Motorola Razr 40 Review: The Best Affordable Flip Phone with AI Features & Stunning Design

Motorola Razr 40 Review: The Best Affordable Flip Phone with AI Features & Stunning Design

This Year, the Indian Market Gets New Flip Phones

This year, the Indian market has got quite a few flip phones. Just a few weeks back, I wrote an article about the Motorola Razr Ultra, which was an amazing phone, by the way, with a super form factor and flagship experience, along with some amazing and useful features. I loved using a phone as my daily driver, which was small yet big. Now, today, we’ve got one of the most practical and affordable flip phones out there, the Motorola Razr.

Unboxing the Motorola Razr

As soon as we open up the box, there is a sleeve inside. Inside the sleeve, the first thing that we get is a case. This is a good thing that they’re including a case inside the box, and the color of the case is matching with the smartphone. That is super cool. Next up, we have some paperwork and the SIM card ejector tool. Keeping these things aside, the next thing inside the box is the phone itself. We will come back to it in just a bit. Then, there is a W charging brick. Finally, last but not least, we have the USB cable. Now, we’ll keep everything aside and get back to the smartphone. It is time for the best part of an unboxing, and here we go. This is the Motorola Razr in all its glory. I absolutely love this orange color; it has that pop which looks cool. So, Motorola has launched their second flip phone here in India this year. It’s like a younger sibling to the Razr Ultra. It takes a lot of good elements from the Ultra and offers incredible value. Let me explain.

Form Factor

The main thing with the flip phone is the form factor. I honestly feel that people should buy flip phones to get the best of both worlds: a compact phone as well as a big phone. The Motorola Razr does a good job at offering that. It is very compact when folded and can be carried around easily as compared to a slab phone. The phone is lightweight and not bulky at all, so carrying it around in your pocket, backpack, purse, etc., is not a hassle.

The Practicality of the Outer Display

Now, one of the main reasons why the form factor is so practical is because of the outer display. It has the segment’s largest in-display panel. The refresh rate is 120Hz, and it can run any app that you want. There is no limit whatsoever. Quick tasks like checking OTPs, replying to a WhatsApp message, or browsing through Instagram reels can be done easily on the outer display. Also, the quality of the outer display panel is great. It has an LTPS flexible PET panel with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection, a wide color with 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, and a peak brightness of 1200 nits. Basically, the outer display quality is amazing.

Useful Features of the Outer Display

Now, let’s talk about some use cases of the outer display. Say you want to quickly navigate somewhere using Google Maps. You can easily do that using the outer display itself, no need to open up the smartphone. Then, you can also make handsfree video calls using the outer display. Say you’re doing something like cooking in the kitchen and you want to do a video call at the same time. You can just place this smartphone on a desk or table somewhere and do handsfree video calling. And yes, “flip to answer” calls works, which is super satisfying, and you can end the call by flipping it shut. One-hand operation is very comfortable because of the outer display, and this helps a lot in not getting distracted. Normally, what happens is that I get an OTP or notification, I pick up my smartphone to check that, and then I waste 10-20 minutes on YouTube, Instagram, or X. I’m sure you relate to this point, but that doesn’t happen with the Razr. So, the outer display is big, convenient, and useful. But whenever you want, there is a big screen available at your disposal. Just flip open the smartphone.

The Inner Display

The inner display is a 6.9-inch Full HD+ PET panel with a 120Hz refresh rate. One main thing over here is the crease. Now, because of the newly designed hinge, the crease is very minimal and can only be seen at specific angles. In day-to-day life, while using the smartphone, I did not notice the crease at all. So, kudos to Motorola for that. Also, quality-wise, the inner display panel is great. It has a peak brightness of up to 1200 nits, and outdoor visibility is not an issue. The refresh rate is dynamic because of LTPO technology. Colors are also great. It is an AMOLED panel with 100% DCI-P3 color gamut. Content just looks amazing on this display, and it supports HDR10+ as well. Now, this is a tall display because of the 21:9 aspect ratio, but I got used to this aspect ratio in just a couple of days. Fun fact, to demonstrate the aspect ratio, this video is in 21:9, so you’ll get an exact idea about the aspect ratio.

Cameras

One place where this flip form factor helps a lot is with the cameras and content creation. There are a couple of cameras on the rear side: a 50-megapixel primary camera with Optical Image Stabilization, then a 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with a field of view of 120°. On the inner display, there is a 32-megapixel selfie camera. Now, because this is a flip phone, you can use the rear cameras in selfie mode. Essentially, you can click amazing high-quality photos and videos of yourself using the rear camera. Because this is a flip smartphone and because of the outer display, you can shoot videos of yourself without the need for a tripod and use the outer display as a viewfinder to see yourself.

Rear Camera Performance

Alright, this is a very quick rear camera video test. I am shooting with the ultra-wide-angle camera, and I can see myself because of the outer display. That is super convenient. Now, the rear camera can shoot up to 4K at 60fps with both the cameras, so vlogging is convenient and fun with this phone. What about photos though? Well, you can see them on your screen. I like the images captured from the Razr. They’re detailed with good dynamic range. Shadows and highlights are exposed properly. Colors are also good— not too saturated and not undersaturated as well. The overall image output is pleasing to the eye, and you can shoot great images in all sorts of lighting conditions: daylight, artificial lighting, and low light as well. The ultra-wide-angle camera offers a great perspective. You can get creative with it. Also, it doubles as a macro camera. Selfies are also good from the 32-megapixel camera, detailed with good skin tones and the right exposure.

Front Camera Performance

This is a very quick front camera video test, which will give you an idea about the video quality as well as the microphone quality of this smartphone. Now, you can also use this smartphone in camcorder mode like this. This is a super fun experience, and I love doing this. See, as far as my initial impressions go, the cameras do seem promising on this smartphone.

AI Features

The Motorola Razr comes with a lot of AI features. We will start with the outer display. This is the first phone in the segment to have Google Gemini on the outer display, and this is super useful. Let me give you some examples. I can ask Gemini to generate video title ideas right from the cover display. I can also ask Gemini to write a script for my video. Image generation is also possible with Google Gemini. For example, generate an image of a motorbike on Mars, and here we go. Whoever buys the Motorola Razr will get 6 months of Google Gemini Advance for free with 1TB of cloud storage. Now, that is nice. There’s also Moto AI with specific features to enhance photos and videos. There is AI photo enhancement, which helps in giving the overall image a great look with wider dynamic range. Magic Eraser helps remove unwanted objects or people from images. Photo Unblur can improve the quality of your blurry images. This works surprisingly well. Magic Editor helps you reimagine your photos. There’s also AI adaptive stabilization for stable videos. Basically, there are a whole host of AI features with this smartphone.

Performance

Under the hood, there is the MediaTek Dimensity 1350X processor with 8GB LPDDR5X RAM and 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Plus, you get a RAM boost feature, which can expand the RAM by another 4GB. Now, all this translates to smooth performance for day-to-day applications: WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, UPI payments, maybe some light photo editing here and there. But with that being said, this is not meant for heavy usage. You can do casual gaming if you want on this smartphone, but it is definitely not meant for heavy gamers. What I’m trying to say is that for normal day-to-day applications, I’ve not noticed any major hiccups whatsoever. The software is My UX based on Android 13. Motorola is promising 3 years of OS updates and 4 years of security updates. Motorola is known for clean software with no bloatware and no ads. You get exactly that with the Razr 40: almost stock Android experience with some useful customization features to personalize the phone and also useful AI features. And how can we forget Moto gestures? Iconic and fun to use.

Durability

Durability is a very important thing with flip phones, and Motorola has taken care of that. First of all, the back panel is made of vegan leather, which feels very premium and has a good grip. The outer display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus. This phone is also IP52 rated, so no worries about water splashes. The hinge is also tried, tested, and certified for up to 500,000 folds. That means you can use this phone easily for years without being worried about the hinge getting damaged.

Battery

The Motorola Razr 40 has a 3800mAh battery, which in my initial testing lasted me throughout the day with like 10-15% left towards the end of the day. My use is very normal: WhatsApp, Instagram, UPI payments, lots of photos and videos, and that’s about it. What about charging? There is 33W TurboPower charging with this smartphone and 15W wireless charging.

Price

The Motorola Razr 40 is priced at ₹59,999, but you can get a discount of ₹5000 because of the festive offer. Basically, what this means is that you can get this Motorola Razr 40 only for ₹54,999. Now, that is a very attractive pricing for this flip smartphone. If you want a compact smartphone, which also has a big display, then you can definitely go ahead and buy this one. Remember, you buy a flip phone for the form factor and for the experience. I will definitely recommend this smartphone if you are looking to buy this form factor. Pre-booking starts on 5th September. You can pay ₹1,000 to book your smartphone, and the sale starts on 8th September.

 

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