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

More screen equals more fun.

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.

The 2024 Razr has a much bigger cover screen than its predecessor.

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.

Motorola claims that the new hinge makes the phone easier to close with one hand.

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.