The mainstream Motorola Razr 50 is more than enough flip phone for me
Loses a few high-end features, but brings a bigger battery
Motorola has just pulled back the curtain on its latest folding flagship smartphone, but its more mainstream sibling might be all the clamshell phone you could need. The Motorola Razr 50 has a lot in common with its bigger brother, yet can be had for considerably less cash.
The two-tier approach worked well for Moto last year, so the firm has decided to up its game for 2024. The £799 Razr 50 swaps the previous generation’s simple rectangular outer screen for a much more expansive 3.6in OLED, effectively matching last year’s high end Razr 40 Ultra and only being a tiny bit short of the £999 Razr 50 Ultra‘s 4in stunner of a display.
The Ultra is undoubtedly the more spangly of the two, with a polished metal frame to the Razr 50’s more subdued matte finish, and four shouty colour schemes to choose from. The regular 50 goes for simpler Beach Sand, Koala Grey, and Spritz Orange hues, with vegan leather on their rear panels. But if you’re not a slave to spec sheets there’s surprisingly little in it.
You’re still getting a 6.9in pOLED panel on the inside, complete with as subtle a screen crease as you’ll find for the money. A 120Hz LTPO variable refresh rate and up to 3000 nits peak brightness should deliver a slick user experience even on the brightest of sunny days.
There’s a promising 50MP main snapper on the outside, which is paired with a 13MP ultrawide secondary that can also manage macro close-ups. A 32MP selfie cam on the inside completes the set. If you like being able to squeeze as much into your shots as possible, this might be the better option, seeing how the Razr 50 Ultra ditched its ultrawide shooter for a 2x zoom telephoto.
Performance comes courtesy of a Dimensity 7300X chipset and 8GB of RAM. This will be the first phone I’ve used with MediaTek’s new upper-mid tier silicon, so it’ll be interesting to see how it stacks up to the Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 inside the Razr 50 Ultra. Elsewhere you can expect 256GB of on-board storage, a side-mounted fingerprint sensor/power button combo, and Motorola’s soft touch take on Android 14. Google Gemini AI-powered assistant is also on board right out of the box, replacing the old Google Assistant.
It might charge at a slower 30W to the Ultra’s 45W, but the Edge 50 benefits from a larger 4200mAh battery – so in theory should last longer between top-ups. It even matches its bigger brother with 15W wireless charging.
The Motorola Razr 50 is set to launch in early July for £799. It’ll be available SIM-free from Currys, Argos, John Lewis and Amazon, but if you order direct from the Motorola website you’ll get a free pair of Motorola Buds+ true wireless earbuds thrown in for good measure.
Tom Morgan-Freelander
Deputy Editor 
