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Review: Motorola Razr 60 Ultra - Versatile foldable with style

One of the intended main advantages of this type of foldable phone is that you should be able to do a lot without having to unfold the phone. Here, on the smaller, outer screen, Motorola has come a long way.

Erik Mörner

Published 22 May 2025 - 10:11

It offers great possibilities in a small format. In addition to various quick widgets and shortcuts, I can run most apps here. How well it works depends on which app it is. Some apps, such as Google Photos, are displayed in full screen so that the cameras cover part of the image. Other apps, most others, are displayed with a larger black bar at the bottom so that the effective screen area is smaller. Apps that are mostly designed for portrait full-screen mode, like Instagram, become more or less unusable on the outer screen, and typing in any app there is cumbersome because the keyboard then takes up almost the entire screen. Therefore, the outer screen is most convenient for consuming shorter forms of information or possibly checking off a to-do list, shopping list, or similar. It is possible to control and adjust how apps on the outer screen should be handled. If I use an app on the large screen and close the phone, I can choose at the app level which apps should continue running on the outer screen, if I want a prompt to continue on the outer screen, or if the app should not be used there at all. Starting navigation in Google Maps on the large screen and then closing the phone and following the directions on the outer screen works well.

Quick Check from the Outside

Apps can be run in full on the small screen, but how much space can be used depends on the app and how it is used.

The most use I get from the outer screen is to quickly check notifications, take a look at my calendar, or when taking photos. Because in the closed position, I can use the phone's best cameras to take selfies. Here, Motorola's established gesture control comes in handy, and all I need to do is quickly flick my wrist, and the entire outer screen becomes a viewfinder for the camera, and I can click anywhere to take the picture.

Another feature accessible on the outer screen, as well as prominently throughout the phone, is Moto AI, Motorola's almost all-encompassing venture into artificial intelligence. If you set the phone in tent mode, that is, half-open on a table, Moto AI is automatically activated as soon as the phone's cameras notice that you are looking at the phone. First, I see a colourful animation around the screen, and when I have looked at the phone for a few seconds, it notices and displays “Listening…” on the screen. Then I can ask any question. The language support is somewhat fluid. Officially, only English, Spanish, and Portuguese are available. In Moto AI, English and Swedish are freely mixed, and I can speak to the AI in Swedish, and it understands. The response alternates between English or with a strong English accent in Swedish.

Comprehensive AI Coverage

Moto AI can listen for questions when the phone is in tent mode and you are looking at it. It works most of the time.

Moto AI is a disparate collection of features. Essentially, it revolves around three core functions. These are to help you remember things, to summarise your app notifications, and to listen and take notes for you. Additionally, Motorola collaborates with almost all important AI players except the largest, Chat GPT. So in the Razr 60 Ultra, there is Google Gemini and Google's Circle to Search, but Motorola also collaborates with Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and Meta regarding AI. The three core functions I mentioned are quite limited today. The summary of incoming app notifications only supports a few apps within the personal communication area, such as the SMS app, Instagram, phone, and WhatsApp. Therefore, there is never a complete summary of everything that has happened on the phone when you return to it and are met with piles of notifications you want to clear.

Getting help to remember things is based on me taking a picture or a screenshot, perhaps recording a short voice message, and describing what it is I want to remember. However, these diary entries are difficult to find later, and AI adds little to the context, other than interpreting content and any text in images. Mistakes often occur here.

When I then test letting the phone record a slow, simple conversation in French from a language course on YouTube, it makes a few small errors in translation and summary, but above all, it incorrectly claims that the conversation, in addition to French, was also conducted in “Portuguese and several other languages”. Limited usefulness of Moto AI at present, therefore.

The phone's system chip is of the latest, most powerful kind and contributes to some extent to the current and hopefully upcoming AI features. The chip is Snapdragon 8 Elite, the top chip used in virtually all top mobiles today. It makes the system always feel fast. The only really noticeable downside is that the phone easily gets warm when we run the most demanding apps or games. This limits the usefulness and the phone can become uncomfortably warm. An equally clear advantage in this context, however, is that the phone has exceptionally good battery life.

Lastly, let's go through the cameras. They are of good quality and most notably, you can take extra good selfies because the main cameras can be used for that when the phone is closed. Then, you particularly notice a nice dynamic range that you rarely experience in selfie cameras. For other subjects, the cameras show fine colour reproduction, they work well in the dark, and the two cameras on the outside provide fine zoom images up to about 10 times magnification, still with good detail reproduction.