In a world of bombastic smartphone nomenclature, Motorola has joined the upper echelons, thanks to unveiling the first true flagship clamshell phone, the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025.
The first flip phone with Ultra branding, this slick smartphone offers a series of significant upgrades over other flip phones, including the popular Galaxy Z Flip 6.
Sure, it’s the highest-priced flip phone to date – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I found a few substantial improvements that Samsung had better be adopting in the upcoming Galaxy Z Flip 7 if it’s to keep pace.
There’s nothing earth-shattering here, like AI that can walk your dog and order dinner for you. No, instead it’s just the basics of things like longer time between charges, nicer interfaces and more colors that show how high the bar is raising for flip phones in 2025.
Bigger battery and faster charging
My favorite feature of the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 is undoubtedly its larger battery and faster charging. The Razr Ultra 2025 boasts the biggest power unit and fastest charging capabilities in a flip phone to date, particularly when compared to the Galaxy Z Flip 6.
The 4,700 mAh battery is considerably larger than the 4,000 mAh battery found in Samsung’s latest flip phone. It’s also paired with 68W charging, which offers a full day’s battery life in just eight minutes —a significant improvement over the 25W charging found in the Galaxy Z Flip 6.
Battery and charging are the biggest challenges with the clamshell form factor, and the Razr Ultra 2025 proves that you don’t need to compromise on either, as long as you’re willing to use a phone that is slightly thicker and heavier.
Colorful finishes and materials
With its flip phones so far, Samsung has mostly opted for muted colors that don’t stray too far from the standard colors you’ll find on most phones. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 comes in Yellow, Black, White, and Mint, with additional colors offered exclusively on Samsung’s website: Silver, Blue, and Peach.
While these are good-looking, they don’t compare to the vibrant and unique colors and finishes available on the Razr Ultra 2025. Motorola’s new flagship features four Pantone color-matched colors, with the Scarab model introducing Alcantara leather to smartphones for the first time.
Two vegan leather finishes are reminiscent of previous Razr phones, with the Rio Red and Cabaret (hot pink) options offering continuity of earlier devices. The most interesting new Razr Ultra 2025 color is the Mountain Trail model, which reintroduces FSC-certified wood to Motorola phones for the first time in a decade.
Sure, these are potentially a little more niche, but given Samsung’s strong marketing to the younger end of the market, some of these more vibrant options would be a great addition.
Bigger displays
The best phones often push the boundaries of design in terms of maximizing screen real estate and minimizing the overall screen-to-body ratio.
The Razr Ultra 2025 achieves this by further increasing the main display size to 7 inches, the largest of any clamshell phone yet, and one of the largest displays on any phone. Folded, the Razr Ultra 2025 features a 4-inch Cover Display designed to maximize the front display’s capabilities.
In comparison, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 features a smaller 6.7-inch main display, paired with a 3.4-inch Cover Display. The former is more than acceptable, but Samsung should increase the Cover Display size so it envelops the front of the phone, rather than using the folder-like design it has so far, as that’s lacking the visual impressiveness of some of its competitors.
Improved Cover Display software and AI
In addition to a larger Cover Display, Samsung needs to improve the Cover Display experience significantly. The front display on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 features a curated set of panels and an experience that’s more akin to an advanced smartwatch than a small smartphone.
The Good Lock modules allow you to install any app, but this requires you to enable this feature actively, and it’s not something every user will be aware of. Samsung does have some wonderful panels, but the overall Cover Display experience is not as exciting, interactive or simple to use as it could be.
The Razr Ultra 2025 continues Motorola’s trend of allowing you to use the Cover Display as a compact smartphone. You can add any app to one of the three app panels, as well as any smartphone widget to any of the three widget panels. There’s a selection of games that run on the Cover Display, you can use a full keyboard, and you can add shortcuts to your favorite contacts or features inside any app to the Communications Panel.
Motorola also offers a vastly improved AI suite, with Moto AI designed to mix productivity and creativity in unique ways, while also providing you a choice of AI platforms. The Razr Ultra 2025 runs Google Gemini as the default assistant, but also brings Perplexity and Microsoft CoPilot to Android.
These features are paired with Moto AI capabilities that enhance your life, such as Catch Me Up to summarize recent personal notifications, Pay Attention to initiate a voice recording with transcription, and Remember This to help you easily save screenshots that you can recall later.
There’s also Next Move, which recognizes what’s on your screen and offers suggestions on what to do next, including creating musical playlists, generating images, or saving information so you can easily recall it later.
The Cover Display on the Razr just feels more slick and intuitive to use, so hopefully Samsung is planning some smart UI improvements to keep pace when the Flip 7 launches, likely later this year.
Better cameras
The cameras on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 are fairly similar to previous versions, but it’s time for Samsung to improve them as part of a revamp of the lineup. The 50MP main camera features an f/1.8 aperture, matching that of the Razr Ultra 2025. However, Motorola’s phone includes an in-sensor crop for 2x optical zoom.
The biggest need for improvement is the ultrawide and selfie cameras. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 features a dated 12MP ultrawide sensor with a 123° field of view, as well as a 10MP selfie camera with an f/2.2 aperture. In comparison, the Razr Ultra utilizes two 50MP modules for these purposes, which will likely produce much better photos than the Galaxy Z Flip 6 does (and we’ll be testing these thoroughly when we bring your our full Moto Razr Ultra 2025 review).
The Razr Ultra 2025 is undoubtedly the first true flagship flip phone, addressing the key issues with flip phones thus far where they often felt like diluted versions of the ‘true’ high-end smartphones.
Motorola has already captured 70% of the US flip phone market, and the Razr Ultra 2025 is likely to extend this lead further, unless Samsung significantly improves on its Flip range with the upcoming Galaxy Z Flip 7.
