The Motorola Razr 2022 runs Android 12 with some of the closest looks and feel to 'stock' that you can get. There are several in-house customizations, though they don't really affect the general Pixel-like vibe, only enhance it.
There are some Razr-specific touches here and there as well that cater to the abilities of the particular form factor, but we'll get to those in a bit.
Motorola's recent flagshipshave all been promised 3 OS updates and 4 years of security patches. Here with the Razr 2022, however, you'd only be getting two OS upgrades.
Anyway, immediately noticeable is the new Quick Settings interface and notification shade, one of Android 12's more striking visual changes. That means the big bubbly buttons, of which you only get 4 on the first pull, up to 8 on the second, and the full-screen notification shade.
On to widgets, which saw an overhaul with Android 12. The widget picker offers responsive previews for differently-sized widgets. The new API supports dynamic coloring by tying into the Material You theming engine, allowing the widgets to adapt to the wallpaper.
Quick settings • Notification shade • Widgets
Another Android 12 staple, the Material You auto-theming feature, is here too, though it's masked behind a slightly customized Moto-specific theming engine. You can still get wallpaper-based accent colors, which will apply to Google apps and the settings menu.
One bit of customization available specifically for the Razr 2022 form factor is the interactive wallpapers. You can use a dedicated app to download wallpapers that are made to animate, along with opening and closing the hinge of the phone.
Privacy is an especially big deal on Android 12, and the Razr 2022 comes with the latest Google's come up with in the field. That includes the new Privacy dashboard, which offers a unified view of what permission is being used by which app and when. There are also the camera and microphone indicators in the top right corner of the screen for an immediate clue that you're being watched/listened to, but also the quick toggles to limit access to those altogether. There is also the option to determine whether an app gets your precise coordinates or an approximate location.
The in-house features and functionality that the Razr 2022 offers that Google doesn't are conveniently grouped together in the Moto app. These are mostly long-standing Moto features we've seen time and time again.
The first category is personalization - that's where the OS-native autotheming has found a foster home. There is also a wide selection of Moto wallpapers in addition to Google's own, plus the option to leverage AI to create your own from the photos in your gallery.
Then come the gestures. By now, you must have seen Moto's karate chop motion that turns on and off the flashlight and the twisting motion that launches the camera app. Both work even when the device is locked and when it is closed.
A swipe-to-split function is available, too - it triggers split-screen multitasking. You can also double-tap the power button of the phone to do a custom action.
The display-related features are Peek Display and Attentive Display. The former works as a second-best alternative to the Always-on display feature, which is actually missing, but with some added functionality to make up for it.
The screen lights up when it detects motion that's close to the phone or when you pick it up. Once you've received some kind of notification, you can tap on it, see the message, and even interact with it from the lock screen.
Attentive Display disables the screen timeout as long as there's a face looking at the screen. Pretty useful when reading long articles, though you do probably scroll often enough for the screen not to lock anyway.
Then there's the Play section. Here, you'll find the Gametime utility, which offers the usual functionality of such tools, such as call and notification blocking and screen recording. You can also set a display refresh rate on a per-game basis. Additionally, there are optional shortcuts for media playback when the screen is locked using the volume keys and a Dolby Atmos sound enhancement utility.
We appreciate the fact that many of the tutorials and features found within the Moto app are specifically tailored to the Razr 2022.
Tips and tutorials for the Razr 2022
It was particularly cool to see a comprehensive list of all of the camera features available, particularly on the external display of the Razr 2022.
Using the camera on the external display
The Motorola app also goes out of its way to explain how apps work on the external display and how they transition to the main screen when the phone is opened.
Speaking of the external Quick view display, it also gets its own dedicated settings menu. This is where you can edit the panels that appear on the vertical carousel of the display. It is also worth noting that you can separately control the UI and font sizes on the main and external displays.
Per-app settings are also found in this menu. Each app needs to be specifically enabled to work on the Quick view display. You can also control the app transitioning behavior from here. By default, apps opened on the external display will transition to the main display when the Razr 2022 is unfolded. You can also selectively enable the reverse behavior on a per-app basis however you see fit.
Speaking of the Quick view display and app transitions, we can't fail to mention that the Razr 2022 can technically be used in a partially folded/unfolded state. We only really found two apps that respond to this half-opened state. The camera app tweaks the interface a bit, leaving the viewfinder on the top part of the display and all of the controls on the bottom so that the phone can be used in a sort of a "tripod" mode.
Camera app and YouTube reacting to a half-folded Razr 2022
The only other app that tweaked its interface in response to half-folding we found was YouTube.
You can actually do quite a lot on the external Quick view display. It has a lock screen of its own, a notifications and quick toggles shade, and an app drawer of sorts.
Lock screen • Notifications • Quick toggles • Quick toggles • App drawer
Apps need to be specifically enabled in order to appear inside the app drawer of the Quick view display and work on the external display.
Enabling apps to work on the Quick view display
Most apps we tried scaled surprisingly well to the weird resolution and aspect ratio. You still need to moderate your expectations about how usable their UIs will be, but it's still something you don't get with other clamshell foldables.
Apps on the Quick view display
Beyond the notification and quick toggles shade and the app drawer, the Quick view display also gets its own horizontal carousel-style launcher full of what Motorola calls different panels.
There are dedicated panels for your calendar, the weather, and contacts, and even one that launches the camera and its viewfinder and interface.
Panels on the Quick view display
Naturally, you can manage these panels in all the usual ways - add or remove each one from the carousel and rearrange them.
Managing panels on the Quick view display
Introduced in 2021, Motorola's 'ready for' platform enables a multitude of use cases that put the phone in the center of a big-screen experience. Connecting a TV or a monitor allows you to get a Windows-desktop-like environment, play a game on your phone, display it on the external screen, or even have a video chat on a larger display.
The connection can be made with a cable - either with the 'ready for' cable (or another USB-C MHL Alt solution) or with a USB-C-to-C cable with a compatible monitor. Alternatively, you can connect wirelessly to a Miracast-capable display.
If you don't have a mouse and/or keyboard handy, the phone's screen can be used as a trackpad and/or keyboard.
You can also use 'ready for' on a Windows-based PC - it runs within a window on your desktop. This is helpful when you want to run an Android app from your computer or multi-task between devices on just one screen.
Another use case of 'ready for' on a Windows PC is for video calls, where you can use the phone's camera to capture yourself and an external display to see the other participants.
The final Ready For use case is for gaming on a bigger screen - be it TV or laptop/monitor. You connect an external controller and run the game on the phone, with the obvious benefit being the larger display for gameplay.
The Motorola Razr 2022 packs the top-dog Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. It is paired with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 128GB, 256GB of 512GB of non-expandable UFS 3.1 storage. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 has an Octa-core (1x3.19 GHz Cortex-X2 & 3x2.75 GHz Cortex-A710 & 4x1.80 GHz Cortex-A510) CPU setup and a powerful Adreno 730 GPU.
Motorola clearly made no compromises when it comes to the chipset in the Razr 2022. It opted for the best possible silicon around with all of the power and additional features it brings to the table. That being said, it hardly comes as a surprise that the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 feels a bit "crammed" and restricted inside the body of the Razr 2022 with its specific form factor and limited cooling potential.
Still, thermals are not a major concern when it comes to short bursty loads, and GeekBench clearly shows that the Razr 2022 has plenty of power to throw around for these.
Higher is better
Higher is better
The same goes for AnTuTu with its much more compound set of tests. The solid, though far from the chart-topping, performance of the Razr 2022 puts it well in line and even above some of its other foldable clamshell competitors. We just have to moderate our expectations and accept that the Razr 2022 is leaving some of the potential performance of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 on the table.
Higher is better
There is nothing particularly interesting about the on-screen GFXBench results. The Adreno 730 inside the Razr 2022 performs as expected. However, in a pretty odd development, the phone appears to consistently be struggling and underperforming in off-screen scenarios. Not that that matters much in practical terms.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
As the graphics runs get lower in intensity, it also becomes clear that the refresh rate is not locked at 60Hz for these benchmarks despite the fact that they are correctly not recognized as games by the phone. Apparently, Motorola's automatic refresh rate switching is even smarter than we originally thought, which is great to see.
Higher is better
Higher is better
The Razr 2022 suspiciously hits 144 fps in the Manhattan 2.0 off-screen 1080p rendering test, which hints that the 144Hz cap on refresh rate is also enforced somewhere in the graphics rendering pipeline as a whole since it seems to be affecting off-screen rendering as well. Again, not something that matters in real-world terms, but an interesting observation nontheless.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Rather expectedly, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 managed to max out the scoring on the Slingshot, Slingshot Extreme and Wild Life tests inside 3D Mark, so we had to resort to Wildlife Extreme, where the Razr 2022 did surprisingly well. The test is fairly short which might explain the high score, though.
Higher is better
All things considered, we can't complain about the Razr 2022 performance. Sure, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 can't properly stretch its legs within that constraining flip shell, but even crippled, its performance is plenty, especially in practical terms. Motorola could have gone for a lower-tier chip, but that would have created an image problem for their flagship product, so it's a bit of a catch-22 situation.
Motorola has crammed a flagship Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 inside the Razr 2022, so naturally, heat is a concern from the get-go. The phone does, indeed, get quite toasty under prolonged loads. Luckily most of the heat is concentrated under the external display right above the hinge of the phone where the chipset is, so actual in-hand comfort is not affected too much.
Still, the Razr 2022 has a lot of internal heat to deal with, and one of the ways it does so is by aggressively throttling down the performance of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset.
Our testing revealed substantial performance losses and a very aggressive throttling curve. Both of these are understandable, given the form factor of the device. At least on a positive note, all of the dips in performance appear to be controlled and deliberate, and there are no sudden or jarring ones to worry about. Those are the ones that typically result in stutters in-game, and the Razr 2022 seems to be preemptively dialing itself back to avoid such scenarios.
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