Razr Plus and Razr 2023 Hands On: First Look at Motorola's New Foldable
Tech
Speaker 1: Motorola just announced two new razor flip phones, the Razor and the Razor Plus. The Razor Plus is a premium phone that starts at a thousand dollars and launches in June, while the razor is a cheaper version that will be coming later this year. The first thing you'll notice about the Razor Plus is it's a giant front screen. It has a 3.6 inch cover screen, which is actually, believe it or not, a little bit [00:00:30] bigger than the iPhone four you probably had more than 10 years ago. And there's a lot that you can do with that cover screen. You can run full apps on it, you can play games on it, you can even take photos with it. And you can also type on it if you're using an app that requires the keyboard, maybe you're sending a text message, maybe you're typing in Gmail, or even just searching for something in Google Maps, you can actually use a full keyboard on the front cover screen and you might be asking, why [00:01:00] do I care about having a giant cover screen?
Speaker 1: Most of the time I'm gonna use the phone when it's open. That may be true, but having the giant cover screen really just makes it more useful when it's closed. It kind of reminds me of a smartwatch in a way. Um, you could take it out, glance down on it, maybe reply to a quick message or check the next step in your directions or, or the what's next on your calendar without having to really open your phone and dive in. So I think that's something that's gonna be really useful and it really helps [00:01:30] the Razor Plus stand out. And on the inside you have a 6.9 inch screen that has a 165 hertz refresh rate. You might not know exactly what that means, but it's pretty high for a phone. So a lot of flagship phones have 120 hertz refresh rates, uh, which makes animations and scrolling feel smoother than normal. So since this one has a 165 hertz refresh rate, we should see even more.
Speaker 1: And in terms of the cameras, you're getting [00:02:00] a 12 megapixel main camera and a 13 megapixel ultra wide camera. And there's also a 32 megapixel selfie camera on the inside. And the reason why I'm mentioning the cameras is just like other flip phones we've seen recently, the cameras are kind of a big deal on this phone. One of the biggest use cases that Motorola is really pitching here is being able to take photos and videos from unique angles. So for example, you can actually open the phone halfway and kind of hold it like a video camera, [00:02:30] which might be useful if you take a lot of videos on your phone and just want a more comfortable way of holding it. There's also a fun photo booth feature that lets you prop up the phone, open it halfway, and when you put it in this mode, it'll take a couple of photos at a time after a countdown, just like a photo booth that you might encounter at a wedding or another type of event. The Razor Plus is the more premium version at $1,000. It's definitely not a cheap phone, but it's also not uncommon for other phones that seen with this [00:03:00] same kind of flip form factor. It'll run on a Snapdragon eight plus Gen one processor and you get 256 gigs of storage and eight gigs of memory.
Speaker 1: Now moving on to the regular razor, this one might sound less exciting because it doesn't have that giant screen on the front. It has more of a normal size screen that still lets you see notifications, the time alerts, the weather, things like that. But it's missing that big screen. But the big thing here [00:03:30] is that it's gonna be a lot cheaper than most of the foldable phones we've seen before. Motorola has not announced pricing yet, but it did say that it will be well below the razor plus's price, which is a thousand dollars. So again, we're seeing a new foldable that will be less than a thousand dollars, which is quite a big deal considering most of the other devices we've seen have been pretty expensive.
Speaker 1: What really stood out to me with the Razor and also other foldables we've seen [00:04:00] this year, like the pixel fold, is that it really feels like the companies behind these products are finding a purpose for foldable phones. In the early days, it felt like the technology was there, but there weren't many use cases for it. Now with its larger screen, it feels like that's changing with the Razor Plus. I really think that camcorder mode, that photo booth mode and other use cases that come up for that bigger screen on the front are gonna make these devices feel so much more useful. So be [00:04:30] sure to check out C Net's coverage for even more details about Motorola's new razors and also foldable phones in general. So what did you think of the new razors? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.
