The new Razr Ultra costs $200 more. Here’s what that gets you

Motorola's latest flagship is more costly than ever

Apr 29, 2026

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📱 Motorola just announced the new Razr Ultra
🎨 It’s a lot like last year’s model, but with a fresh coat of paint
📸 Its upgraded 50MP main camera is able to capture more dynamic range
⚙️ Moto also includes an upgraded chip, brighter 7-inch display, and plenty of AI tricks
🔋 There’s also a massive 5,000mAh battery – the biggest in any flip phone
💰 The price of the Razr Ultra is going up by $200
📅 It launches May 21, with preorders opening on May 14

Last year, I called the Motorola Razr Ultra the best flip phone you could buy. Even after toying around with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 7 that arrived soon after it, I still felt like Motorola had the superior flip phone. This year, Moto is widening the margin even more with the upgraded Razr Ultra for 2026.

I flew out to Los Angeles to check out the new device, which is getting a handful of upgrades in key areas like the camera, battery life, and performance. Motorola is also leaning more into fashion and aesthetics with the materials and colors it chose for the device, which all look very nice in person. Google is even debuting a new wardrobe feature in Google Photos on the Razr to help you look stylish every day of the week.

But here’s the kicker: the new Razr Ultra costs $200 more than the old version, which already cost more than Samsung’s Flip 7. I’ll have to wait to get my hands on my review unit to know whether that price increase is justified, but after going hands-on with it, there’s a good chance Motorola still has the best flip phone on the market. Here’s what’s new, what’s the same, and everything in between on this $1,499.99 flip phone.

Hands-on with the Moto Razr Ultra (2026)

✨ Aesthetics are hitting. Motorola made a huge deal about the entire Razr family being fashion-forward – a vibe, a moment, a statement. That messaging might not appeal to me, but it does to a lot of people, which inspired Moto to dig deeper and come up with some innovative looks for 2026. The Razr Ultra is offered in two finishes: PANTONE Orient Blue with an Alcantara textured back, and PANTONE Cocoa with a natural wood veneer finish. The former looks a bit more purple in-person than I was expecting, but it certainly caught the eye of many influencers at my demo. Meanwhile, the latter is a darker, richer variation of a similar wooden finish found on last year’s Razr Ultra. It wound up being my personal favorite of the two.

📱 The 7-inch display gets brighter. The Razr Ultra still has a huge 7-inch AMOLED display with a sharp resolution, inky black levels, and vivid colors. Motorola made one big upgrade to it for this new generation: it’s a lot brighter. It can now reach up to 5,000 nits of peak brightness, nearly double the brightness of last year’s 3,000-nit Razr Ultra. The display is still super responsive thanks to its 165Hz refresh rate, and there’s plenty of room for multitasking in split-screen. Plus, I love the aspect ratio; it’s a bit wider than the Z Flip 7 at 22:9, so you get extra room for watching horizontal videos and playing games.

📺 Razr Ultra’s cover screen remains supreme. It’s one of the biggest reasons I love how Motorola does flip phones, and on the new Razr Ultra, it’s as good as ever. The 4-inch AMOLED cover display is bright, responsive, and spacious enough so that you can do something quick without opening your phone. Need to fire off a text? You can. Wanna post quickly to X? You can. Need to kill time and play a game? You can. There are a bunch of widgets you can swipe through, too, for quick glances at the weather or your calendar. Samsung has caught up a bit with the Galaxy Z Flip, sure, but Moto still lets you run full-fledged apps on the Razr Ultra’s, which helps it stand out. It’s also stronger than ever thanks to Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3, which is 75% more protective against drops than what was on the previous Razr Ultra.

📸 Beefier cameras for better photos. There’s a new main camera on the front of the Razr Ultra. Motorola has upgraded the 50MP sensor so that it can take in 6x more dynamic range, which should help with capturing light and detail in every setting (especially at night, an area that the previous Razr Ultra struggled in). You also get a 50MP 122-degree ultra-wide/macro camera, a 50MP selfie camera, “true-to-life” color in each photo validated by Pantone, and Dolby Vision Capture support for better processing. I’ll be diving deep into how each sensor performs and whether colors are actually “true-to-life” when I start my review process.

🎥 New camera tricks for the perfect shot. Motorola introduces a couple of new camera features to complement the fresh hardware: Frame Match and Tilt Zoom. The former lets you frame a photo you want someone to take of you: first, line up the background the way you want, tap the shutter button, and an overlay will appear on the screen. Pass your phone off to someone else and they can easily position the camera the way you had it, helping you get the right shot every time. Meanwhile, Tilt Zoom works in camcorder mode by letting you tilt the phone left or right to zoom in and out, which means you never have to touch the screen to film a video and zoom in. While Tilt Zoom makes more sense on a phone like the Razr Ultra, I can see Frame Match getting copied by other manufacturers in the future - it seems way too obvious.

🤳 Versatile shooting modes. One thing about taking pictures and videos on the Razr Ultra is how versatile the shooting modes are. Bend the phone in half, and you’ll enter camcorder mode, making it easy to record video and control how it looks with one hand. It also makes it easy to take group photos in tripod mode, and your subject can see how they’re framed on the cover screen before the photo is taken. All of those features (and more) are arriving on the new Razr Ultra.

👗 A stylish Google Photos AI update. There’s also a new feature debuting first on the Razr Ultra: wardrobe. Over time, Photos will recognize the outfits and clothing you have and organize them all so you can get a bird’s eye view of what’s in your closet. You can then use AI to mix and match different outfits so you can see what goes with what. The feature will roll out first on Moto’s latest Razr phones before coming to other Android devices in the coming months.

🤖 Speaking of AI… Yeah, there’s still a whole bunch of AI on the Razr Ultra. From deep Gemini integration to Perplexity, Copilot, and more, there’s no lack of AI tools at your disposal on this device. There’s even a dedicated key to access it all, something Moto originally introduced last year. The company wasn’t as bombastic about AI as it was last year, but it did stress that all the same features are on board.

⚙️ A small performance bump. The new Razr Ultra uses a custom Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, the same one found in last year’s Ultra, but with better heat management and efficiency. What does that mean for you? The phone will run a tiny bit faster, which is fine given that the year-old Razr Ultra is still a very capable smartphone. However, it’s worth mentioning that Samsung is rumored to use the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in the Galaxy Z Flip 8, which could lead to more impressive performance than what the Razr Ultra delivers. Regardless, the Razr Ultra is well-equipped to handle anything you throw at it today, thanks to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

🔋 The biggest battery in any flip phone. The upgrade I’m most excited about is the battery. Motorola has made an important switch from normal lithium-ion batteries to silicone-carbon batteries, which allow for higher capacities without increasing the physical size of the battery. For the Razr Ultra, that means Motorola was able to cram in a 5,000mAh battery, which is really impressive given the size of this phone. I still have to test it to see how long it’ll last, but since the Razr Ultra from last year could go a full day on a charge, I imagine the new version will have no problem delivering the same experience. Plus, you get 68W fast wired charging, 30W wireless charging, and reverse wireless charging.

The new Razr Ultra’s on the left, while last year’s is on the right. (Credit: Max Buondonno / The Shortcut)

🧠 Heavy déjà vu. Every time I picked up the new Razr Ultra, it reminded me a lot of using the one from last year. Motorola didn’t make any flashy changes this year beyond the new colorways, which are very nice, but everything else sort of fades away. The battery’s bigger, there’s a new camera sensor, the screen’s a bit brighter, and the processor is a little faster. Is that enough to justify a $200 price increase? On paper, it might not seem like it, but we’ll need to wait and see how it plays out in the real world when we have our review samples.

Pricing and availability

Motorola says the new Razr Ultra will go up for preorder on May 14 at Best Buy, Amazon, and Motorola.com. It’ll launch a week later on May 21. As of now, it doesn’t sound like there will be any trade-in deals or other promotions at launch, nor will there be carrier availability, though the phone will work on any carrier in the United States.