Motorola Razr 2022

A substantial improvement on previous Razr flip phones, with a bigger battery, nippier performance and a superb pair of screens

-  ALEX WALKER-TODD

PRICE £792 (£950 inc VAT) from motorola.co.uk

This is Motorola's third attempt to build a foldable Razr phone, and undoubtedly its best yet. It looks different to its predecessors, ditching the iconic "chin" in favour of a cleaner and better-proportioned layout. It's also distinctly bigger, switching from a 6.2in display to a much larger 6.7in OLED panel.

The screen looks great, with HDR10+ colour, full support for the DCI-P3 gamut and a peak refresh rate of 144Hz for supported games. Outside those, it mostly runs at 120Hz, dipping to 90Hz or 60Hz where appropriate.

Perhaps even more impressive than the technical specifications of the screen is the engineering that's gone into it. The display is made of ultra-thin glass, an upgrade from the plastic screen on last year's model, and an all-new hinge mechanism allows the phone case to close completely by bending the screen's mid-point into a teardrop shape. It looks and feels neater than Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip4 (see issue 337. P72), which closes with a small gap, and because there's no hard crease you can barely see or feel the bend point when the phone's open. It's the most successful folding screen I've seen.

If you're worried about the size of the unfolded display, you can activate one-handed mode, which pulls content down to the half-way point for easier reach. Or you can use the phone while it's flipped shut, thanks to the secondary Quick View display - a 2.7in 60Hz OLED panel on the outside face of the Razr. This is the largest external display on a clamshell foldable and, unlike the Z Flip4, the Razr lets you run almost any app on the outer screen.

This doesn't always work brilliantly: most apps are designed for larger and taller screens, and I got mixed results when trying to play games or edit photos. But if you just want to check messages, control smart devices or pull up a video, it's ideal.