The Motorola Razr 50 will make you love foldable phones.
The most well-known clamshell mobile phone on the market has (once again) a competitor, the Motorola Razr 50. In this review I will give you my opinion after having tested it thoroughly.
In this case of mobile phones with folding screens, there are mainly two types: the book type, designed for users who want to have more screen in their pocket; and the clamshell type, like this Motorola Razr 50, which allows you to take your phone everywhere in a very compact format.
After the team had tried out the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra, it was the turn of the Razr 50, a slightly more affordable version of Motorola’s revamped range of clamshell phones.
If clamshell phones are your thing and you want to know more about this Razr 50, read on for my review and opinion about what I thought of this phone in everyday use.
A clamshell design with a secondary screen that is every bit as good as the main panel
Although the secondary screen of the Motorola Razr 50 is not as big as that of its big brother (there it reaches 4 inches, while here it is 3.6 inches), its size and image quality are still enough to generate the ‘wow’ effect when you see it for the first time.
I will talk to you in more detail about the screen(s) in the next section of this review, but for now let me tell you more about the design.
Unfolded, this mobile is the size of a rather large handset. Its main screen of 6.9 inches and its length of 171.3 millimetres confirm this.
Of course, when folded there is no compact mobile that beats it in terms of reduced size: its length is reduced to just 88.1 millimetres, even less than a Nokia 105.
Its thickness, logically, increases when you fold it: it goes from 7.3 to 15.9 millimetres, a measurement that can be equated with the width of a standard wallet. It fits easily in your pocket.
The folding format means that the screen has screen frames that are not that much wider than usual (the screen occupies 84.9% of the front, which is the market average for this size), but they protrude above the front, it’s as if you were wearing a case that had been fitted at the factory.
Furthermore, with the phone fully unfolded it is impossible to avoid seeing the black hinges on the sides of the panel, and there is also a slight crease in the screen that runs from side to side.
The Razr 50 feels very solid in the hand, at no time did I have the feeling that it was more fragile than ‘standard’ phones just because it had a folding screen.
In fact, the folding mechanism of the screen conveys a feeling of good quality, allowing the lid to be opened and closed robustly.
The brand claims that it can withstand up to 600,000 folds (if you open and close the mobile phone 200 times a day, that’s more than 8 years of resistance).
The Motorola Razr 50 has a design with very good finishes, although I have to say that, looking at its specification sheet, I was struck by the fact that it has one of the widest varieties of materials that I have ever seen in a mobile phone.
It is made of plastic (plastic) on the main panel; glass (glass) on the secondary screen (with Gorilla Glass Victus protection); synthetic leather (leather) on the back half; aluminium (aluminium) frames; and stainless steel (stainless steel) hinges. I think I have seen Transformers less equipped than this mobile.
For my taste, both the Power button and the volume buttons are too high (they are on the right side) and it is difficult to reach them (especially the volume) with one hand when the screen is unfolded.
By the way, the Power button hides a fingerprint reader that works (very quickly) without needing to press the button, and the phone also has facial recognition that is compatible with all cameras (so you can use it with the phone unfolded, using the front camera, and also folded, with the main camera).
Two screens that share the same technology to offer a very high level multimedia section
The large 6.9-inch screen has LTPO AMOLED technology, a maximum refresh rate of 120 Hz, HDR10+ and up to 3,000 nits of brightness, with a resolution of 2,640 x 1,080 pixels.
I have no complaints about the main screen on a day-to-day basis.
Its brightness is more than enough outdoors, and the image quality is on a par with any other high-end model this year.
As for the crease in the centre of the screen, it’s like when you get a small scratch on your mobile: if you look for it, you’ll always see it, but if you use it normally, you end up forgetting that there’s a crease there.
Obviously, if you turn the screen sideways you will see more clearly that the panel is slightly indented to allow for the fold.
But on the secondary screen, we find a 3.6-inch panel that is also AMOLED and has HDR10+ technology; its resolution is almost as high, 1,066 x 1,056 pixels, although its maximum refresh rate is 90 Hz and its maximum brightness is 1,700 nits.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that you can even use this screen to watch YouTube videos, it has enough resolution so you won’t miss any details.
Furthermore, there is continuity between the two screens, so that, for example, you can start playing a YouTube video on the big screen and then continue watching it on the secondary screen from the second you left off.
Motorola calls this second screen the External Display, and it offers a whole host of customisation options to adjust its operation: you can choose the wallpaper, the colours, the applications, the font size, the sleep screen… truly endless options.
It’s a bit small for typing on the Android virtual keyboard, but for viewing notifications, controlling music or multimedia content, it’s great.
If you were wondering, the secondary screen is automatically deactivated as soon as you unfold the phone (and the same happens the other way round).
Performance is rather poor in the tests, although you won’t notice it in everyday use.
In any case, it is a fact that, with its 4-nanometre Mediatek Dimensity 7300X processor, its Mali-G615 MC2 graphics and its 8 + 4 GB of RAM (in the version I tested, the 8 GB are from the device and the extra 4 GB are from memory expansion), on paper the Razr 50 has no chance against the flagships on the market.
In fact, you can see from the table that it lags quite a bit behind its big brother, the Razr 50 Ultra.
It is available in 256 and 512 GB versions of internal storage with UFS 2.2 technology. There is no microSD card slot.
The usual suspects in the camera department
The Motorola Razr 50 comes with a set of two main cameras that are more than familiar in recent times:
50 megapixel main camera, f/1.7 aperture and dual pixel PDAF technology with OIS.
13 megapixel wide-angle camera, f/2.2 aperture, 120º angle and autofocus.
There is no third double-zoom lens (as in the Ultra model, which replaces the wide-angle lens with a telephoto camera), so the 2x zoom effect offered by the camera application is digital.
In general, the camera offers good quality results, but I have the feeling that the processing of some outdoor scenes needs improvement to achieve greater consistency in shadows and colours.
Android 14 with a light layer of customisation from Motorola
There is little to say about the operating system other than that it comes with Android 14 and, here’s a shocker, it only guarantees three years of updates.
Motorola’s customisation is limited to the typography and some interface designs, although there is a whole collection of Moto apps including seven manufacturer apps installed as standard.
Very well optimised battery, as well as 30W fast charging and 15W wireless charging
Its 4,200 mAh capacity allows you to comfortably get through a whole day of use, further reinforced by the 30W fast charging technology which, drum roll, does not include a charger in the box (and beware because the cable it comes with is Type C at both ends).
The Razr 50 is also compatible with wireless charging, reaching a maximum speed of up to 15W.
This device features Motorola’s reverse wireless charging technology.
Verdict: the clamshell-type flip phone that doesn’t force you to compromise
Testing Motorola’s Razr 50 has reconciled me with flip phones.
Yes, nowadays you can have a phone with a foldable screen without having to give up any of the features that everyone demands for their daily use.
It is true that it is not the most powerful phone on the market, but it doesn’t need to be: its MediaTek processor holds its own very well and, honestly, the rest of its specifications are well balanced for what the average user demands.
