Friday, October 4, 2024

Motorola’s 2024 Razr phones are ready to roll

Foldable season is back, and Motorola is leading the way with updated versions of its Razr Plus and Razr flip phones. They’re coming next month in some poolside-worthy colors, with upgraded screens — a Big 2024 Razr – and upgrade to IPX8 ratings for full resistance against water submersion. You know what else is super hot? Prices are not rising.

The Motorola Razr Plus 2024 still starts at $999 and comes with a Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 chipset and 12GB of RAM. The cover screen now measures four inches, a significant upgrade from the previous generation’s 3.6-inch panel. It’s an LTPO display with a 165Hz refresh rate; The internal screen is still a 6.9-inch 1080p OLED. The main rear camera has an updated 50-megapixel sensor, and the ultrawide lens on the previous model has been swapped to a 2x telephoto.

The 2024 Razr has a much larger cover screen than its predecessor.
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Honestly, though, the standard 2024 Razr might be the most compelling device at the moment. It’s still $699 with the 6.9-inch internal screen, but its new 3.6-inch cover screen now matches last year’s Razr Plus in size. The previous generation Razr offered a small 1.5-inch screen that seriously limited its functionality. It’s the cheapest flip-style foldable sold in the US, but that didn’t mean much when the cover screen was so low. This time with a bigger cover screen – and a beefier water resistance rating – it’s starting to be a good deal. And that Sprites orange color option? Very sweet.

The Razr offers a few perks – a MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chipset and 8GB of RAM. Wired charging tops out at 30W compared to the Razr Plus’ 45W, though both models get a welcome upgrade to 15W wireless charging, up from 5W on last year’s models. The Razr gets a new 50-megapixel main camera, but has a 13-megapixel ultrawide, which isn’t much better than last year’s model.

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Motorola says the new hinge makes it easier to close the phone with one hand.
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Both models use a new hinge, which is said to offer better dust resistance. Motorola has also made some changes to the Cover Screen software. There’s a new widget panel, which looks like a handy addition, and now you can zoom in to see all your panels at once. There’s a clever new Desk Display mode, so you can set your phone in flex mode and play a photo slideshow on the cover screen, which sounds StandBy-ish.

There is now support for the always-on display, which is Rules. More great news for me personally: You can now download Google’s Gemini Assistant and run it on the cover screen, which is useful if you want to make the Razr a humanoid-style wearable (not). to do this). If you are Do Make this foldable wearable and the hot pink and spring green color options are sure to make a statement.

Continuing the trend for 2024, Motorola is also announcing a suite of new AI tools that will be useful but haven’t shipped yet. It’s a thing. You can say “hold me” to get an AI-generated summary of high-priority notifications – sounds familiar. Or you’ll say “Remember this” to have the phone capture something on the screen that you’ll want to refer to later.

There’s also a “focus” command to automatically record the conversation, transcribe it, and provide a summary. The company aims to make all of this context-aware, so it gives you answers based on where you are and what you’re doing. Sounds good, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

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The 2024 Motorola Razr and Razr Plus will be available for pre-order on July 10th and will go on sale on July 24th.

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