Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 vs Motorola Razr (2024): flipping pancakes – Ultra-Sim

Intro

Motorola has been doing a great job at offering affordable foldables under the Razr brand — well, “affordable” is a subjective concept here. But, by all means, the Motorola Razr (2024) costs $699.99 which is pretty impressive for a phone that folds right through its middle, right?

But that’s not to say the Samsung doesn’t have a lot going for it. It’s clearly the more powerful phone, it has a tough hinge that inspires more confidence, it has the Galaxy AI tricks, and it will probably have the better camera — we’ll hold final judgement until we get the test units in our hands.

The Razr has the bigger cover screen — it looks lovely, and is very useful, as it can run full Android apps instead of being restricted to widgets.

Design and Size

Similar battle

Motorola takes a pretty bold approach with its external ticker screen — it’s actually an entire cover screen on the Razr (2024). It’s a full-blown Android experience — runs a home screen, launched any app you tap on. Provided the app is coded to scale right to any screen (most are nowadays), you can do anything without even opening the phone — order food, track your Uber, do a quick Google search or email checkup. It manages to look pretty impressive, especially on a $700 foldable — the cover is almost all screen.

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 — like last year — has a slightly smaller cover screen, which is not a full rectangular shape as it steers awkwardly around the cameras. It’s fairly large, but it’s mostly a “ticker screen” — capable of showing oversized widgets. This includes widgets for stock Samsung apps, but there’s also an API for willing 3rd party developers to make their own.

The other half of the phones is also interesting to explore, as Motorola dresses its Razr phones in stylish vegan leather, which feels grippy and premium. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 has a matte glass, which offers its own cold touch of class.

The Z Flip 6 comes with the new Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protecting the cover display, but Motorola didn’t skimp on shatter protection — it still has Gorilla Glass Victus for its own cover screen. Samsung did enhance its ingress protection to get an IP48 rating this year — it’s not dust-tight, but it will prevent particles 1mm or bigger from entering the phone’s hinge. Bit it’s water-resistant, and so is the Moto Razr with its IPX8 rating.

Colors-wise, the Razr (2024) comes in Spritz Orange, Beach Sand (light gray-ish with a pinch of tan), and Koala Gray. Samsung’s Z Flip 6 comes with more choice — Silver,  Shadow, Yellow, Blue, Mint, then three more at the Samsung.com store — Crafted Black, White, and Peach.

The unboxing experience with both of these phones will be the same — both come with a USB C cable… and that’s it.

Display Differences

Both of these phones pack OLED main screens — the Galaxy Z Flip 6 has the Samsung-branded Dynamic AMOLED X2 screen hits a peak brightness of 2,600 nits, which will be great for HDR content. Its dynamic refresh rate goes as high as 120 Hz for smooth animations, though the external screen is locked to 60 Hz.

The Motorola Razr (2024) main screen has 3,000 nits peak brightness — that little $700 overachiever — and a 120 Hz refresh rate, and its external display still has 90 Hz so it will feel smoother than a simple “substitute screen”.

The main screens are similar in size, but it’s worth to mention that the Razr (2024) has a 6.9-inch display, the Z Flip 6 is slightly smaller at 6.7 inches. Both companies have worked to reduce — but not yet eliminate — the crease.

Additionally, the Z Flip 6’s cover display has 1,600 nits of peak brightness, which less than the 2400 nits of the Moto’s external display. Keep in mind, though, these are peak brightness numbers — an area of the screan, measured for a small amount of time. We will be running tests to see how these actually perform for full-screen brightness, and under the bright summer sky.

Performance and Software

We found the cut corners

The Motorola Razr (2024) has a MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chip — that’s where the corners were cut. Its an upper-midrange processor, which will feel slower than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, no way around that. It’s another octa-core, 4 nm chip, but taps out at 2.5 GHz.

The Dimensity does have an NPU core, but Motorola doesn’t utilize it for any fancy AI features — just a wallpaper generator, AI system optimization, and a photo booth with effects. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 has the full plethora of Galaxy AI on board — live call translation, generative image editing, recording and text summaries, the works.

The only storage option for the Motorola Razr (2024) is 256 GB with 8 GB of LPDDR4X RAM. You can boost the latter by dedicating another 8 GB from the storage for Virtual Memory. The storage type is not disclosed in the Moto specs, but the Dimensity 7300X supports UFS 3.1, so that’s that.

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 comes with 256 GB and 512 GB UFS 4.0 storage options, and 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The memory chips, combined with the processor, will definitely be a huge boost in performance over the Motorola.

As for software support, Samsung has started to offer 7 years of Android updates and security patches with its more premium phones, and the Z Flip 6 is no different. In comparison, Motorola continues to offer 3 years of Android updates.

Camera

Probably a steep hill for the Moto to climb

The two phones come with similar camera specs — 50 MP main and 12 MP ultra-wide on the Flip 6; 50 MP main and 13 MP ultra-wide for the Razr (2024).

For selfies, the Z Flip 6 sticks to a 10 MP snapper, the Motorola Razr (2024) has a 32 MP sensor for bragging rights.

Battery Life and Charging

Similar performance?

The Motorola Razr (2024) has the slightly bigger battery here, at 4,200 mAh. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 sports a 4,000 mAh cell. Yeah, these aren’t exactly flagship capacities here, but still quite impressive, considering how little room there is for battery in these folding phones.

So, which one will last longer? Our bets are on the Motorola — it has slightly more capacity, its software is lighter than Samsung’s feature-rich One UI, and it needs to feed a less powerful processor. Benchmarks and test time will tell the full story, though.

The Razr (2024) supports 30 W charging, the Z Flip 6 maxes out at 25W. No super-intense charging from either of these, but they do support 15 W wireless top-up.

Specs Comparison

The Motorola Razr (2024) holds its own in many areas here, but lacks the premium reverse-wireless spec to charge your accessories off the phone, and has weaker hardware.

Summary