has also done respectably well to make the Razr 50 Ultra look and feel novel. Both the displays use AMOLED screens—up to the standards of any premium, flagship smartphone today. The outer display covers the entire folded-up area, with a 4-inch screen that is super smooth and vivid in colours. The two main cameras are as less intrusive in the display as they could be, and the smooth rear panel’s texture befits the lofty price tag ( ₹94,999).
The folding mechanism feels assured, which is perhaps the biggest win for the Razr 50 Ultra. No longer does a foldable smartphone feel like it needs to be handled like precious metals, which shows that over the past generations, innovations to the smartphone form factor have considered the need for users to treat foldable smartphones like everyday, mainstream devices that can withstand the accidental bump.
That apart, the Razr 50 Ultra works like any other premium smartphone. It handles gaming well enough, and the smartphone comes bundled with a pair of Bose co-branded true-wireless earphones. The latter does well for casual music streaming and won’t thrill audiophiles, but that shouldn’t be within the realm of expectations from a brand-bundled pair of earphones anyway.
The only bit where the Moto Razr 50 Ultra does just about alright is the cameras. Flagship counterparts from Samsung, and non-folding ones from the likes of Apple, Google and even Xiaomi, fare better as camera-centric smartphones. Especially in low-lit indoor setups, the Razr 50 Ultra loses details and fidelity of colours. This will leave photography and social media enthusiasts wanting more.
Verdict
Overall, the Moto Razr 50 Ultra is a splendid smartphone. It does everything that a flagship smartphone is supposed to, including making you feel good for having spent an arguably hefty amount on buying a device that won’t last you a decade. Most importantly, it gets the user experience just right. Its gimmicks – all the bells and whistles – are well-designed and fun to have.
This is perhaps its biggest win, and coupled with a premium build to boot, the 2024 rendition of the iconic Moto Razr does carry some of the irreverent, outspoken spirit that the original, 2004 version of the Razr V3 had brought to the market.
