(phone creaking)
- Motorola Razr, Motorola Razr.
It is definitely a phone that folds in half.
I just wish that I had other nice things to say about it.
(soft music)
The Motorola Razr is a $1,500 dollar phone
that's available exclusively on Verizon in the US,
although available is kind of optimistic.
There have been shipping delays
and it's not really showing up in stores yet
in a consistent way.
It's almost like this phone
isn't really ready to be sold yet
and that's because it isn't.
I'm not gonna beat around the bush here.
The Razr is bad and even if you think you can deal
with its trade-offs,
I'm telling you not to really try at all.
But the Razr is at least bad in interesting ways
because this folding thing, it really is neat.
You can see the good phone that's inside this bad one.
See, every phone has trade-offs,
but the Razrs trade-offs are a little different
than what you're used to with most phones.
What are you willing to trade
in order to get a flip phone with a folding screen?
Something that can fit in your pocket
and that isn't too thick and that folds completely flat
and even has a second display on the outside.
Well, first you're gonna have to trade a lot of money,
it's $1,500 which is a sky high cost
relative to this Razr's capabilities.
If this phone didn't fold in half
and it cost a penny over say, 250, bucks,
I would tell you not to buy it.
Even at that price, I don't know if I'd even be sure.
Motorola makes the Moto G Power
which is much better than this phone and costs $250.
That is six times less than this Razr.
Next you trade on camera quality.
I'm sorry but the 16-megapixel camera on this phone
is middling at best.
It's kind of camera that you'd expect on a mid-range phone
from a couple of years ago.
It's passable but it's super hard
to justify this camera in 2020
and definitely not for how much this phone costs.
It's just behind.
Too many of the shots have blur,
there's terrible low-light results and, you know what?
Just getting focused with this thing is kind of a chore.
Now, don't get me wrong,
I can sometimes get some nice shots with this camera,
but you can pretty much say that about any camera.
I do like some of the camera features though,
it shows this cute little face when you're taking a photo.
You can take selfies with the main camera
instead of the bad selfie camera which is good.
And there are some neat camera effects
like there's a cinemagraph effect
and there's a spot color effect
for making just one part of the photograph
have a little pop of color.
Basically, the camera is retro in pretty much bad ways
but also weirdly sometimes, that's good every now and then.
Like, take a look at the shot of Aaron.
It's objectively a bad photo but I kind of love it.
Another trade-off is the screen.
Look, it's a folding screen
so it's just not gonna be as nice on the overall merits
as a Samsung or Apple screen
but I still think it's passable.
The crease is actually less visible here
than it was on the Galaxy Fold but you can feel the fact
that it's a flexible screen.
It's got weird gaps behind the hinge.
And that doesn't bother me that much
but what does bother me is the screen actually feels loose
in the bottom left hand corner
like you can feel it kind of jostling around
every time you hit the back button.
The reason the screen does all that weird stuff
is because it has to move
and it has to have those gaps underneath it
so that the thing can fold completely flat,
I mean here, look, you can see it moving
as I fold it down and the way it closes
is actually really clever.
It forms this teardrop on the inside
that lets it fold completely flat.
The trade-off is maybe worth it,
but I don't know, just barely.
The next trade-off that you're gonna have to make
is just overall performance.
In order to make everything fit
in this teeny tiny little package,
Motorola had to go with a slower than usual processor
for Android phones but that really
shouldn't affect your experience for day-to-day stuff.
I was actually fine with it.
One of the reasons that Motorola
went with that tiny little processor is for battery life
and it turns out the battery life is kind of (laughs).
I did manage to get a full day a couple of days
but I really had to work for it.
Most days I was topping off in the late afternoon.
It does not support wireless charging
but it does support fast charging
when you plug it in via the USB-C port.
Oh, also this is running Android 9
which is another trade-off
and since it's a Verizon phone, there is a ton,
and I mean, just a ton of Verizon crap around this thing.
There were 12 extra apps by my account,
they're pushing the user messaging app,
their cloud backup app,
and there's a bunch of their spammy little games.
On the bright side Motorola software enhancements
are actually pretty good.
I like their gestures for turning on the camera or whatever
and this retro Razr Easter egg is pretty neat.
And overall, this just feels like basic Android.
There's also this peak screen on the front,
which mostly just shows you notifications and it's okay.
You have to do a lot of weird swiping and holding the icons
so it's a little limited.
It's not even as good a notification management system
as like a smartwatch but it's better than nothing.
So those are the four big trade-offs,
price, camera, screen, and performance.
And maybe you're telling yourself, "Hey you know what?
"I'm okay with all those things",
because this is a sick, flip phone,
and I'm tired of big giant slab sticking out of my pocket,
plus, it's just cool and I like cool things.
It is so satisfying to open this thing to take calls
and slam it close when you wanna hang up on somebody,
so cool, all those things are true.
The whole point of this phone is how cool it is
to have a folding phone and the experience
of opening and closing it
and the experience of opening and closing it kinda sucks.
That creaking that you heard at the top of the video,
it is very real and it's only gotten worse every day
as I've used this phone.
In fact, Motorola even had to issue a statement about it.
Here it is, "When folding and unfolding Razr,
"you may hear a sound which is intrinsic
"to the mechanical movement of the phone.
"Razr has undergone rigorous durability testing,
"and the reported sounds in no way
"affect the quality of the product."
Sorry, but it does affect the quality of the product.
The sound and the feel of the flip on this phone
really do matter.
I mean, here's the new Razr can barely do it one handed,
but I could do it but it's a little slow
and just sort of eh, and then here is the OG Razr
and this, way more satisfying.
Let's just go back for a second to this folding screen.
It is plastic and so it's not gonna be as durable
as a regular glass screen,
but Motorola says that it will last the life of the phone.
I don't know, I'm not so sure.
But let's just take them at their word on that.
There's still the fact that the experience here isn't great.
Motorola says that bumps and lumps are normal
and I don't know, but it's so fragile
that they even tell you you can't put it in your pocket
with the phone open, you've gotta close it first
and that doesn't really inspire confidence
for the long-term, but the whole thing
that's supposed to justify all those trade-offs,
the experience of it, it's just not that good
and if it's not that good then, well, what's the point?
Now, look, the Razr is super cool when it's closed.
I think it looks good, it's got this retro aesthetic
and the first few times you do it,
it is really neat to unfold it.
The 6.2 inch screen gives you all the benefits
of a huge phone, except for the width, I guess,
but it is a tiny little pocketable package
and I think I like the idea of this form factor
more than I do of phone that folds out into a tablet
like the Galaxy Fold.
But I can't stop thinking about those trade-offs.
How much should you pay extra for the folding part?
Like I said, this phone, if it costs $250
and didn't fold would be unacceptable.
And this thing costs $1,500.
How much are you willing to trade for a fold?
You know, another word for trade-off is compromise
and that's what the Motorola Razr is, a compromised phone.
Hey, thank you so much for watching.
There is another flip phone that just got announced,
it's Samsung's phone, it's the Galaxy Z Flip.
We just did a hands on with it
so you should click to look at that.
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, take one.
Just think of the stuff, end card.
Thanks for watching.