Motorola Razr 60 Ultra review

Android 15 with Hello UI

The Motorola Razr 60 Ultra runs Android 15 with Motorola's in-house customizations on top, called Hello UI. The new software combo brings plenty of AI-powered features. Motorola promises 3 OS updates and 4 years of security patches.

We've repeatedly said that Motorola's software looks a lot like AOSP with some added in-house features and finishing touches, and that remains mostly true.

Something as simple as a font can add a lot of personality though, and Motorola has been doing that expertly. An AI-generated wallpaper option is also on the table if you're after personalization, because AI everything - Motorola calls it Style sync and the idea is to have a wallpaper tailor-made to your outfit for the day.

The customizations live in the usual Moto app 'hub'. Things are now more neatly organized, with the categories that have a lot of entries, like Gestures, fitting things on a single page, no scrolling required.

Homescreen • Moto app

Smart Connect is the new combined name for the features that involve connecting the phone to a PC, tablet, or standalone displays, be it wired or wirelessly. Streaming, mobile desktop, phone to PC, smart sharing, smart clipboard, cross control and more - all features are here under one roof.

There's also a wireless desktop-like environment. You can connect the phone to a smart TV or a monitor to bring out that interface and use the phone as a trackpad and even as a keyboard. There's also a dedicated gaming mode, so you can bring out your game on the big screen.

Smart Connect isn't new to the Motorola ecosystem, but with Android 15, Motorola has enabled voice commands, leveraging AI. You can cast your phone's screen to the TV or extend it to the PC or even search for a file across all connected devices with a simple voice command.

Smart Connect

Razrs have consistently been great when it comes to cover screen functionality, offering a lot more ways to use a clamshell foldable without opening it than any of the competitors, and the 60 Ultra continues along that path.

You get a fully functional quick settings panel and notifications tiles, as well as a large number of apps (you just need to 'enable' them from the edit menu). Defaults such as Gmail, Calendar, Messages, Photos, Gemini and Camera work very well. Games can work, too!

Cover screen

Gemini is available, yes. But besides Google's AI, Motorola also provides its own AI helper, called Moto AI, and it's designed to be accessible from anywhere. The prompt bar is always visible in the app tray and anywhere else across the UI you can invoke it with a double tap on the phone's back.

You can ask Moto AI for pretty much anything on the fly, including stuff related to the phone itself. It can provide a summary of your notifications, record, transcribe, and summarize content on the screen, save photos, screenshots and text notes, and create images from scratch.

Moto AI features

Another new addition to Hello UI is Smart Tabs. They appear as separate tabs in the app drawer. You've got Newsfeed, which is pretty self-explanatory, and Journal. The Journal tab pulls out your recordings, photos, notes and other journal entries from the dedicated Journal app.

Smart Tabs

AI aside, tapping on the phone's back is a nice shortcut gesture. It's called Quick Launch and it's not limited to starting Moto AI specifically. You can alternatively set it to open a specific app, start/stop music playback, or go back to the homescreen or the last used app, among others.

As usual, Motorola's UI offers several other physical shortcuts like this, including the karate chop to toggle the flashlight and the quick wrist twist to start the camera.

Performance and benchmarks

The Motorola Razr 60 Ultra runs on the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, crammed in this compact foldable - it is the most powerful platform on the market. Versions with up to 18GB LPDDR5X RAM and 2TB storage may exist, but in most markets you can expect to see a 16GB/512GB setup (as is our review unit) or maybe a 16GB/1TB spec.

The Razr 60 Ultra is the most powerful flip phone out there, which is great. It cannot be any other way, as it uses the most potent chip on the market to date - the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

But if you compare it to regular phones that utilize the same platform, say Xiaomi 15, you will see that the processor has some notable throttling (about 25%-30%), which brings its performance down to the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 inside the Z Flip6. This also affected the compound AnTuTu score.

The Motorola Razr 60 Ultra never got hot during our tests, because its sustained performance is rather bad. It scored 42% on the CPU stress test and it could never complete the GPU test because it overheats 3 minutes into it!

CPU score • GPU overheating

We ran some games and the experience was trouble-free. But if you expect to make a gaming machine out of this Razr 60 Ultra, you should look elsewhere. In fact, what was even the point of having the best chip, if it cannot be handled and cooled properly. A bit of a waste, if you ask us.