In the dawn of modern foldables, Motorola’s reimagined Razr and Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5 are the only great choices in 2023.
Design
The design of both devices is similar but there are few differences. The Galaxy has flat sides, while the Razr has curved ones. Both have their pros and cons, but the Motorola has a better grip when holding it, the curved frame makes it feel more comfortable and is just a bit easier to open because of the flaps curving inwards where they meet. Samsung however feels a little bit more premium. As for the overall size, Motorola is just a tad wider and taller, which means a little more screen area. – talking about the main screen.
Another difference is that on the Galaxy – the cameras are sticking out more than the Motorola – and I am not a fan of that,
There is a panel difference in the panel finish on both, the Motorola Razr Plus has a matte glass finish with the Motorola logo etched on it. The galaxy has a glossy glass panel that attracts lots of fingerprints.
When closed, both phones have exactly the same thickness and their weight is also similar. Both the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Motorola Razr Plus can close with no gap, which is great so dust and other pocket debris won’t have a way in between screens. Actually, there is a little bit of a gap on the Samsung Flip 5, but really hard to see. And I will show you why.
Opening the device, they both look similar in terms of bezel thickness but Motorola’s bezels are taller than Z Flip 5. Now talking about the gap, Samsung has these little rubber pads on the bottom of the screen so the screen will rest on it preventing it from completely sitting flat, on the other hand, the Razr rests straight on its bezels. Now one thing to point out, Samsung will rest on its pads and it will prevent the bezels from crushing dust particles which will keep them looking nice in shiny longer than Razr’s.
Now let’s quickly glance at the display crease, It’s less noticeable on the Razr you can barely feel it but it’s more visible on the Galaxy. Also, Galaxy comes with a factory-installed screen protector film , on the Razr seems like it’s missing.
Cover Screen
The cover screen on both devices is really awesome. In terms of size, Motorola features a bigger screen that goes nicely around both cameras. On the Galaxy, the screen is just .2 inch smaller than the Razr leaving it at 3.4 inch. The screen has a cut-out to avoid the cameras. Now looking at both devices we can see that the display on the Galaxy is positioned higher, closer to the hinge giving it a more natural and balanced look and because of that has an advantage – it really improves the reachability of the navigation buttons on the lower left corner. On Motorola, you kinda have to stretch the thumb to be able to reach it and it’s not really convenient.
Galaxy Z Flip 5 has a little better reflective coating on the outer screen than the Motorola Razr Plus which will help a little when using the screen outdoors in bright light.
Now in terms of using the cover screen, Motorola has this really annoying continuous hunt to adjust the screen brightness where the cover screen keeps going from dim to bright and so on, I actually had a closer look at the screen to have an idea where the light sensor but I couldn’t find it. but my guess is that when using the screen the thumb goes over it and triggers it. I know it can be fixed with a software update but I am curious if anyone else experienced the same phenomenon please leave a comment down belowi. Leaving that aside – both cover screens are great but the overall experience is better on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5. And I am going to elaborate on that:
1st off, Galaxy has way more options to customize the Lock Screen widgets. Huge selection of fonts for the time and date, plenty of colors, text alignment options, and sizing options. If we take a look at Motorola, we only see a fraction of what Samsung offers in terms of customizations. Not so many color choices, 2-3 selections of typeface, and not able to change the layout or the text alignment.
2nd – The widgets on the Galaxy are Better optimized and designed for the little cover screen, they just show the information in an efficient way in order to take advantage of the display. Take the Wheater app for example – on the Motorola, it’s only a brief preview of the data unless you tap on it and that will take you to more details – on the Samsung everything is shown there without having to interact too much with the screen, just a simple scroll and that’s it. Another example is the Calendar, on Motorola we are not able to see future events as we do on Samsung.
3rd point is Switching back and forth between widgets – the Galaxy has this pinch-out feature where it will zoom out of the universe and provides a birds-eye view of the widgets, which really speeds up things, on the other hand the Razr 40 ultra has no way to quickly switch between unless you slide one by one.
Now let’s praise Razr’s ability to natively support the usage of pretty much any app on the cover screen, that’s really cool. The Z Flip 5 only supported 5 apps right out of the box, well sort of, I still had to reach the settings app and enable the Galaxy Lab feature for that. However, I was able to get Samsung Good Lock which is an alternative launcher for Galaxy phones that can be downloaded from the Galaxy Store in certain regions of the world. So it’s definitely not a default feature and requires just a few more taps to get it to work, I’ve already done a video on how to get this launcher and I will include a link in the video description.
Performance
Motorola has a year old chip in it the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, while the Galaxy Z Flip 5 uses the newer and slightly more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Is it a huge difference? Well, yes and no. Both of those chips are flagship ones and have plenty of performance, so for the majority of users there will be no noticeable difference, but for those who care about having the best performance, or for gamers, the Galaxy will have an upper hand.
Battery
Motorola has a 3,800mAh battery, the Motorola Razr Plus has one of the largest batteries among flip phones, while the Galaxy uses a slightly smaller, 3,700mAh battery. But that doesn’t matter much because of the newer and more power-efficient chip on the Galaxy kinda evens out. In terms of wireless charging times Flip 5 definitely has the upper hand on the wired charging, you can expect better performance from the Motorola Razr Plus.
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Last update on 2024-02-03 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
- Launch Offer: Purchase the new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 now and get a $150 Amazon gift card
Last update on 2024-02-03 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API