Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 review: A fantastic flip phone

The Razr Ultra 2025 sits at the top of Motorola’s three-strong line up of flip phones for this year, above the Razr 2025 and Razr Plus 2025. At first glance, it looks almost identical to the Razr Plus 2024 that it succeeds but look a little deeper and there are some significant changes that put this flip phone in the running to be one of the best foldable phones available.

I’ve been using the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 since it was announced in New York on April 24 and here’s why it’s worth your attention, and why it will garner the attention of everyone else around you too.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025: design

Take one look at the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 and you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the Razr Plus 2024. On the surface, there’s very little to differentiate these two devices unless you really know your season’s colors, but that’s not a criticism. The Razr Plus 2024 was a fantastic flip phone in terms of design and the same can certainly be said for Razr Ultra 2025. 

The Pantone Scarab model is my personal favorite of the Razr Ultra 2025’s four available finishes, featuring Alcantara’s signature soft, suede-like material in a deep green, but my review model was the Pantone Mountain Trail and a wood-effect finish on a phone is certainly different, and I mean that in a good way.

It’s smooth to the touch so don’t worry, it’s not going to give you splinters, but there’s a good amount of texture too, which goes along way in reducing the slipperiness you get on glass finishes of other flagship phones.

The flat edges of the Razr Ultra 2025 have a slight curve too, meeting somewhere in the middle between the current trend for the flat edges we see on the likes the Galaxy S25 and the iPhone 16, and the comfort of rounder devices from the past. Those edges, which are 7.2mm when open and 15.7mm when closed, make the Razr Ultra 2025 very comfortable in the hand, while the overall finish of the aluminium frame is exceptionally premium and solid in its build quality.

As with all flip phones, the Razr Ultra 2025 draws plenty of attention. Put it down on a restaurant table and envious eyes gaze longingly at it, because despite modern flip phones having been around since 2020, they still aren’t as common place as the latest iPhone or Galaxy phone.

The large external display on the front – more on that in a second – makes good use of the space available with the two camera lenses positioned in the bottom right corner again, while open the Razr Ultra 2025 up and you’re greeted with a larger internal display than before.

On the right edge, there’s the power button with a fingerprint sensor built in, and the volume buttons can be found here too. The left edge meanwhile, has a new button for Moto AI – again, I’ll talk more about that in a minute – but this is one area of the design you would be able to circle in a game of spot the difference between this year’s model and the Razr Plus 2024.

Another area would be the hinge because despite looking the same as the Razr Plus 2024, it has been redesigned, adding titanium into the mix for reinforcement, whilst also allowing the Razr Ultra 2025 to be IP48 dust and water resistant, which is a jump up from the IPX8 rating of the Razr Plus 2024.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025: displays

Motorola has made some key improvements to the Razr Ultra 2025’s displays too. I’ll start with the external display as while the size remains the same as the Razr Plus 2024 at 4 inches, the brightness has increased from 2,400 nits to 3,000 nits and there’s Gorilla Glass Ceramic protection too. There’s no anti-reflective coating so it’s basically a mirror when off and it really likes a fingerprint too, but the bump in brightness does a great job of cutting through sunny days.

It’s pretty much a fully functioning display too. While the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6’s external display is reserved primarily for quick settings, widgets and notifications, the Razr Ultra 2025 allows you to run most apps without requiring third-party software or fiddling with special settings, from WhatsApp and Spotify to highly addictive games like Marble Mayhem and Catch Moto Moo. Naturally, you can also see notifications, as you would expect, and there are plenty of customisation options for widgets and apps too.

Replying to messages on the external display is a little fiddly in that the keyboard takes up most of the display, whether you use the full screen editor or not, but the point is it’s possible without flipping the phone open. The calendar and weather screens lend themselves perfectly to the small, square format too, as do some of the games, and even viewing photos is a good experience for a quick glance. Everything on the external display looks sharp and detailed, there are good viewing angles and there’s plenty of punch from the colors too.

Flip the Razr Ultra 2025 open and the 7-inch pOLED display is gorgeous. You can fiddle with the display settings to suit your preferences, with a choice of Natural, Radiant and Vivid styles, plus the ability to switch between Default, Warm, Cool and Custom tones so you really can get the display to work for you and what you like. I personally liked Natural, which I still thought delivered bright and vibrant colors without being overly saturated, but you do you.

Both the internal and external displays are “Pantone-Validated”, though I’m not sure how many people will be particularly bothered by that. At the end of the day, you just want a display to look good, and in the Razr Ultra 2025’s case, everything looks great from streaming video on Netflix to your family photos.

There’s a 165Hz refresh rate too, which delivers a smooth experience whatever you’re doing, the 2,912 x 1,224 pixel resolution offers sharp detail and the 4,500 nits peak brightness makes sure this is a phone you can use on the sun lounger without an issue. Viewing angles aren’t as good as the iPhone 16 Pro, with whites losing their brightness as you move the Razr Ultra 2025 to a certain angle, but you won’t do that very often so it will make little difference to your overall experience.

What can make a difference to your experience with flip phones is the crease in the display and while still not invisible here, Motorola has done a superb job of reducing it. There is still some distortion when reading large amounts of text, and you can see it at certain angles too, as well as feel it when you run your thumb over it, but it’s less obvious than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, resulting in a folding internal display that’s one of the best out there.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025: camera

The Motorola Razr has a triple camera setup, with dual 50-megapixel sensors on the front, effectively making up the rear cameras when the device is open, and a third 50-megapixel sensor at the top of the internal display. In what might be considered a slightly strange move from Motorola, the company switched the telephoto sensor that was on the Razr Plus 2024 for an ultra wide sensor on the Razr Ultra 2025. You still get 2x optical zoom, but it does that by cropping in rather than using a dedicated sensor – something a number of other phones, like the iPhone 16, also do.

The Razr Ultra 2025’s dual 50-megapixel sensors deliver consistent results and while I personally don’t love ultra wide shots on the whole – I always think they look a little odd – there will be some who prefer the option to fit more in their shots than to zoom in closer. The main sensor delivers some lovely images in good lighting conditions, handling dynamic range well and offering great detail and a true representation of what you actually see with your own eyes. The images are more vivid and more saturated than the Apple iPhone 16 Pro, but the result of that is very shareable photos that are full of life.

Low light results are good too and while more noise does creep in along with less detail in some situations, I got some fabulous shots from the Razr Ultra 2025 during a weekend in New York. Broadway looked stunning with all the bright lights and bold colours, while a wall of graffiti on a cloudy evening was well represented too.

I mentioned the Razr Ultra 2025 offering 2x optical zoom, which offers decent results in good lighting, but there is also 30x digital zoom. This I wouldn’t bother with as it’s generally pretty bad, like most digital zoom options out there. It is useful for seeing an airport departure board from a distance, but it’s not going to give you a good shot of the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park.

Images taken in the default “Natural” mode are “Pantone-Validated” like the displays, and they were my personal preference for their true to life results. There is a new “Signature” mode too however, which you can either take at face value as a “unique Moto Color Style”, or customise to change the color balance and tone of your shots to your preferences, applying that to the images you take. To customise the Signature style, you import five images of food, five portrait shots and five landscape and then adjust each photo so the AI can learn your preferences. 

Once setup, the Signature mode is selected at capture stage rather than within the editing suite of Google Photos. To select it, you need to tap on the three star icon at the top of the camera screen and AI will then apply what it believes will be to your taste in terms of preferences depending on whether you’ve taken a portrait, landscape or food shot. As I said, I found Natural to be best but if you like something specific, like very vivid shots or blue undertones, Signature gives you those options. 

In terms of editing, Google Photos offers plenty, including Magic Eraser for removing unwanted objects in the background, as well as a “Suggestions” section that offers one-button taps for edits like unblurring, enhancing and adjusting dynamic range in shots.

Overall, the camera offering is simple on the Razr Ultra 2025 with an easy point and shoot approach for decent shots, combined with simple editing options to help you get the most out of your shots. There are also some handy features like a preview appearing on the external display that’s great for selfies and helping anyone you’re taking a photo of see what they look like, as well as an old school Camcorder mode for video recording that launches when you hold the Razr Ultra 2025 at a 90-degree angle on its side.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025: software and AI

Running on virtually stock Android (if you ignore a couple of additional Moto apps), there’s a clean and relatively bloat-free software experience on the Razr Ultra 2025. The interface is slick and smooth, everything is easy to access and there’s plenty of customisation available. 

As the software is so close to stock Android however, it’s perhaps even more disappointing that Motorola only supports three years of OS updates. With Samsung and Google both offering seven, and Samsung having significant more bloat on its devices – by which I mean more duplication of apps like the gallery and browser – you would think it would be more effort for Samsung to support updates for longer and yet it offers over double what you get with Motorola. You get security updates for four years on the Razr Ultra 2025, but even so, Motorola is effectively making this device redundant after three years and that feels mean for a $1,000 phone.

If you can forgive the stingy update offering however, there is a lovely and friendly interface here and some neat software features, such as tapping on the bottom of the external display to expand an app around the cameras and use more of the small screen.

Motorola offers a number of gestures too, from a double flick of the wrist to open up the camera, to a double karate chop turning the torch on and off, and while they will be familiar to Razr users and not necessarily new for the Razr Ultra 2025, both are particular favorites of mine. I used the wrist flick for the camera multiple times a day, and I also turned on the slide gesture on the power button to show notifications. You can have that slide feature zoom in and out instead though, giving you a couple of options. 

Moto AI isn’t new either in that you’ll find it on several of the company’s phones, though there are a couple of new features for the Razr Ultra 2025, as well as the new dedicated button on the left. That button can’t be changed away from Moto AI but you can give it a dual purpose at least, with a press and hold launching Moto AI, while a double press can take you straight to ‘Update me’ – more on that in a second.

Image Studio is new and similar to Apple’s Image Playground and Samsung’s Sketch to Image, enabling you to use AI to generate images, whether you sketch one or describe one. I got my seven year old to draw her teddy and a puffin and while her drawings were a little rough around the edges, Image Studio did produce some decent results (as well as some not so great ones). Playlist Studio is new too and lets you create a playlist depending on your mood, though it currently only works with Amazon Music it seems so this feels limited still.

Elsewhere, there’s the ‘Remember this’, ‘Take notes’, ‘Ask or search’ and ‘Update me’ functions, all of which lean on AI. All of those were available previously (though some have been updated) and like most AI offerings, I still think they need refining.

The ‘Update me’ feature, for example, will summarise notifications, which is handy for when you might have had your phone in Do Not Disturb mode. The summaries aren’t particularly accurate though, and while they offer the general gist of a WhatsApp chat for example, they often misread the context resulting in summaries that are way off the mark. Taking notes meanwhile, is a little slow, though it does differentiate speakers which is more helpful than Apple’s transcribing option that just gives you a block of text.

The Razr Motorola also introduced a ‘Look and Talk’ feature that’s exclusive to the Razr Ultra 2025, allowing you to speak to Gemini without having to say anything first or press any buttons. As the feature’s name suggests, you simply look at the phone when the phone is in stand mode or tent mode and a colourful glow runs around the perimeter of the Razr Ultra 2025’s external display, very much like Apple Intelligence on the latest iPhones.

If you look straight at the Razr Ultra 2025, the screen says “Listening” and when you speak, it will answer your question. It works well enough, but it isn’t a soul reason to buy a phone.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025: performance and battery

What is a solid reason to buy the Razr Ultra 2025 is its performance because it’s brilliant. Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite runs this device and the experience is superb. Day to day tasks are effortless, with the Razr Ultra 2025 switching between apps and tasks without any hint of an issue. I’m more of a casual gamer than a die hard Call of Duty fan, but gaming wasn’t an issue for the Razr Ultra 2025 either, with a smooth and judder-free experience. 

I was slightly concerned about such a powerful chipset being in such a small device, but the Razr Ultra 2025 didn’t seem to have any heat issues, which was a relief. I don’t love benchmarks but for reference, the Razr Ultra 2025 came in just under the Galaxy S25 but above the Oppo Find X8 Pro and Galaxy Z Flip 6 for single core tests.

Meanwhile, battery life is superior to the Razr Plus 2024, I am thrilled to say. Now, battery of course depends on the type of user you are so do keep that in mind, but I finished most days on between 35 and 45 per cent, and that was during a testing period so I was using the phone more than average. 

I was testing the camera, taking multiple calls, replying to countless messages and emails, and using all the AI features and I still finished the day with over 30 per cent at 11pm after starting the day at 7am with 100 per cent. Charging is nice and speedy too however, so even if you do need a top up before a night out, you’ll get around 15 per cent in 10 minutes which should make sure you get your cab home at the end of the night. 

The Razr Ultra 2025 has bumped up its charging support from 45W in the Razr Plus 2024 to 68W and there’s 30W wireless charging too should you prefer that method.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025: price and availability

The Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 was announced on April 24, 2025, with pre-order in the US starting on May 7, 2025. There is one storage model of 512GB, which has 16GB of RAM, and that model will cost $1,299. Availability will begin from May 18, 2025, though some carriers, like Verizon, may offer it earlier.

For those in the UK and Europe, the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 goes by the name Razr 60 Ultra and it is already on sale. Again, there is only one storage option and it costs £1,099.99 in the UK and €1,299 in Europe.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2025: verdict 

The Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 gets so many things right. The design may not have changed much since the Razr Plus 2024 but various improvements have been made under the surface, including a stronger external display, dust resistance and a less visible crease. 

The finish options are lovely, both displays are superb and brighter than previously, camera results are decent and performance is excellent. The Moto AI offering still has a way to go before it delivers on all its promises and the three years of OS updates is well below average, but that’s really all there is to complain about. 

The combination of a great design, solid performance, decent camera results and great battery life (with speedy charging) make the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 the flip phone to beat for this year.