Motorola Razr Ultra, Razr Plus and Razr 2026 First Impressions

Motorola’s 2026 Razr lineup pushes flip phone foldables forward with better batteries, wild new camera tech, and some genuinely enviable new finishes that other phone-makers should take note of — seriously, who doesn’t want a dark wood or indigo Alcantara back on their phone? But the price hikes the new Razrs come with are a tough pill to swallow and they cast a shadow over this otherwise starry lineup.

Each new model costs more than its 2025 counterpart. The standard Razr 2026 is $800 and the Razr Plus is $1,100, each $100 more. But it’s the Razr Ultra’s $1,500 price that is truly shocking, $200 more than last year. It’s even harder to justify when, at the time that I’m writing this, you can snag the 2025 Motorola Razr Ultra with double the storage (1TB vs. 512GB) and a pair of Moto Buds Plus for $800 (that’s $700 less than the new Ultra).

So where does that leave the new $1,500 Razr Ultra and its 2026 Moto flip phone siblings?

In the US, Motorola’s Razrs make up roughly half of the foldable phone market, beating rival Samsung, according to a video with IDC’s Francisco Jeronimo and Nabila Popal. One of Motorola’s best decisions in recent years was to make the Razr fun to use and reflect its owner’s individuality with unique colors and fabric backs. The approach has led to many Razr foldables being sold. (Having three models ranging from $700 to $1,300 didn’t hurt either.) And that fun design might still be the key appeal to the 2026 Razr lineup.

Once we can test the new phones, we’ll have to see if that playful appeal is enough to offset Motorola’s new pricing. I should note that it’s unclear what Motorola’s reasons were for the price increases. The ongoing RAM shortage, fueled by demand from AI data centers, may be partly to blame, and it’s affecting the broader industry. In the meantime, you can preorder the new Razr flip phones starting May 14, and they will be available on May 21 alongside the Motorola Razr Fold, the company’s first book-style foldable.

Motorola Razr Ultra 2026 has a LOFIC camera

So much about the 2026 Razr Ultra is a repeat of the 2025 version. And that’s not entirely a bad thing, considering that last year’s Razr Ultra earned a CNET Editors’ Choice Award for its top-of-the-line features and irresistibly playful design. Of the new features, two are actually quite significant.

The Razr Ultra has a larger 5,000-mAh battery compared to the 2025 version’s 4,700-mAh one. And the new battery now is silicon-carbon, a new type of anode (the negative end of a battery) that allows phone-makers to increase the capacity without needing a larger physical size. Clamshell-style foldable phones like the Razr Ultra don’t have much internal real estate, so being able to boost the battery’s capacity without taking up more space is clutch. In fact, all three 2026 Razr flip phone models have silicon-carbon batteries.

I’ll be curious to see how its battery life is. I found that the 2025 Razr Ultra lasted a full day on a single charge when I reviewed it. It also scored higher in our CNET Labs battery life tests than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 7.

The 2026 Ultra has a trio of 50-megapixel cameras: wide and ultrawide on the back and an inner screen selfie shooter. But the Razr Ultra’s killer feature is the main camera’s LOFIC image sensor, which stands for Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor. It’s a new camera sensor technology designed to give images a much better dynamic range. In fact, one of our favorite camera phones of 2026, the Leica Leitzphone by Xiaomi, has a LOFIC sensor (likely not the same exact one) and takes absolutely stunning photos. 

The 2026 Razr Ultra comes in two colors/finishes: Pantone Orient blue with an Alcantara finish and Pantone cocoa in a wood finish. Otherwise, the 2026 Razr Ultra has the same dimensions, weight, Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, and 16GB of RAM as the 2025 Ultra. It has a 4-inch cover display with Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 and a 7-inch main screen, both with 165Hz refresh rates. The 2026 version comes in a 512GB storage option, unlike last year’s Ultra, which also had a 1TB variant.

Motorola Razr Plus 2026

Of the three new clamshells, the Razr Plus is the biggest headscratcher for me. It is identical to the Razr Plus 2025, which, aside from a titanium-reinforced hinge and an IP48 rating for water and dust resistance, was the same as the 2024 Razr Plus. You can buy the 2025 version for $700, which is $400 cheaper than the new one. Also, you could get that aforementioned deal on the Razr Ultra 2025, which is a much better phone and save $300 compared to the 2026 Razr Plus.

So what is new on the Razr Plus? It has a silicon-carbon battery with a larger 4,500-mAh capacity compared to last year’s 4,000-mAh battery. The new Razr Plus comes only in Pantone mountain view (green) but looks rather snazzy in the photos Motorola shared. And speaking of photos, the 2026 Razr Plus trades out last year’s telephoto camera for a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. That means you have two 50-megapixel cameras on the back (wide and ultrawide) and a 32-megapixel selfie camera on the inner display.

There’s a new tool that uses AI to put different outfits on images of yourself in Google Photos — it’s on all new Razr devices and will be available on Android phones this summer. It seems similar to the Try On software previewed at Google I/O 2025. Motorola also added Google Photos Memories to the Razr’s content feed, surfacing images you took.

All 2026 Razr models also have a new “rotate to zoom” feature when using the phone in camcorder mode. Otherwise, the Razr Plus has the same Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 chip, 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage as the 2025 and 2024 versions. It also has a 4-inch cover screen and a 6.9-inch main display, both supporting a 165Hz refresh rate. At $1,100, I just don’t know what anyone would buy this phone.

Motorola Razr 2026

The cheapest Razr of them all also has the most updates — but not all are great. The Razr 2026 has a MediaTek Dimensity 7450X chip, replacing the MediaTek 7400X on the Razr 2025. Like its 2026 Razr siblings, the new baseline model has a silicon-carbon battery, boosting the capacity to 4,800 mAh. It has two 50-megapixel rear cameras: wide and ultrawide (the 2025 ultrawide was just 13 megapixels). It also has a 32-megapixel selfie camera on the inner display.

But the Razr 2026 only comes with 128GB of storage and lacks support for a microSD card to add more. The 2025 Razr came with 256GB. Otherwise, the Razr 2026 has a 3.6-inch cover display with a 90Hz refresh rate, a 6.9-inch inner screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, and the same dimensions and weight as the 2025 version.

The Razr 2026 comes in four Pantone colors: hematite, violet ice, sporting green and bright white. Like the Plus and Ultra, Motorola stills sell last year’s base model Razr for $600, $200 less than the new 2026 version.