Motorola’s 2024 Razr phones are ready to make a splash

Foldable season is back, and Motorola is leading the way with refreshed versions of its Razr Plus and Razr flip phones. They’re arriving next month in some poolside-worthy colors, with upgraded screens — a big upgrade in the case of the 2024 Razr — and IPX8 ratings for full resistance against water immersion. And you know what else is pretty hot? The prices haven’t gone up.

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 3.6-inch panel on the previous generation. It’s an LTPO display with up to 165Hz refresh rate; the inner screen is still a 6.9-inch 1080p OLED. The main rear camera features an updated 50-megapixel sensor, and the ultrawide lens on the previous model has been swapped out for a 2x telephoto.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Honestly, though, the standard 2024 Razr might be the more compelling device this time around. It’s still $699 with a 6.9-inch inner screen, but its new 3.6-inch cover screen now matches the size of last year’s Razr Plus. The previous-gen Razr offered a small 1.5-inch screen that seriously limited its functionality. It was the cheapest flip-style foldable sold in the US, but that didn’t mean much when the cover screen was so limited. This time around with a bigger cover screen — and a beefier water resistance rating — it starts looking like a seriously good deal. And that spritz orange color option? So sweet.

The Razr makes a few concessions — there’s a MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chipset and 8GB of RAM. Wired charging tops out at a (still pretty speedy) 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 the new 50-megapixel main camera, too, but carries over the 13-megapixel ultrawide that wasn’t very good in last year’s model.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Both models use a new hinge that claims to offer better dust resistance. Motorola has made some tweaks to the cover screen software, too. There’s a new widget panel, which seems like a handy addition, and now you can zoom out to see all of your panels at once. There’s a clever new desk display mode so you can set your phone up in flex mode and play a photo slideshow on the cover screen, which sounds StandBy-ish.

There’s now support for an always-on display, which rules. And one more great piece of news for me, personally: you can now download Google’s Gemini Assistant and run it on the cover screen, which will come in handy if you want to turn the Razr into a Humane-style AI wearable (don’t do this). If you do turn this foldable into a wearable, the hot pink and spring green color options will definitely make a statement.

Staying on trend for 2024, Motorola is also announcing a suite of new AI tools that sound helpful but aren’t shipping yet. It’s a thing. You’ll be able to say “Catch me up” 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 want to reference later.

There’s also a command to “Pay attention” to have it automatically record a conversation, transcribe it, and provide a summary. The company also has intentions of making this all context-aware, so it will tailor responses based on where you are and what you’re doing. Sounds nice, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

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