Motorola

Motorola is the oldest name in mobile phones still selling them — it built the first handheld cellular phone — and it has been owned by Lenovo since 2014. That history matters mainly because Motorola still holds the Razr trademark, which it has revived for its clamshell foldables and which remains one of the few genuinely recognisable phone names outside enthusiast circles.

The range splits cleanly. Razr is the clamshell foldable line, with Ultra denoting the higher-specified model of a generation. Edge is the conventional flagship and upper mid-range line, usually with curved display edges. Moto G is the high-volume budget and mid-range line, and it is where most Motorola phones actually sell. Moto E is entry-level. Naming within Moto G is inconsistent between regions and years — model numbers and suffixes shift — so the model number is the reliable identifier.

Foldables need spec fields that slab phones do not have, and we list them: cover display size alongside the main display, unfolded thickness, and the manufacturer-stated ingress rating. That last one deserves attention. Razr models have carried IP48 where slab flagships carry IP68. The first digit is dust and the second is water, so IP48 means good water protection but a lower dust rating — and dust in a hinge is one of the documented failure modes of folding phones. We report the rating as published; we do not run our own durability tests, and we will not tell you a foldable is as robust as a sealed slab phone.

The other foldable trade-off visible on our tables is battery. A clamshell splits its internal volume across two halves and a hinge, so capacity runs well below a same-price slab phone. Faster charging is the usual compensation.

Motorola's Android layer is close to stock with a small set of gesture shortcuts, which many people prefer. Update commitments on the budget Moto G line are short — often notably shorter than Samsung's A-series equivalent — and that is worth checking per model rather than assuming the Razr policy applies.

One last thing that shows up in ownership rather than on a table: Motorola discounts aggressively and often. Moto G and Edge models in particular spend much of their lives well below launch price, so the USD figure on our sheets is a weaker guide here than it is for Apple or Samsung. If a Motorola phone looks marginal at list price, it is frequently a different proposition a few months later.

We do not sell Motorola products and are not affiliated with Motorola or Lenovo.