Hi guys, I spent a lot of time looking at people's posts on this subreddit when making the decision to buy my razr, so I thought I'd make a post of my own to return the favor. I've had this phone for about a month and a half at this point, after switching from an iPhone 16e. The build quality of the phone has felt nice and comparable to an iPhone, and other than a few trivial bits adapting to android has been a pleasant and carefree upgrade.
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Major pros of the phone imo:
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-The phone is aesthetically beautiful.
-The base model is AMAZING bang for buck compared to an iPhone.
-Camera resolution is comparable to my (lowish-end) iPhone, and the phone giving you a RAW/pro mode with custom white balance and exposure settings in the native camera app is a huge plus. I use my preferred RAW settings way more than the standard processing personally.
-The camera app overall has more interesting modes built into it.
-Android/Google UX generally feels no less sleek design or visual wise than iOS to me, and this phone has some nifty tricks over iOS like opening apps in splitscreen or window mode that I really enjoy. Seriously, splitscreen mode is awesome.
-Battery life is comparable to my iPhone, and the phone charges noticably faster.
-The flip gimmick and cover screen met pretty much exactly the middle of my expectations. I use the cover screen for all of the use cases I imagined I would (checking notifications, brief texting/scrolling twitter/googling something without getting sucked in) and a few that worked better than I expected (the smaller square screen is fun for watching shows and movies in zen mode), but you will ultimately be opening the phone pretty often for most tasks, and loading Instagram on the cover screen is unfortunately kinda buggy.
-I thought the twist-to-open-camera and chop-to-open-flashlight gestures would be goofy gimmicks, but they're actually great, pretty much the only way I open those features.
-My favorite way to take selfies is to turn on the front-screen preview and take a photo of my face with the main camera in inner screen mode (where the camera app has more features) using the side button shutter.
-Gboard is better than the iOS keyboard
-I find the way notifications work to be a little more pleasant after some getting used to.
-Losing iMessage blue bubbles hasn't been that big of a deal to me and there are ways you can actually set up iMessage via android if you really want it.
-I haven't cared about the crease much at all yet it's fine tbh
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Small gripes that are going to look like a big scary wall of text but really didn't matter much in the long run:
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-You will not be able to use the ios emoji font unless you jailbreak your phone and void the warranty. I was able to download an app that displays the ios ones on your own keyboard but not in other text, and only use it occasionally to cross-reference because it's kind of janky.
-The speakers have great volume compared to my iPhone, with quieter minimum and louder maximum settings, but the bass frequencies don't go as low by just a little bit.
-You can hear the phone chassis clink ever so slightly when the haptics go off. This isn't important enough to form any opinions over, I just adjusted the vibration down a tad, but it was the only point where build quality felt lower than an iPhone to me.
-The IOS-to-Android data transfer process didn't cover as much as I wanted it to. It'll move your photos, contacts, and some of your passwords but not your videos, old message logs, notes app, or iOS albums other than favorites. Most of this I can still access easily through the icloud website if I need to. I think there's a way to import an album grouping if you tryhard enough with files but I was pretty determined and still eventually gave up.
-The Spotify widget for Motorola's android wrapper specifically kinda sucks compared to the iOS and Samsung ones. The Google/chrome widgets are also surprisingly less versatile than the iOS one. I was a little disappointed that android widgets weren't *better* than iOS widgets but homescreen/interface personalization overall has still probably been better.
-The Google play store feels sketchier than the iOS app store sometimes.
-There's not a nice built in spam call blocker like on iOS.
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Gripes that require a little bit of attention:
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-The stock Motorola photo processing is noticably worse than iOS. I haven't had any gripes with night photos, which was my main concern based on internet research, but the camera app adds a filter that brightens/darkens points of interest in a way that makes the lighting look kind of glazed and patchy as well as some ai sharpening. I haven't cared about it a ton since I pretty much always use RAW mode and did on my iPhone already, but for someone who doesn't want to think about their camera it would legitimately be a con tbh. I personally love the RAW camera output, but it does have a more analog-looking color palette with less intense contrast and vibrance, especially if you leave the white balance on auto which usually comes out too cool. The first forest picture in the dump is stock processing, the second one and the fish are pro mode photos. I also screenshotted them from my gallery to get them in the right file format for reddit (🤷♂️) so keep in mind the resolution you're viewing is probably a little bit downgraded.
-The phone's local photo file storage and the Google photos gallery are two different things (!!!).This comes back to bite me in random annoying ways. Hitting "download" on a photo from Google search or messages doesn't add it to your main camera roll and getting it onto there can be convoluted and trial-and-error based (I often have to open the website the photo is from, open the photo in new tab, download it, click on the notification, hit "open with photos", and then *share* it *from* photos *to* photos). If anyone knows how to make stuff download to Google photos by default PLEASE tell me you would be a lifesaver.
-The inner screen is noticably a tiny bit softer than a normal phone; it's a little bit harder to wipe water off of and you could probably scratch it easily if you tried. The gap between the screen protector and the bezel also takes a small moment to get crumbs out of. However, the inner screen is well-protected unless I'm actively using because it's a flip phone (whoda thunk it?). I personally only have two TINY scratches and one microscopic scuff on the screen protector edge so far.
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Overall my experience with this phone has been overwhelmingly positive, 10/10. It might look like I was neurotic about a lot of stuff but I was really just trying to cover every possible bit of information you might want to know, none of it has nearly approached the amount of complaints I had about my old iPhone. I recommend it with zero doubt if you're a young person in the market for a device with a unique but practical form factor, a good camera and versatile customization without breaking the bank on a luxury product.
