Motorola’s 5G Razr Is Better Than the Original In Almost Every Way

According to Engadget, Motorola’s brand-new Razr sports an improved design, support for 5G, and corrects many of the issues the first model was notorious for. Chris Velazco writes: Motorola was always clear that the Razr is a “design-first” device, and it went to great lengths to recreate the visual vibe that its classic flip phones ran with for its first foldable. To pack some much-needed extras into this new model, though, Motorola had to make some changes: The new Razr is a little chubbier, and a features a “chin” that’s a bit less prominent than the original’s. Personally, these changes are enough to make the Razr just a little less visually striking, but they’re worth it when you consider what Motorola could pack in here as a result. For one, Motorola squeezed a better camera into the Razr’s top half. My biggest gripe with the original Razr’s 16-megapixel rear shooter wasn’t that it was bad, per se — it just wasn’t great compared to every other camera you’d find in a similarly priced phone. In response, Motorola chose a 48-megapixel camera for this new model, which should improve photo quality substantially. The somewhat pokey Snapdragon 710 found in the first Razr also is gone, replaced here by a more modern Snapdragon 765G and 8GB of RAM. As I said, we’re not working with flagship power here, but the new Razr has everything it needs to run much more smoothly this time around. By now, it might sound like Motorola has improved this new Razr on all fronts, and that’s very nearly true. There are only a few things Motorola didn’t change here, like its 6.2-inch flexible internal display. It’s the exact same panel they used last time, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I was still hoping a second-gen Razr screen would run at a resolution higher than 876 x 2,142. Maybe more curious is the fact that, in the United States anyway, Motorola just plans to call this phone the “Razr,” and doesn’t plan to differentiate it from the Verizon-only model it released earlier this year. “[I]t’s still not a flagship phone, and at $1400 we’re not sure it’s a great deal either,” Velazco says. “But for people who want an extremely pocket-friendly foldable that’s also usable while closed, Motorola just might be on the right track.”