 Motorola Razr. Motorola Razr, it is definitely a phone that folds in half. I just wish that I had other nice things to say about it. The Motorola Razr is a $1,500 phone that's available exclusively on Verizon in the US, although available is kind of optimistic. There have been shipping delays and it's not really showing up in stores yet in a consistent way. It's almost like this phone isn't really ready to be sold yet. And that's because it isn't. I'm not gonna beat around the bush here. The Razr is bad. And even if you think you can deal with its trade-offs, I'm telling you not to really try at all. But the Razr is at least bad in interesting ways because this folding thing, it really is neat. You can see the good phone that's inside this bad one. See, every phone has trade-offs, but the Razr's trade-offs are a little different than what you're used to with most phones. What are you willing to trade in order to get a flip phone with a folding screen? Something that can fit in your pocket and that isn't too thick and that folds completely flat and even has a second display on the outside. Well, first you're gonna have to trade a lot of money. It's $1,500, which is a sky high cost relative to this Razr's capabilities. If this phone didn't fold in half and it cost a penny over say 250 bucks, I would tell you not to buy it. Even at that price, I don't know if I'd even be sure. Motorola makes the Moto G Power, which is much better than this phone and costs $250. That is six times less than this Razr. Next, you trade on camera quality. I'm sorry, but the 16 megapixel camera on this phone is middling at best. It's the kind of camera that you'd expect on a mid-range phone from a couple of years ago. It's passable, but it's super hard to justify this camera in 2020 and definitely not for how much this phone costs. It's just behind. Too many of the shots have blur, there's terrible low light results, and you know what? Just getting focused with this thing is kind of a chore. Now don't get me wrong, I can sometimes get some nice shots with this camera, but you can pretty much say that about any camera. I do like some of the camera features though. It shows this cute little face when you're taking a photo. You can take selfies with the main camera instead of the bad selfie camera, which is good. And there are some neat camera effects, like there's a cinemagraph effect and there's a spot color effect for making just one part of the photograph have a little pop of color. Basically, the camera is retro in pretty much bad ways, but also weirdly, sometimes that's good every now and then. Like take a look at this shot of here, and it's objectively a bad photo, but I kind of love it. Another trade-off is the screen. Look, it's a folding screen, so it's just not gonna be as nice on the overall merits as a Samsung or Apple screen, but I still think it's passable. The crease is actually less visible here than it was on the Galaxy Fold, but you know, you can feel the fact that it's a flexible screen. It's got weird gaps behind the hinge, and that doesn't bother me that much, but what does bother me is the screen actually feels loose in the bottom left-hand corner. Like you can feel it kind of jostling around every time you hit the back button. The reason the screen does all that weird stuff is because it has to move, and it has to have those gaps underneath it so that the thing can fold completely flat. I mean, here, look, you can see it moving as I fold it down, and the way it closes is actually really clever. It forms this teardrop on the inside that lets it fold completely flat. The trade-off is maybe worth it, but I don't know, just barely. The next trade-off that you're gonna have to make is just overall performance. In order to make everything fit in this teeny tiny little package, Motorola had to go with a slower than usual processor for Android phones, but that really shouldn't affect your experience for day-to-day stuff. I was actually fine with it. One of the reasons that Motorola went with that tiny little processor is for battery life, and it turns out that battery life is kinda meh. I did manage to get a full day a couple of days, but I really had to work for it. Most days I was topping off in the late afternoon. It does not support wireless charging, but it does support fast charging when you plug it in via the USB-C port. Oh, also, this is running Android 9, which is another trade-off, and since it's a Verizon phone, there is a ton, and I mean just a ton, of Verizon crapware on this thing. There are 12 extra apps by my count. They're pushing you to use their messaging app, their cloud backup app, and there's a bunch of their spammy little games. On the bright side, Motorola's software enhancements are actually pretty good. I like their gestures for turning on the camera or whatever, and this retro Razer Easter egg is pretty neat, and overall, this just feels like, you know, basic Android. There's also this peak screen on the front, which mostly just shows you notifications, and it's okay. You have to do a lot of weird swiping and holding the icons, so it's a little limited. It's not even as good a notification management system as a smartwatch, but you know, it's better than nothing. So those are the four big trade-offs, price, camera, screen, and performance, and maybe you're telling yourself, hey, you know what, I'm okay with all of those things, because this is a sick flip phone, and I am tired of big giant slabs sticking out of my pocket. Plus, it's just cool, and I like cool things. It is so satisfying to open this thing, to take calls and slam it closed when you wanna hang up on somebody. So cool, all those things are true. The whole point of this phone is how cool it is to have a folding phone, and the experience of opening and closing it, and the experience of opening and closing it kinda sucks. That creaking that you heard at the top of the video, it is very real, and it's only gotten worse every day as I've used this phone. In fact, Motorola even had to issue a statement about it. Here it is. When folding an unfolding Razer, you may hear a sound which is intrinsic to the mechanical movement of the phone. Razer has undergone rigorous durability testing, and the reported sounds in no way affect the quality of the product. Sorry, but it does affect the quality of the product. The sound and the feel of the flip on this phone really do matter. I mean, here's the new Razer. I can barely do it one-handed, but I can do it, but it's a little slow and just sorta... Eh. And then here is the OG Razer. And this, way more satisfying. Let's just go back for a second to this folding screen. It is plastic, and so it's not gonna be as durable as a regular glass screen. But Motorola says that it will last the life of the phone. I don't know, I'm not so sure, but let's just take them at their word on that. There's still the fact that the experience here isn't great. Motorola says that bumps and lumps are normal, and I don't know, but it's so fragile that they even tell you you can't put it in your pocket with the phone open, you've gotta close it first, and that doesn't really inspire confidence for the long term. But the whole thing that's supposed to justify all those trade-offs, the experience of it, it's just not that good. And if it's not that good, then, well, what's the point? Now look, the Razer is super cool when it's closed. I think it looks good, it's got this retro aesthetic. And the first few times you do it, it is really neat to unfold it. The 6.2-inch screen gives you all the benefits of a huge phone, except for the width, I guess, but it is in a tiny little pocketable package. And I think I like the idea of this form factor more than I do a phone that folds out into a tablet, like the Galaxy Fold. But I can't stop thinking about those trade-offs. How much should you pay extra for the folding part? Like I said, this phone, if it costs $250 and didn't fold, would be unacceptable, and this thing costs 1,500. How much are you willing to trade for a fold? You know, another word for trade-off is compromise, and that's what the Motorola Razr is, a compromised phone. Hey, thank you so much for watching. You know, there is another flip phone that just got announced. It's Samsung's phone, it's the Galaxy Z Flip. We just did a hands-on with it, so you should click to look at that. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, take one. Oh. This thing with the stuff? End card. Thanks for watching.