Motorola Razr 50 Ultra

I'm not really "into" flip-style foldable phones, although I can easily, sort of see the everyday use case of such devices. I don't find 6.1" smartphones to be a major inconvenience to my daily life, and am not desperate to make them smaller. But at the same time, I'm quick to recognise that some people do, and not only that; all forms of versatility in a single device should be encouraged, I think.

Take Motorola's Razr 50 Ultra as an example, arguably one of the best smartphones of the year, which for completely different reasons stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold as a shining example of what foldable phones can do. At the time of writing, this phone is on offer for around £800, and that's with 512GB of space. No expense has been spared on the chipset inside, neither the screens nor any other aspect of the construction, and yet the equivalent Samsung Galaxy S24 is about significantly more expensive. It's insane.

This review is pretty much all good news. First and foremost, Motorola has made the physical designs fun, and you can get a variety of colours, but also choose materials for the back. We were handed the dark green in a variant of eco leather. It feels great and the system colours are matched directly. Plus, it's premium materials used here. The glass on the small screen is Gorilla Glass Victus, the frame is aluminium, there's dual SIM, IPX8 certification, a 4000mAh battery, 45 watts wired charging and even 15 watts wireless charging. See, no compromises here.

The entire front is a large 4" 1272x1080 touch panel - it's also an LTPO OLED with Dolby Vision, 165Hz refresh rate, HDR10+ and 2400 NITS brightness. It's pretty wild for a front display, but you can actually open all apps, perform all system functions, watch Netflix, open NemID - it's all here, and because the phone is so exquisitely crafted, you often want to just keep it closed and perform these small everyday tasks with the front display.

When you open it up, you get the equivalent of an iPhone 16 Pro Max screen size of 6.9", and once again it's 165HZ, LTPO - the whole shebang. These are truly stunning displays, both with deep contrast, amazing Pantone-validated colour calibration and intense brightness. Once upon a time, a foldable display meant sacrificing quality - that's not the case here.

The Razr 50 Ultra uses a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 along with 12GB RAM and up to 512GB UFS 4.0 space - again, no compromises here. It performs exactly as you'd expect a flagship to, and it has a promised three OS upgrades (which really isn't the industry's best promise in that regard). However, I'd like to state that this one will stay snappy for a long, long time.

I said there was "pretty much" only good news here, and I meant it. But it's a shame that Motorola has opted for a 2x telephoto lens instead of a much more usable ultra-wide. It's 50 megapixels at f/2.0, and Motorola has pretty solid colour chemistry and sharpness. These images are sharp without being flashy, no doubt about it, and you can rely on it to capture your holiday pizza or even a bar shot or two in low light conditions. But you lack the wider angle of view of an ultra-wide, and while a telephoto is easier to detect depth and thus takes slightly better portraits, just 2x is pretty much useless as an optical zoom. The funny thing is that the cheaper Razr this year just swaps the telephoto lens with an ultra-wide - weird!

That said, the 512GB version can be yours for just £800. That's insane. Not only is the hardware far more versatile, everything about this phone is pretty much a slam dunk. It's not transformative, like the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, but this is among the best of the year. No doubt about it.