Motorola bets on premium Razr 50 Ultra to dethrone Samsung in foldable smartphones

The hinge is 30% smaller, and Motorola says it offers better dust protection and durability, and it’s supposed to be easier to flip open and close with one hand. The phone also has an IPX8 rating, meaning it’ll be fine if submerged in water, but it has not been tested for dust protection.

The phone has a large 6.9-inch foldable display (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor, 12 GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage. It comes in vegan leather and soft leather finishes and can be purchased in several colours.

As for the cameras, Motorola has added a 50-MP primary camera with optical image stabilization support and a 2X optical zoom telephoto camera. There’s a 32-MP selfie camera on the inner display. One interesting camera feature on the Razr 50 Ultra is that you can use the device as a camcorder when the hinge is at a 90-degree angle and the phone is held sideways. Interestingly, Motorola added a new Auto Camcorder Mode, which allows the handset to automatically start recording when it’s held in the right orientation in the camera app.

Motorola is also adding a bunch of AI features to keep up with the latest consumer trends in smartphones. First, Google’s Gemini chatbot app can now be accessed from the external display. Plus, Razr users will also get three months of the Google One AI Premium Plan for free—it includes access to Gemini Advanced, 2 TB of cloud storage, and other perks. There are two other generative AI features: Style Sync and Image Canvas. The former lets you snap a picture of your outfit and it’ll generate four images using that pattern that you can then use as wallpaper. Magic Canvas, on the other hand, lets you generate images via a text prompt.

Later this year, Motorola plans to launch new AI features as part of “Moto AI,” which it says is powered by both in-house and Google’s large language models. These features will include “Catch Me Up,” which will summarize your notifications, and “Pay Attention,” which will enable the phone to start recording instantly and transcribe and summarize the recording automatically. Additionally, “Remember This” will capture onscreen information and save it automatically with AI-generated details. However, it remains to be seen if these AI features will come to India.

The Razr 50 Ultra isn’t Motorola’s first foldable smartphone. The Lenovo-owned company has previously launched folding phones on the market. However, Samsung remains the global leader in foldable smartphones with 66% of foldable phone shipments in 2023, according to TrendForce. China’s Huawei is also a big player in foldable phones, though the lack of availability of the brand’s foldable devices in markets like India and the US gives Motorola a leg up, bringing the competition mainly between Samsung and Motorola.

With Motorola’s iconic Razr phone celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the company hopes the Razr 50 Ultra will click with consumers who have a penchant for fashionable devices. Experts say Motorola made a clever move by launching the Razr 50 Ultra ahead of Samsung’s big Unpacked event on July 10, where the company is expected to unveil new foldable phones including the Z Flip 6, which is closest to the Razr 50 Ultra in form factor.

In India, Motorola is yet to break into the top 5 smartphone vendors. However, according to IDC, the brand posted the highest growth in shipments at 110% year-over-year in Q1 2024.

We went hands-on with the new Moto Razr 50 Ultra, and here it is

Motorola has also integrated Gemini AI into the phone (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

The cover display can now do more things (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

Even when folded, it is a thin device (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

On the back, the phone has the iconic ‘Moto’ logo (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)