Motorola Razr 70 Ultra Review
Motorola Razr 70 Ultra pros and cons
Fantastic foldable stamina, thanks to 5,000 mAh battery.
Premium Pantone-approved finishes.
Highly functional external display.
Great Android customisation in Hello UI.
Slightly pricey at £1,199.
22:9 inner display aspect ratio unwieldy for landscape content.
The Motorola RAZR 70 Ultra continues to represent both the most attractive and practical use case for foldables, offering a highly refined clamshell experience alongside high-end hardware and striking looks.
Equal parts bold fashion statement and daily driver for technology enthusiasts, it’s proof that Moto doesn’t miss.
Find out what's changed for 2026 in our Motorola RAZR 70 Ultra review!
Design and specifications
Motorola’s RAZR 70 Ultra device is the perfect example of weaponised nostalgia - we’ve long been fans of the clamshell foldable form factor here at Uswitch Towers, and this device hits dead centre in courting its target demographic as well as attracting inquisitive new audiences.
Evoking Motorola’s heritage in both naming and design, the RAZR 70 Ultra represents the pinnacle of their flagship foldable line-up, this newest iteration seeing refinements and revisions on multiple fronts.
To recap, the RAZR 70 Ultra boasts an advanced clamshell mechanism that houses both an outer display and an inner, larger screen - effectively giving the device two distinct methods of use.
The inner display functions much like a traditional smartphone, but the outer, square display is where a lot of the exciting novelties find themselves. Over time, these screens have gone from little more than tiny glorified clock faces to fully-fledged smartphones in their own right, to the point where the majority - if not all - app features and functions can be conducted without even opening the device.
So the RAZR 70 Ultra snaps shut confidently to make an eminently diminutive and pocketable gadget, but one which doesn’t compromise on core smartphone features, and exudes premium flourishes throughout.
Build quality is sublime - the RAZR 70 Ultra feels incredibly solid in the palm, whilst the hinge is surprisingly sturdy and has a resistance to operation.
This means that it can be comfortably placed on a desk with the device semi-open at 90 degrees, but also that the ultra-satisfying ‘snap’ of shutting the device remains present and correct.
The device is also a bit of a looker, with Motorola having updated its vibrant colour palette through an ongoing partnership with the arbiters of aesthetics - Pantone.
The RAZR 70 Ultra is available in two bold options that steer clear of the staid glass rears found on most smartphones - we’re talking warmth and texture with a beautiful Orient Blue via an Alcantara material finish and a second stunning Cocoa wood veneer - both official Pantone hues, naturally.
It’s difficult to convey just how refreshing it is to have a nice-sized phone to be able to drop into a shirt front or easily into a shoulder bag. The RAZR 70 Ultra is just a joy to pop into a purse or pocket, rather than worrying about lugging a weighty brick around.
Marry that with the warmth and subtle grooves of the wooden rear - the model in for review - and it’s arguably one of the greatest devices around in terms of ergonomics, and certainly the most fun we’ve had in 2026.
Measuring 15.69mm thick when closed and weighing just 199g, the device strikes an excellent balance between portability and premium heft. Motorola has also combined military-grade toughness thanks to both Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic protection on the exterior, as well as an IP48 certification.
Dust and particles are a bit of an issue, as both the hinge and softer inner display are susceptible to damage if careless, but Motorola continues to have quite a pronounced lip around the edges of the display, both acting as protection against dirt ingress for the inner screen and serving as the actual contact points when snapping the device closed.
The RAZR 70 Ultra can also boast brains as well as beauty, trading in current-generation technology due to being powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform, as well as offering 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage.
When it comes to buttons, the right side plays host to a pair of distinct volume controls - which interestingly have to reverse roles when the phone is opened and the bottom one becomes top - as well as a power button that also serves as the fingerprint reader.
It’s thin, but still serves as rapid and responsive for secure access to the device - no issues there.
As for the left side, a solitary button where a long press takes you into the world of Moto AI, filled with features and functions to streamline the smartphone experience - more on this later!
Display(s) and audio
The 6.96-inch LTPO AMOLED internal display is vibrant, incredibly sharp and fantastic for immersive media consumption, although the aspect ratio does make it a bit of a letterbox when browsing content in landscape mode.
its narrow and tall stature does invariably make it far more suited to viewing content in portrait, but it’s okay on average.
Resolution is a none-too-shabby at 1.5K or 1224 x 2992 pixels, whilst peak brightness has seen a welcome bump from 4,500 nits up to a staggering 5,000 nits. This makes visibility in direct, harsh sunlight pretty impressive on the Razr 70 Ultra, a decisive improvement.
However, it is important to temper expectations slightly - despite a headline-grabbing 165Hz adaptive refresh rate, and much like the 60 Ultra before it, the screen dynamically caps itself at a standard 120Hz in everyday scenarios to preserve battery.
So whether scrolling through social feeds, navigating system menus or reading text, you will not be seeing the full 165Hz, it’s a ceiling which is unlocked when playing specific mobile games, rather than a standard setting.
Away from the frame rate nuances, eye comfort remains a major priority. The panel features advanced dimming capabilities and Low Blue Light certification to reduce strain during extended reading sessions.
It’s the outer 4-inch AMOLED screen - 1272 x 1080 resolution with a peak brightness of 3000 nits - that is genuinely transformative for the 70 Ultra’s user experience. Matching the impressive size of the 60 Ultra, it offers the same gaming-specific refresh rate behaviours as the inner screen, but is 120Hz in general use.
It remains spacious enough to let you run apps, tap out emails and messages, as well as viewing content without ever opening the device.
Content looks rich and lifelike across both panels (although definitely needs to be viewed up close on the outer display), fully backed by comprehensive DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage and HDR10+ certification.
The stereo speakers produce loud, punchy and full-bodied sound. Retaining the excellent Dolby Atmos support seen on the 60 Ultra, the audio setup complements the cinematic visuals perfectly.
Vocal clarity during phone calls is exceptionally crisp, whether the device is flipped open or completely closed, thanks to an intelligent multi-microphone array that successfully isolates background ambient noise.
So a novel form factor - although the return of the flip is more than a decade at this point - and Motorola’s confident device deservedly shows how it's done when it comes to audio-visual quality without compromise.
Camera capabilities
Motorola has equipped the RAZR 70 Ultra with a highly capable and versatile imaging setup, with the most exciting upgrade coming in the form of a new 50-megapixel main lens, paired with an advanced LOFIC sensor.
Standing for ‘Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor’, this new cutting-edge sensor is purported to radically improve dynamic range in challenging lighting conditions, perfectly balancing harsh highlights and deep shadows for crisp night-time portraits.
A really appreciated feature, and a complete surprise on this phone, with results really meeting the mark when it comes to richness and clarity in both harsh daylight and moodier settings alike.
A lucky photo with Chali 2na from Jurassic 5 (hip-hop royalty!) in a dimly-lit Jazz Cafe turned out well, with the RAZR 70 Ultra’s output proving vibrant and clear despite the dusky surroundings.
Similar striking shots of a Norfolk beach sunset with minimal effort saw me become a quick LOFIC believer…very impressive stuff in general, let alone on a foldable device.
The secondary rear camera is another 50-megapixel effort, this time an ultrawide lens that captures expansive landscapes and group shots with superb dynamic range and natural colour reproduction.
This represents a massive upgrade over earlier 13MP ultrawide sensors, ensuring consistency across all rear-facing shots.
Images from Comic-Con managed to capture both the fine detail of individuals’ outfits and the contrast between subjects and backgrounds.
This was also a great opportunity to put the ‘Frame Match’ feature to the test, allowing others to execute your artistic vision - the first press of the shutter creates a locked, transparent overlay of your preferred background onto the screen. When handing the device to someone else, they simply have to match it up with said frame, and the ideal photo is created.
The novelty of the feature meant some additional explaining, but a good selection of photos as a consequence.
Around the front, a 50-megapixel internal camera featuring a wide f/2.0 aperture handles video calls and selfies with ease, also delivering incredibly sharp and well-lit results in a wide variety of lighting conditions.
Usage of the camera was certainly an interesting experience, as the RAZR 70 Ultra’s form factor plays heavily in the actual nature of images taken in a variety of ways.
The external screen can act as both a preview display that dynamically activates when about to snap a photo, as well as show one of a set of amusing animations to grab subjects’ attention.
Both applications completely changed the demeanour of those about to be photographed, either resulting in a big cheesy grin, a last-minute touch-up, or both.
In almost all cases, people remarked on how cool it was to be able to see something in a photo that wasn’t a selfie - a great practical application of the RAZR 70 Ultra’s outer screen in terms of camera capabilities.
It is a little unwieldy to whip out and flip out and snap at a moment’s notice, but the RAZR 70 Ultra’s snapper credentials more than make up for it, with resulting images being seriously impressive for such a slender smartphone.
Zoom is one area where we saw decidedly mixed results, attempts to capture a rabbit at distance were both behind expectations due to a slower shutter speed than needed, as well as just a muddy final image...
Also important to note that the device’s video credentials are equally strong, going all the way up to 4K at 60 frames per second and 8K at 30 fps, all with Pantone Validated colour correction where appropriate.
Not only that, but once again form plays a role, as bending the screen whilst in landscape turns on ‘camcorder mode’, instantly starting recording video, and allowing users to hold it like an old-school handheld video recorder (or pretending to if too young to have ever experienced one), capturing moving moments in either portrait or landscape format.
There’s just a playfulness and tactility that permeates through the RAZR 70 Ultra, and whilst admittedly many of these functions were present in previous iterations, this model just continues to be the perfect example of a world beyond identikit black smartphone slabs - and the industry is richer for it.
Check out the latest mobile phone deals on Uswitch
Performance and software
Powering the handset is the top-tier Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform - no change here from last season’s model, but still a powerhouse where it counts.
This advanced 3nm chip delivers blistering operational speeds and introduces highly efficient thermal management to maintain high performance during sustained workloads.
The phone easily handles intense multitasking, heavy image processing and demanding open-world games with complete smoothness.
The device runs on Android 16 with Motorola's refined overlay, delivering a bold, highly customisable visual style and a brilliantly fluid experience out of the box.
Navigating the interface feels incredibly snappy, with Snapdragon silicon ensuring that both the internal and external displays transition and operate seamlessly.
For users leaping to a foldable, Motorola has packed the operating system with intelligent, contextual tips that pop up proactively based on usage patterns.
These tips effectively handhold the user, offering friendly guidance on how to best configure the outer screen, manage split-screen multitasking, and unlock hidden shortcuts to get the absolute most out of the hardware - not one for power users, but a welcome initiation for those less familiar with bleeding edge hardware.
Crucially, Motorola continues to champion tactile intuition by remaining one of the few manufacturers still actively supporting classic physical gestures.
It is a massive win for daily convenience: a double 'chop' motion of the device instantly toggles the torch, while a quick double-twist of the wrist launches the camera, which is a spectacularly cool and effortless way to quickly snap a selfie using the main lenses and external display.
On the downside, the software is not entirely immaculate, as a significant amount of promotional content and bloatware in the native newsfeed panel.
Privacy-conscious power users should note a specific, ironic caveat here - deploying a custom private DNS server like AdGuard to strip away these integrated ads can break the software layout of the newsfeed entirely.
Rather than cleanly removing the clutter, it tends to leave broken, unresponsive blank blocks, which unfortunately diminishes the overall usability of that specific screen interface, although it can just be deactivated outright in the settings menu.
To round out the package, Motorola has layered a wealth of clever proprietary AI integrations directly on top of Android's native capabilities.
Beyond the standard baseline Google Gemini integration of Circle to Search and the like, the phone introduces a wealth of bespoke features such as Style Sync - using Generative AI to analyse a photo of your outfit and automatically create a matching wallpaper theme - more examples of that youthful demographic that Motorola are aiming for with this device.
Combined with advanced on-device text composition tools and smart notifications, Motorola's AI integration shuodl be commended for being more considered than others, ensuring the entire user experience feels genuinely additive to daily use.
The RAZR 70 Ultra also promises a decent degree of support - worthy given the cost of the outlay - meaning three years of operating system updates, as well as five years of security updates.
Battery life and charging
The RAZR 70 Ultra wows with a whopping 5000mAh battery - easily the largest to be found in a flip phone and a nice spec bump from the 4700 mAh effort found in the RAZR 60 Ultra (review here).
The device easily powers through a full day of heavy use, and stretches well into a second day with judicious screen time.
I found that pairing it with a Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro did eat into the battery somewhat, resulting in daily charges needed, thankfully it was a breeze when doing so due to the support for 68W wired fast charging.
Wireless charging is equally impressive and supported at 30W, provided you have a compatible high-speed charging stand (sold separately).
Motorola Razr 70 Ultra UK pricing and availability
The Motorola RAZR 70 Ultra launched in May, and is priced at a substantial £1,199 in the United Kingdom.
Launch incentives are particularly strong, with Motorola currently bundling a free Moto Tag and a pair of Moto Buds Loop headphones, adding hundreds of pounds worth of value for early buyers.
It is widely available from major networks, although the above discount is available directly from the Motorola online shop.
Final verdict
The Motorola RAZR 70 Ultra does admittedly have a price which matches its premium credentials, but in both looks and performance cements itself as a spectacular flip phone, and the leading contender in the highly competitive premium foldable market.
With its best-in-class battery life, highly functional external display and refined design, it delivers a genuinely uncompromising flagship experience - with a fantastic camera array serving as icing on a particularly decadent smartphone cake.
For those who want a folding phone that excels in high-end style, premier hardware features and reliable daily usability, the RAZR 70 Ultra is a superb option which we would recommend without little reservation beyond the price tag.
