Foldable for under 10,000 SEK

Review: Motorola Razr 50 - Cheaper in the Right Way

When Motorola aims to keep the price down on its foldable, they make the right priorities.

Published 9 September 2024 - 09:09 Modified 24 January 2025 - 16:22

I find it hard to see why anyone would need a phone with a foldable screen, at least not in this format. Most things become more cumbersome to do when you first have to unfold the phone before you can use it, and it's hard to see any real advantages to having the phone folded. Yes, the screen is protected, but that's necessary because it's much more fragile to begin with, and in any case, you have an outer screen that isn't protected.

The arguments for a foldable phone must therefore be emotional, that it's cool, that it's stylish, that it feels appealing. The most important thing then is that the phone is indeed appealing.

That's why I think Motorola is prioritizing correctly with the Razr 50. Motorola now has two models in its Razr family, the Razr 50 Ultra, which is the top model, and the Razr 50, which costs two-thirds of the Ultra and keeps the price under 10,000 kronor. This makes it the cheapest foldable phone if you don't count older and discounted phones.

Stylish and Cool

I don't think Motorola has compromised on the exterior. The one I have is bright orange, but it is also available in sand-colored or gray for those who prefer more subdued colors. All three have a faux leather exterior which provides a nice grip and a matte curved metal frame that makes it fairly easy to open the phone with one hand. Above all, the front is adorned with a large screen that wraps around the cameras, a stylish effect and an improvement compared to last year's affordable Razr 40.

The inner screen is slightly recessed for protection but with fairly thin bezels around the screen, for being foldable. When folded, there is virtually no gap between the two halves. There is nothing that feels cheap about the design.

The foldable screen is bright and with a resolution of 2640 x 1080 pixels, the same elongated format as the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, but with a slightly larger screen. The crease in the screen when the phone is unfolded is less visible than on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 but still hard to miss. The screen has a substantial maximum brightness that makes it readable even in sunlight.

The external screen can be used both for widgets and running apps. Motorola warns that some apps may not run correctly on the external screen but leaves the judgment to you. The Keep app allows me to check off checklists on the external screen, but the Merlin app, which records bird sounds and identifies the birds, cannot display the results during recording. It's not Motorola's fault, but it's good to have realistic expectations of what you can do with the external screen. All apps that require you to input text cause all content to be hidden except for the text input window, making it difficult to use them in many cases. You can choose per app whether they should continue running on the external screen when you fold the phone, while in the other direction, an app always continues on the large screen when you unfold the phone.

For the first time, Motorola also has an always-on display, so on the outer screen, you can see the date, time, notifications, and more even when the rest of the screen is off. You can also use the outer screen as a viewfinder and take selfies with the main camera, but if you're not taking selfies, you must first unfold the phone to see what you're photographing.

Cameras and performance not top-notch

The cameras are an area where it's noticeable that Motorola has cut some corners. The main camera is 50 megapixels, and next to it is a 13-megapixel wide-angle camera. The main camera takes pictures with fairly good color reproduction, but when you zoom in, you can see that the detail reproduction is not top-notch. You can take pictures with two times magnification and get slightly better results than if you zoom in digitally, but only slightly. The camera performs quite well in lower light. The wide-angle camera is average and lacks autofocus, among other things, but still takes decent pictures. We complained about the camera setup in the predecessor Razr 40, and these cameras are better, but they don't match the quality you would get if you bought a non-foldable phone for the same price.

Performance is the area where it is most obvious that you do not get a top model with the Razr 50. The Mediatek Dimensity 7300 chipset performs similarly to Samsung's Galaxy A35 and A55, that is, like a phone for around 5000 kronor. Or for that matter, like last year's Razr 40. It can certainly be noticeable if you play games, but Motorola is good at making its interface fast, and in everyday use, you only sometimes notice that it takes a little longer to do certain things than on a top model.

In our battery test, where we turn up the brightness to max and play YouTube until the battery dies, the Motorola Razr 50 gets an almost suspiciously good result, over 14 hours. This may be because the chipset is power-efficient, but at the same time, I think the battery can run out noticeably faster under load that makes the phone warm. Overall, I think the Razr 50 has good battery life.

Stylish exterior, top-class screens, slightly worse cameras, and noticeably lower performance are the priorities Motorola has made with the Razr 50. One could argue that what you get is a mid-range phone at a top model price, but that's the price you pay to get a foldable phone.

Questions & Answers

Are any accessories included? A faux leather case and a very long strap to attach to the case, more like for a handbag than something you wear on your wrist, but no charger.

How fast can the phone charge? Up to 30 watts if you buy a charger that follows the USB PD standard. It takes about an hour to charge the phone from empty to full at maximum charging speed.

Is the phone waterproof? Yes, it has an IP rating of x8, so it is completely waterproof but lacks protection against dust and particles.