Obviously, Motorola has made a lot of phones over the last decade, but the
last time one really caught my eye was the Droid Turbo. So, imagine my surprise
when I saw the one pager for the Razer 2025 and Razer Ultra 2025 and thought,
"Dang, those look really interesting."
Both of them are foldable flip phones, but come with dramatically different
specs and prices, meaning Motorola is targeting a wide range of customers with
these two models. Why don't we start with the flagship Ultra and see what
they've managed to pack in here? Oo,
that is
kind of gorgeous, isn't it? Wow. Very
subtle crease. You can definitely see it, huh? But the display is not on, so I
don't really count that. Ooh, we should have a look at the accessories.
Wow. Plum squad. All it really is a 2025
edition phone. A USB-C to C cable,
three-footer by the look of things, USB 2 by the look of things, and a SIM
removal tool. See, this wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't for the fact
that to achieve Motorola's advertised 68 watt charging, you need both their
proprietary power brick and their proprietary cable. We capped out at 50
watts, regardless of which high-ower charger we were using. That's not to say
that it's a slow charging phone. It's decent and you can see exactly how
decent it is on this nifty little inrogress graph from the lab. We're
still working on the exact way to present this. We'll have an accompanying blog article that you guys can check out
in the video description. But in summary, it's fine. It's just not what
it says on the tin unless I buy additional accessories. All right, let's
have a look at this thing. So, we've got our lock button on the right, volume
rocker, as well as, oh, good, an AI
button. When will they learn? Remember Samsung and the Bixby button? Remember
how much people loved that? Motorola, you should emulate that. In all
seriousness, some of its AI features do sound kind of useful. Being able to
speak more naturally to Google Gemini, obviously a plus, and being able to
recall things that you've blathered at your phone through the AI button
earlier, I guess that's kind of cool. It's just that
you should really be giving me the option to rebind it, and apparently you
can't. Uh, noise cancelling mics on the top, USBC in the bottom, speaker, and
SIM tray. I love this. Is this real
wood? It's real wood. Wow,
that's super cool. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that much. One of the things
that really stood out to me about the Droid Turbo back in the day was the
ballistic nylon backing. I don't know what ballistic nylon means, but it sure
felt cool. In the meantime, let's have a look at what separates the Ultra from
the not quite as ultra. The Ultra gets a
4 in Gorilla Glass ceramic display, while the regular one gets just 3.6 in.
And for the main display, we go from 7 in to a nice 6.9 in. And also at a lower
resolution, although both of them have pretty darn high pixel density to the
point where I really don't think that you're going to notice it. Oh
wow. Is that ever in your screen ever hard to clean? Look at this. Can you see
that? Yeah. It's still grubtastic even
though I just tried to wipe it. Okay,
first thing we're going to need to do is turn down the brightness because both of
these are flipping bright displays. Get
it?
Ooh. Wow. That feels really good. Is it the
same fold mechanism in both?
Oh, that's nice. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is Motorola rates the
exterior display on the non-Utra for 1,700 nits and the interior one for
3,000 nits, making for a great HDR
viewing experience. And the Ultra, they rate even higher. We weren't able to
validate their claims on the Ultra. In fact, we weren't able to even get close,
but it is at least brighter than the non-Ultra. So, I guess that's something.
Motorola is going to get back to us on this, and we'll pin a comment down below
if they have anything to add for how they managed to claim 4500 nits peak
brightness on the internal display. Whoa. Okay, normally I don't do the
software stuff till a little bit later, but I'm so happy right now.
Thank you. Not everyone has to copy Apple. I don't want to target a specific
corner of my stupid display to bring down my quick settings. I like I don't
like that Motorola only promises three years of software updates for these.
That is a No. All right, let's watch some HDR.
You see that? It goes bright for like a split second as I'm rotating it. See
that? And then it like goes dim and
Again, obviously better on the non-Utra. I'd be
floored if Motorola doesn't solve this. Like, this is the more capable display,
which we have validated even if we didn't manage to hit their numbers. So,
I'm not going to hold it against it too much. But hey, this is the situation
right now as of us recording this video. Oo, do more on the external display.
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The cameras are just like right in the middle of your screen there. Yeah, I
guess that makes sense. If only anyone could have foreseen the problem with
having holes in your display. I can't I
can't click the learn more. There's a learn more in there. There's a not now.
Oh, I can click the not now. Okay, cool.
I can look at my photos. Look at that. Beautiful, isn't it? Okay, maybe it'd be
more useful for messaging. Start a chat. Hey, look at that. Well, it's smart
enough to put the keyboard not somewhere that there's a camera in the middle of
it. So, that's something. Full screen editor. Exit full screen.
Oh. Oh, okay. That's cool. That's useful.
Makes a little bit easier to input text without, you know, having the whole
interim face taken up out really. We have Tim Apple contact in our Labs
benchmark account. Oh, you can allow apps to continue on the outside display.
So, I'm going to start watching a YouTube video like say Havi.
Boom. Nice.
Oh, well, okay. I have to continue playing it, but still nice. Then I can
put it in like tent mode. Okay. Boom.
Watch YouTube in the bath. Sleep display. Oo, always on display.
Likey, let's see what it looks like once it uh
chills out a little bit. I'm going to put that Oh, nice. I love to have clocks
around me. I don't know what it is. It's not like I'm ever on time for anything
because of them. I just I like knowing how late I am. I was going to see if
Motorola lets me change where my back button is.
Boom. See, it's that easy. Google and
Sony, that's how you do it. Thank you.
Now I can reach the back button more easily. The question is, how quickly
will I be able to go back? These two devices use marketkedly different
processors at their cores, which leads to marketkedly different prices. In the
Ultra, you've got the latest 3nm chipset from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
It's not quite as performant as the overclocked variant for Galaxy that
Qualcomm is shipping to Samsung, but it's within striking distance, about 10%
off. Meanwhile, over here, we've got a MediaTek chipset that uh
uh is what, anywhere from like a third
to a fifth of the performance. Although, we discovered there's a bit more to that
story than you might think. The Geekbench numbers might look extremely
tilted in favor of the Ultra, but when running games, okay, the numbers are
tilted pretty heavily toward the Ultra. That is until both phones reach the
point of equilibrium where they are limited by their cooling rather than by
the performance of the processor inside them. Once that happens, they're
actually not that far off. So, uh,
last couple speeds and feeds things. The non-Utra has 8 gigs of RAM. The Ultra
has double that. The non-Utra gets up to 120 Hz on the internal display, while
the Ultra hits 165 in supported
applications. And they both have Wi-Fi 6E, unfortunately, instead of Wi-Fi 7,
which I would expect on a flagship chipset, even if I wouldn't expect it on
a more, okay, I don't want to say budget because this is still a $700 phone, but
a more attainable $700 device. Let's
play with the camera. They both come with this gimmicky camcorder mode. So,
why don't we try that out first? Tap the touchpad to start and stop recording.
Oh, the hinge doesn't really like So, you can see it doesn't really like stay.
Well, it stays. It's hard to show this to you guys cuz it's like a touchpad for
a second. See, tap the touchpad to start and stop recording. But if I go too far
Oh, but there's a regular button. That is It's totally necessary that we have
the touchpad because if we just had that touch button then that wouldn't Oh,
swipe in any direction to zoom in and out. As someone who actually used a
camcorder back in the day, this is really not that much like using a
camcorder. I mean, it's like it in the sense that
I'm recording a video. What is this fist? What was that fist? Did it stop?
It stopped recording. Why did it stop recording? Because of the fist. To their
credit, they designed it with no buttons here or here. So, there's nothing to
accidentally mash while you're holding it like that. I am just not convinced
that that is more ergonomic than just doing this and then just also having a
bigger screen for your viewfinder. Actually, pretty smooth video capture on
this. And apparently in camcorder mode.
Oh, look at that. You can like selfie it. Okay, that's pretty cool.
So, it shows on both screens. I could see, dude, I could see that. I could see
this being kind of useful. But then, okay. Yeah, this is totally just still
showing me what I'm recording. So, oh, we haven't even talked about the
cameras. 50 megapixel wide and 12.6.
Wow, you're really reaching when you have to include that 6. Okay, so 12.6
ultra wide on the ultra. And then on the regular, we're 32 megapixels and 8
megapixels. All right, let's take my uh let's take my shots. Okay,
the camera on the Ultra is better. Not
by much. The processing is just a little more natural. Like this blanket is not
yellow. I promise you that it is this
color, not this color. Also, like, oh my
god, look at that oversharpening. This one's honestly a little soft, though,
too. Both record slow-mo up to 240 frames per second, but you're going to
need the Ultra if you want to record 8K at 30 FPS. I wouldn't bother personally.
Uh, but it can do 4K 60 instead of 4K30.
And then the last big difference between the two is battery life. We weren't
expecting this part. It's a 4700 mAh
battery versus a 4500 mAh battery. And
this is a lesser, not as performant
chipset. So, you would think, huh, the non-Ultra is going to have a big
advantage here. But what we found is that whether it's down to the 3nmter
manufacturing process or just better power saving modes, the Ultra
dramatically outperformed the non Ultra in our battery longevity test. So make
of that what you will. That just leaves checking out the speakers. While I'm
loading this up, by the way, guys, we captured a CT scan of the hinge on this
phone, and it is super cool. We're going to have that linked down below on Lumaf
Field's website. Uh so you can really see how they made this just
outstanding feeling like car door feel
hinge of a hinge. Freaking love that. Oh
yeah, and I guess we never talked about how like difficult to make out. Look at
that. The crease is unless you catch the light, which guys, this is a studio
environment. I'm literally pointing it at my studio lights to catch it. It's
really not that noticeable. amplified earpiece speaker on the Ultra
and on the non-Utra. Love to see that. Oo,
rookie mistake. The speakers here. If you're right-handed and you hold your
phone like this.
Whoopsy doodles. Um, yeah, prefer the
speaker here. I guess you could just hold it this way, but then your pinky is
going to match the volume buttons and the lock button potentially.
Significant distortion at the very loudest levels, but honestly
up until then, okay clarity and it gets really loud for such a slim phone,
right? Like remember as a foldable they have to make the two halves like pretty
freaking slim to make this usable at all. Actually pretty impressed with the
Ultra. Oh, look at that. They got the speaker
in the right spot on the non-Utra.
Again, not bad, especially when you
consider the form factor. Subscribe to ShortCircuit.