Motorola makes its 4th-gen foldable, the Moto Razr+, official

After endless leaks, Motorola made its fourth-generation lineup of foldables official today. The flagship is the Moto Razr+, which will launch in the US on June 23 for $999. There’s also a cheaper phone called only the “Moto Razr” with a smaller outside screen, slower SoC, and no clear US price or release date. Internationally, these phones are called the Moto Razr 40 Ultra and Moto Razr 40.

The Ultra model’s SoC is a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1—that’s not the best you can get from Qualcomm, which would be the 8 Gen 2—this is a year-old mid-cycle upgrade chip. The phone has 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 3800 mAh battery with 30 W quick charging. The leaked display specs have been all over the place, but officially, the interior display is a 6.9-inch, 2640×1080 OLED that runs at a smoking 165 Hz. The exterior display is super big on the Ultra model and is a 3.6-inch, 144 Hz OLED at a nearly square 1066×1056. Motorola has the phone’s dust and water ingress protection rated at IP52, which typically only protects from “direct sprays of water up to 15 degrees from the vertical” and is far from qualifying the Razr as a water-resistant phone.

The design has been better. The original foldable Moto Razr reboot from 2020 had beautiful throwback looks that screamed “Moto Razr.” It looked just like the old-school flip phone from the early 2000s but modernized. This fourth foldable generation tones things down a lot and is more of a generic rectangle. You could easily confuse it for Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip.

This fourth generation seems more mature, though. Motorola will now let you run any app you want on the ultra’s giant front screen, complete with the option of a super tiny Android navigation bar tucked away in the bottom left corner, to the left of the two front cameras. You can peruse the app drawer, use Google Pay, or play media on the front display. You can even type on the keyboard: Google GBoard has a special full-screen mode that will show a single line of input text.

Will any Android app look good on a square screen? It’s been a while since apps have dealt with a screen shape like this (shoutout to the 2011 Motorola Flipout). Motorola mentions it has a few custom “panels” specifically made for the front display, giving you easy access to “games, Google News, weather, contacts, Spotify, and view notifications at a glance.”

Those front cameras give this font display one of the strangest display shapes on the market. With two big dead spots in the bottom right corner, the workable display area is kind of an upside-down L shape. By default, apps will stay out of the non-rectangular part of the screen, but it’s possible to enable a “full screen” mode for the front apps. This will force apps to use the lower part of the display, and you just have to hope that they will somehow deal with that. Android has APIs to identify dead areas of the display for apps to work around, but usually, that’s for a top camera notch. Not many apps are built for this, but you’re apparently welcome to try to make them work with the feature.

As for the cheaper 2023 Moto Razr, it only got teased today. Motorola says it will be out “in the coming months,” and there’s no price yet. In China, the premium Razr is CNY 5,699 ($801), while this cheaper phone is CNY 3,999 ($562), or about 30 percent cheaper. Going by the percentage would put the US price at $699 or $759 if you’re going by the same ~$239 price difference. The Galaxy Z Flip is $999, the same as the premium Razr, so Motorola would have the cheapest foldable phone on the market.

The price cut gets you a smaller front screen that can’t run apps and only shows various notifications and the time. The outside is wrapped in “vegan leather” material. For specs, you get a slower Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 SoC, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. The inside screen is the same as the bigger model, and the battery is larger: 4,200 mAh.

If you’re interested in the Razr+, preorders start June 16.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1943768