Motorola Razr (2023)
Motorola’s Razr (2023) is one of the most affordable foldables on the market, making it effectively the category’s budget entry. Still, Motorola has cut all the right corners here, proving that a foldable smartphone doesn’t need flagship specs to get the job done.
Motorola Razr 5G
Motorola’s Razr 5G features an iconic design that’s strongly reminiscent of the original classic Razr V3 feature phone of yesteryear. However, as one of Motorola’s earliest attempts at a foldable smartphone, it arrived with middling specs and hasn’t aged particularly well in the three years it’s been on the market.
Motorola is rounding outan exciting year for foldableswith theMotorola Razr (2023), an affordable new version of its premiumRazr+that arrived over the summer. The company’s latest flip phone cuts a few corners to get down to a more comfortable sub-$1K price point, but it’s an encouraging entry in a space that’s been dominated by pricier flagships like Samsung’sGalaxy Z Flip 5.
There’s no doubt the Motorola Razr+ isan excellent upgrade from the aging Razr 5G, but you may be wondering if the company’s new entry-level model has enough of what it takes to make a compelling switch — especially considering that it costs half of what the Razr 5G initially sold for. Still, time and technology marches on, so let’s dive in and look at how the classic Razr 5G of yesteryear holds up against Motorola’s new “budget” model.
Price, availability, and specs
The Motorola Razr (2023) is available now unlocked from Amazon, Best Buy, and Motorola for a list price of $700. It’s available in a single 128GB configuration in Sage Green, Vanilla Cream, Cherry Blossom, and Summer Lilac. The Razr (2023) can also be purchased through most carriers, with Verizon being the only notable exception.
The Razr 5G has been discontinued for a while. It initially launched in late 2020 with an eye-watering price tag of $1,400 with 256GB of storage in Polished Graphite, Blush Gold, and Liquid Mercury finishes. It still inexplicably sells for that much on Amazon today, although it’s possible to find it for much less, particularly in the used or refurbished market.
Nearly 20 years ago, Motorola redefined the flip phone when it released the now almost legendary Razr V3. While clamshell designs weren’t at all uncommon in days of feature phones with physical numeric keypads and small screens, Motorola proved they didn’t have to be clunky little gadgets. The Razr V3 set the standard for thin and stylish cell phones, and the design quickly became iconic.
Hence, when Motorola dove back into the world of foldables with its first Razr smartphone in 2019, it recreated that classic design right down to the rectangular profile and sloped chin. The Razr 5G followed suit the next year but improved the materials with Gorilla Glass 5 on the outside, a better aluminum frame, and a stainless steel hinge cover.
Sadly for some, it’s clear that the classic Razr design won’t be making a return. The Razr+ earlier this year signified that Motorola was going in a different direction but left some hope that the lower-end model might still pay homage to its iconic roots. Those hopes were dashed when we saw the new Motorola Razr (2023), which makes it clear that the company has left the iconic design of the 2020 Razr in the rearview mirror.
Even leaving the nostalgic aspects aside, the older design was unique and stood out among the crowd. The new 2023 Razr lineup instead moves to the pocket square style of Samsung’s Z Flip series. While they’re far from identical, the form factor is so similar that you’ll have a somewhat challenging time telling them apart at a glance unless you know what to look for.
But that’s not entirely a bad thing; it’s a more modern design that Motorola has dressed up with some fun colors and finishes — Sage Green, Vanilla Cream, Summer Lilac, and Cherry Blossom. They all come in a nice vegan leather finish that feels great in the hand and provides a good grip, which is especially important when you’re trying to flip it open and closed with one hand. It’s a fun and whimsical design that’s a significant departure from the metallic finishes of the Razr 5G.
The design change also makes the new Razr slightly more compact, although it only sheds a few grams of weight. Open or closed, it’s shorter and thinner than the Razr 5G. However, the switch to a more squarish design increases the width slightly.
Also, the 2023 Razr has an IP52 rating, which makes for good dust protection but only basic water resistance. The Razr 5G has no official IP rating, but Motorola claims it’s “water-repellant.” Lastly, both offer a USB-C port for charging.
One of the most noticeable compromises Motorola made in this year’s lower-cost Razr is the external cover display. It shrinks to a 1.5-inch AMOLED panel tucked away in the corner, making it noticeably smaller and less versatile than the 2.7-inch display on the Razr 5G, which takes up the entire outside cover. The smaller 2023 Razr display also can’t be used as a viewfinder for taking selfies with the main camera, which is one of the few drawbacks the new model has compared to the older Razr 5G.
While the new cover display is crisper and can reach 1,000 nits of peak brightness, meaning you’ll easily be able to see what’s on it at a glance, you may’t use it for much more than notifications and tiles for things like weather, calendars, clocks, and timers. Think of it more like a smartwatch on the outside of your phone, as you’ll be flipping the 2023 Razr open much more often. In contrast, the Razr 5G cover screen lets you accomplish much more with the phone closed.
Thankfully, the story on the inside is significantly better. Motorola didn’t hold back on the internal display, packing in the same 6.9-inch 144Hz pOLED LTPO screen as the more expensive Razr+, which runs circles around the 6.2-inch OLED found on the Razr 5G. The new display has everything you’d expect in a modern flagship, including full 1080p resolution, HDR10+ support, and a wide DCI-P3 color gamut.
Next to Google, Motorola has always provided one of the purest Android experiences you’ll find on a modern smartphone, and the 2023 Razr doesn’t change that. Despite the recent launch of Android 14, the new Razr comes with a stock Android 13 configuration with the Motorola My UX layered on top. However, that’s not as much about trying to polish up the Android user experience as it is customizing it for the Razr’s unique hardware. Beyond that, My UX does an excellent job of staying out of Android’s way as much as possible.
The same clean Android experience is available on the Razr 5G, except it ended with Android 12. The 2020 model shipped with Android 10 but has since reached the end of its life for software updates. The 2023 Razr falls under Motorola’s more generous update promise of three more years of software updates and four years of security patches, which should take it to at least Android 16.
Performance
In an unusual twist for a $1,400 smartphone, the Razr 5G launched with a midrange chipset — Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 765G — which has left it lagging behind as the years have passed. It also packed in 6GB of RAM and came in a single 256GB storage configuration — one area in which it edges out the 2023 Razr, which only packs in 128GB, although you get 8GB of RAM.
To be fair, the Snapdragon 7-series is no slouch at delivering enough performance for everyday tasks. It’s just not a gaming and multitasking powerhouse the way flagship chips are. For its time, the Snapdragon 765G was a capable chip, so Motorola’s choice to follow suit with a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 in this year’s Razr is understandable, especially now that the sticker price reflects its midrange status.
While the Razr 5G is now showing its age, the 2023 Razr actually runs on par with its more expensive sibling during typical use. That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to enjoy “Genshin Impact” at top frame rates, but you won’t get any stuttering or slowdowns when surfing, messaging, scrolling through social media, or even hopping between apps. The bottom line is that it delivers great performance for a phone in its class that’s roughly on par with how the Razr 5G performed in its heyday — but it does so today at half the price.
Battery life and charging
The 2023 Razr packs in a 4,200mAh battery cell, which is significantly larger than the 2,800mAh of the Razr 5G. While this should give you much better battery life, you’re likely to need that extra because you’ll be flipping open the phone much more often to use the larger screen. Nevertheless, getting all-day battery life shouldn’t be a problem.
Many folks didn’t have a problem getting through a day of use with the Razr 5G when it was new, but that was also based on using the 2.7-inch external display. Since the 1.5-inch display on the 2023 Razr won’t show you much more than the time and basic notifications, you’ll need to power up the inside screen more often, which will tax the battery more. We suspect Motorola thought of this when designing the new Razr, as the battery outsizes the 3,800mAh cell in the more expensive Razr+ (which features a far superior cover screen).
The good news is that the 2023 Razr charges twice as fast as the Razr 5G, with 30W Turbo Charging to get even the larger battery back up to a full charge in under two hours. There’s also wireless charging, although only at basic 5W speeds. However, the Razr 5G only features 15W wired charging, with no wireless option.
While it’s nowhere near the camera system you’ll find on a high-end flagship, Motorola has packed some impressive camera specs into the 2023 Razr for a foldable in its price range. You get a 64-megapixel (MP) main camera on the outside, joined by a 13MP ultrawide lens that can also handle macro photography, though, like the rest of Motorola’s foldables, you don’t get an optical zoom. The hole-punch selfie camera on the inner screen is 32MP.
The Razr 5G has a single 48MP main camera and a 20MP front-facing camera on the inside. There’s no ultrawide lens. Also, both models can record 4K video at up to 30 frames per second (fps) and 1080p at up to 60fps, limitations common to their Snapdragon 7-series chips.
Motorola’s phones have never stood out for their photographic prowess. They typically feature cameras that are adequate for everyday snapshots but fail to truly impress, and the new Razr seems to stick with that tradition despite its better sensors. In practical terms, the 2023 Razr takes good images under ideal lighting conditions but falls down in low-light situations, especially when dealing with motion. The 8X digital zoom is also weaker than you’d expect.
Should you upgrade?
There’s no doubt the 2020 Razr 5G is getting long in the tooth. Android updates have entirely ceased, and most folks still toting one have probably already found that the Snapdragon 765G and 2,800mAh battery are showing their age. So, should you upgrade your Razr 5G? The answer to that is an unquestionable yes. However, whether the 2023 Razr is a worthy upgrade to its three-year-old predecessor is a bit more nuanced.
There’s one key compromise that Razr 5G owners may not want to make in moving to the new Razr. The external display has shrunk down to something considerably less useful. For instance, it forces you to flip the phone open much more often and doesn’t offer much help in taking selfies with the main camera. If an expansive cover display is something you can’t go without, the premium Razr+ will be a much better upgrade.
On the other hand, if you can live with the smaller display, the new 2023 Razr is an upgrade in nearly every other way, with modern performance specs, a more refined and compact design, a stunning 6.9-inch high-performance display, a bigger battery, and an improved camera system — all at half the price of the Razr 5 G’s originally cost.
The budget foldable
Motorola’s Razr (2023) is the most direct successor to the earlier Razr 5G, offering the same class of performance at a significantly lower price, plus a better camera system, a larger battery, and a slimmed-down design. However, you’ll need to sacrifice the larger cover screen to get there.
When a new premium smartphone comes out, it’s usually not a bad idea to consider the previous model since it can save you a few bucks and deliver performance and features that are more than enough for anybody who doesn’t need the latest and greatest. That is not the case with the Motorola Razr 5G.
For one thing, this isn’t just “last year’s model” — it was announced in 2019 and released in early 2020, and it was arguably overpriced with middling specs even then. Today, the discontinued flip phone inexplicably still sells new on Amazon at its original $1,400 MSRP, which is twice the price of the Razr (2023) and $400 more than the 2023 Razr+ and Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5. With an aging processor and no more updates beyond Android 12, it’s impossible to recommend the Razr 5G even if you can find it at a great “fire-sale” price — unless, of course, you’re a fan of old smartphones and simply want to add the iconic design to your collection.
For those who love an old smartphone
The Motorola Razr 5G has an iconic design that inspires nostalgia, but it’s also a phone that’s well past its prime. The mid-tier chip hasn’t aged well, and it’s been left behind on Android 12 and will receive no further security updates.
