RAZR+ Impressions - Is This What You Wanted

The Flipping Phone's Giant Outside Screen: A Game Changer or Overkill?

One of the most exciting features of the new Motorola Flipping phone is its massive outside screen, which takes up almost the entire front face of the device. The screen is perfectly optimized to work seamlessly with various apps, including Google Maps, gPay, and even YouTube. This means that you can take photos, navigate, pay for things, and watch videos without ever having to open the phone. But what's truly impressive about this outside screen is its flexibility and customizability.

The settings page of the phone allows users to enable almost any app on their device to work on the outside screen, with control over continuity settings that ensure apps stay open when you close the phone. This means you can make and receive phone calls, access a scientific calculator, or even type out messages without having to lift the phone. The idea of having an outside screen is revolutionary, and Motorola has truly pushed the boundaries of what's possible on a mobile device.

But as exciting as this feature is, it raises questions about its practicality and necessity. Some might find the constant temptation of the outside screen to be too great, leading to mindless scrolling through social media or other apps. Others might appreciate the convenience and flexibility it offers, especially for productivity tasks like note-taking or browsing the web. As we move forward with technology, it's interesting to consider whether this kind of feature will become ubiquitous or if it's simply a niche appeal.

For Motorola, the Flipping phone represents a new era in mobile design and functionality. With its huge outside screen, it's clear that they're targeting productivity enthusiasts who want to fit as much functionality into their pocket as possible. But for others, this kind of feature might be seen as overkill or too gimmicky. The real question is whether the benefits of having such a powerful outside screen outweigh the potential drawbacks.

Interestingly, Motorola has also announced the Razer Flip 3, another folding phone with a giant outside screen, but with some notable differences. While the Razer has an even larger outside screen than the Flipping phone, its specs are slightly more modest, with a lower-end processor and less storage capacity. However, this comes at the cost of a larger battery and a higher-resolution primary camera. The Razer Flip 3 will be priced similarly to other folding phones on the market, making it an attractive option for those who want a high-quality device without breaking the bank.

The world of foldable smartphones is rapidly evolving, and it's exciting to see manufacturers pushing the boundaries of what's possible with these devices. As we move forward, it'll be interesting to see how consumers respond to features like giant outside screens and whether they become standard across different models or remain niche appeal. With companies like Motorola and Razer leading the charge, one thing is certain: the future of smartphones will be shaped by innovative designs and user-centric features.

The Flipping phone's unique approach to mobile design has sparked both excitement and skepticism among tech enthusiasts. While some see it as a game-changer, others question its practicality and necessity. As we continue to explore the possibilities of foldable smartphones, it'll be fascinating to see how these devices evolve and what benefits or drawbacks they bring to users.

Motorola's latest Flipping phone is an example of the company's commitment to innovation and user experience. By integrating a giant outside screen into its design, Motorola has created a device that's both functional and visually stunning. Whether this feature will become ubiquitous or remain a niche appeal remains to be seen. One thing is certain: the future of smartphones will be shaped by bold designs and forward-thinking innovations.

The Razer Flip 3, another folding phone from Motorola's competitor, offers an intriguing alternative to the Flipping phone. With its slightly more modest specs and lower price point, it presents a compelling option for those who want a high-quality device without breaking the bank. The larger battery and higher-resolution camera are notable upgrades over some of its competitors, making it an attractive choice for users seeking balance between performance and affordability.

As we look to the future of smartphones, one thing is clear: foldable devices will continue to play a significant role in shaping the industry. Manufacturers like Motorola and Razer are pushing the boundaries of what's possible with these devices, and their innovations will undoubtedly have a lasting impact on the market. Whether giant outside screens become a standard feature or remain niche appeal remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the future of smartphones will be shaped by bold designs and user-centric features.

The Motorola Flipping phone represents a new era in mobile design and functionality, with its huge outside screen taking center stage. The device's flexibility and customizability have sparked excitement among tech enthusiasts, and it's clear that Motorola has truly pushed the boundaries of what's possible on a mobile device. But as we move forward with technology, it's essential to consider the practicality and necessity of such features.

The Razer Flip 3 offers an interesting alternative to the Flipping phone, with its slightly more modest specs and lower price point making it a compelling option for those seeking balance between performance and affordability. The larger battery and higher-resolution camera are notable upgrades over some of its competitors, making it an attractive choice for users seeking a high-quality device without breaking the bank.

As we continue to explore the possibilities of foldable smartphones, one thing is certain: the future of these devices will be shaped by innovative designs and user-centric features. Manufacturers like Motorola and Razer are leading the charge, and their innovations will undoubtedly have a lasting impact on the market. Whether giant outside screens become standard across different models or remain niche appeal remains to be seen.

The world of foldable smartphones is rapidly evolving, with manufacturers pushing the boundaries of what's possible. The Motorola Flipping phone and Razer Flip 3 represent two sides of this coin, each offering unique features and benefits. As we move forward, it'll be fascinating to see how consumers respond to these devices and whether they become standard across different models or remain niche appeal.

The future of smartphones will undoubtedly be shaped by bold designs and user-centric features like giant outside screens. Manufacturers are constantly innovating and pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and their efforts will have a lasting impact on the market. Whether this feature becomes ubiquitous or remains niche appeal remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the future of smartphones will be shaped by innovation and user experience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's up MKBHD here and welcome to a Hands-On and first look of a really interesting new folding phone the Moto Razer plus so you know how a lot of these foldable phones have kind of felt like a small bump up from the previous one they're all kind of similar for both the folding and flipping phones well this one feels like a big jump forward for the first time in a while it feels like we're sort of Leaping into the second generation of these flipping phone things that's pretty obvious why so this Razer plus which is the fourth generation of the folding phone for Motorola is going to have a gigantic screen on the outside cover now gigantic is of course a relative term but in the small phone that folds in half and fits in your pocket having a 3.6 in 144hz ped display that goes basically corner to corner all the way around the front and even as pixels around the cameras and the Flash cutouts is pretty dramatically different from what we had before now the rest of the phone is pretty solid tooo right I can't quite call it a flagship since it doesn't really have the highest end available specs but it's pretty close feels like upper you know premium mid-range and the retail price is going to be $9.99 when it launches in a few weeks this summer they've kind of slowly dropped the Retro throwback aesthetic from the first generation of this thing and they've tightened up the edges and modernized the whole thing the huge chin is gone and inside it's a Snapdragon 8 plus gen 1 8 gigs of RAM 256 gigs of storage and a decent size 3800 mAh battery with 30 W charging and 5w wireless charging so yeah not any sort of crazy world beater Flagship specs but still pretty solid I I will note that the 3,800 mAh battery is 1,000 Milah hours greater than the previous gen Razer this thing only had a 2,800 mlia battery so that puts it right in line with the current Z flip the 4 which has a 3700 mamp and then on the inside the main folding display is a 6.9 in 22 by9 1080p P Le display and it's 165hz ltpo display it's not the brightest thing I've ever seen but hey for a folding phone I think it looks really good it's got the whole punch selfie camera at the top the bezels are even thinner and the crease it's not revolutionary it's about as subtle as I've seen in some other folding phones with its redesigned aluminum hinge mechanism it definitely disappears when you're looking at the content and just using the phone but none of that is why this feels like a new generation it feels like a new generation of course because of the giant outside display so let's talk about it this new outside display is really interesting for two reasons one because it's basically what we're also expecting based on the rumors and leaks from what we've seen of Samsung's next flip the flip five it's probably also coming out later this summer but also too because this it does throw a wrench in like how you use a phone like this so like I said this is a 3.6 in 144hz display that basically covers the the entire outside of this phone right up to you get near the hinge where I assume the digitizer is the two primary cameras the 12 megapixel primary and the 13 megapix ultrawide SL macro and the Flash are cutouts with even more pixels around them and in between them and so you can basically do anything you want on this outside screen in its resting state it's just a clock of course but you can change between a bunch of different clock Styles they all have black background so they look pretty seamless on the OLED you also get some basic notifications at the bottom left corner and the ability to manage those notifications when you swipe down from the top you have a whole bunch of quick controls things like brightness and Wi-Fi and a flashlight and whatever media is currently playing but then when you wake it up and unlock with a swipe up from the bottom or a fingerprint unlock you basically get this entire home screen with a wallpaper and a bunch of pages of these things widgets shortcuts Etc now these are limited uh preset Pages they're actually called panels and you can turn them on or off or rearrange them in the settings but they do have a variety of things there's a home panel with the clock and the weather and shortcuts to other panels but then uh of course a calendar panel and a weather panel and a contact panel and you can put them in whatever order you want there's also a Spotify one apparently they've worked with Spotify to create this perfectly optimized one and I do think it looks pretty good but also you can just use whatever app you want on the outside screen there here is a settings page that lets you enable almost any app on your phone to work on the outside screen and control the continuity settings so when you open and close the phone the app stays open which is super useful honestly it sounds pretty great since you can take photos and navigate with Google Maps and pay with gpay and do all kinds of convenient stuff without even opening the phone that's the whole point of the outside screen but it also goes so much further than that you can make and receive phone calls with the phone still closed you can use a whole scientific calculator on the outside screen there's a whole keyboard for typing out messages if you want to send emails or text messages from the outside there's even games of course these are bordering on gimmicky but there's literally games that Motorola built to play on this outside screen like this one where you feed the marble to the end of the maze which is of course the camera cutout like you can watch YouTube videos on this thing if you want to it's going to be a weird Square aspect ratio with all of this but yeah there's basically no limit to what you can do on this outside display it's a super screen it can do whatever you want the screen to do um but hear me out I don't actually know if that's what people want because the more I think about it just just zoom out a little bit with me those uh hot dog style folding phones like the big folding phones those are all productivity monsters you got the screen on the inside and the outside those are for people who want to do as much as possible and fit as big of a screen as they possibly can in their pockets great but then these little flipping phones they've always been smaller and they've always been a little bit more regular I think it's also kind of nice to have a barrier between uh using your phone and not using your phone so if there's just something small and there's a notification you can clear it but I won't get sucked into like scrolling through Tik Tok endlessly or Instagram reels because I will have to open the phone for that but now on this one you can get sucked into Tik toks on the outside screen so is this a good thing I mean for me yeah I mean I I love having tons of functionality on the outside the more the better and they've even built some extra stuff the whole outside screen can be a viewfinder for the camera and there's also this half folded mode that you can use to hold the phone where it feels like an old camcorder from back in the day but the subject can still see themselves there's a lot of cool stuff but yeah I wonder if the customer of a flipping phone like this actually has that like super high on their priority list you know something to think about actually Motorola literally alongside this phone also announced the new Razer so this is the Razer plus we've been talking about with a huge screen for 1,000 bucks but the Razer will come out later this summer and it's also a folding phone but with just the tiny 1 and 1/2 in postage stamp size display on the outside just like from the earliest flipping phones which I don't know just seems to make a lot of sense and the rest of the phone will have just slightly lower end specs like it's a Snapdragon 7 gen one it's a 144 HZ internal display instead of 165 it's 128 gigs of storage instead of 256 it's a vegan leather back instead of Gorilla Glass victus and it's still ip52 water resistant but they didn't tell us the price of this phone so I'm guessing just based on context and knowing that it's probably going to be meaningfully cheaper for this new phone to exist this might be like a $5.99 to 7.99 brand new new folding phone and that's also really interesting plus also because it doesn't have the huge outside screen it has room for a larger battery 4200 milliamp and a larger primary camera 64 megapixel camera so a little lighter on the wallet a little bit more space for other things kind of interesting also speaking of wallets this one's a little bit lighter in your pocket too you can get it at shop. md.com but that's it let me know what you think of the giant outside screen on The Flipping phone is it truly second gen is this where we're going with them all or is this kind of Overkill I'll hang out in the comments for this one I'm really curious what you guys think either way thanks for watching catch you later peacehey what's up MKBHD here and welcome to a Hands-On and first look of a really interesting new folding phone the Moto Razer plus so you know how a lot of these foldable phones have kind of felt like a small bump up from the previous one they're all kind of similar for both the folding and flipping phones well this one feels like a big jump forward for the first time in a while it feels like we're sort of Leaping into the second generation of these flipping phone things that's pretty obvious why so this Razer plus which is the fourth generation of the folding phone for Motorola is going to have a gigantic screen on the outside cover now gigantic is of course a relative term but in the small phone that folds in half and fits in your pocket having a 3.6 in 144hz ped display that goes basically corner to corner all the way around the front and even as pixels around the cameras and the Flash cutouts is pretty dramatically different from what we had before now the rest of the phone is pretty solid tooo right I can't quite call it a flagship since it doesn't really have the highest end available specs but it's pretty close feels like upper you know premium mid-range and the retail price is going to be $9.99 when it launches in a few weeks this summer they've kind of slowly dropped the Retro throwback aesthetic from the first generation of this thing and they've tightened up the edges and modernized the whole thing the huge chin is gone and inside it's a Snapdragon 8 plus gen 1 8 gigs of RAM 256 gigs of storage and a decent size 3800 mAh battery with 30 W charging and 5w wireless charging so yeah not any sort of crazy world beater Flagship specs but still pretty solid I I will note that the 3,800 mAh battery is 1,000 Milah hours greater than the previous gen Razer this thing only had a 2,800 mlia battery so that puts it right in line with the current Z flip the 4 which has a 3700 mamp and then on the inside the main folding display is a 6.9 in 22 by9 1080p P Le display and it's 165hz ltpo display it's not the brightest thing I've ever seen but hey for a folding phone I think it looks really good it's got the whole punch selfie camera at the top the bezels are even thinner and the crease it's not revolutionary it's about as subtle as I've seen in some other folding phones with its redesigned aluminum hinge mechanism it definitely disappears when you're looking at the content and just using the phone but none of that is why this feels like a new generation it feels like a new generation of course because of the giant outside display so let's talk about it this new outside display is really interesting for two reasons one because it's basically what we're also expecting based on the rumors and leaks from what we've seen of Samsung's next flip the flip five it's probably also coming out later this summer but also too because this it does throw a wrench in like how you use a phone like this so like I said this is a 3.6 in 144hz display that basically covers the the entire outside of this phone right up to you get near the hinge where I assume the digitizer is the two primary cameras the 12 megapixel primary and the 13 megapix ultrawide SL macro and the Flash are cutouts with even more pixels around them and in between them and so you can basically do anything you want on this outside screen in its resting state it's just a clock of course but you can change between a bunch of different clock Styles they all have black background so they look pretty seamless on the OLED you also get some basic notifications at the bottom left corner and the ability to manage those notifications when you swipe down from the top you have a whole bunch of quick controls things like brightness and Wi-Fi and a flashlight and whatever media is currently playing but then when you wake it up and unlock with a swipe up from the bottom or a fingerprint unlock you basically get this entire home screen with a wallpaper and a bunch of pages of these things widgets shortcuts Etc now these are limited uh preset Pages they're actually called panels and you can turn them on or off or rearrange them in the settings but they do have a variety of things there's a home panel with the clock and the weather and shortcuts to other panels but then uh of course a calendar panel and a weather panel and a contact panel and you can put them in whatever order you want there's also a Spotify one apparently they've worked with Spotify to create this perfectly optimized one and I do think it looks pretty good but also you can just use whatever app you want on the outside screen there here is a settings page that lets you enable almost any app on your phone to work on the outside screen and control the continuity settings so when you open and close the phone the app stays open which is super useful honestly it sounds pretty great since you can take photos and navigate with Google Maps and pay with gpay and do all kinds of convenient stuff without even opening the phone that's the whole point of the outside screen but it also goes so much further than that you can make and receive phone calls with the phone still closed you can use a whole scientific calculator on the outside screen there's a whole keyboard for typing out messages if you want to send emails or text messages from the outside there's even games of course these are bordering on gimmicky but there's literally games that Motorola built to play on this outside screen like this one where you feed the marble to the end of the maze which is of course the camera cutout like you can watch YouTube videos on this thing if you want to it's going to be a weird Square aspect ratio with all of this but yeah there's basically no limit to what you can do on this outside display it's a super screen it can do whatever you want the screen to do um but hear me out I don't actually know if that's what people want because the more I think about it just just zoom out a little bit with me those uh hot dog style folding phones like the big folding phones those are all productivity monsters you got the screen on the inside and the outside those are for people who want to do as much as possible and fit as big of a screen as they possibly can in their pockets great but then these little flipping phones they've always been smaller and they've always been a little bit more regular I think it's also kind of nice to have a barrier between uh using your phone and not using your phone so if there's just something small and there's a notification you can clear it but I won't get sucked into like scrolling through Tik Tok endlessly or Instagram reels because I will have to open the phone for that but now on this one you can get sucked into Tik toks on the outside screen so is this a good thing I mean for me yeah I mean I I love having tons of functionality on the outside the more the better and they've even built some extra stuff the whole outside screen can be a viewfinder for the camera and there's also this half folded mode that you can use to hold the phone where it feels like an old camcorder from back in the day but the subject can still see themselves there's a lot of cool stuff but yeah I wonder if the customer of a flipping phone like this actually has that like super high on their priority list you know something to think about actually Motorola literally alongside this phone also announced the new Razer so this is the Razer plus we've been talking about with a huge screen for 1,000 bucks but the Razer will come out later this summer and it's also a folding phone but with just the tiny 1 and 1/2 in postage stamp size display on the outside just like from the earliest flipping phones which I don't know just seems to make a lot of sense and the rest of the phone will have just slightly lower end specs like it's a Snapdragon 7 gen one it's a 144 HZ internal display instead of 165 it's 128 gigs of storage instead of 256 it's a vegan leather back instead of Gorilla Glass victus and it's still ip52 water resistant but they didn't tell us the price of this phone so I'm guessing just based on context and knowing that it's probably going to be meaningfully cheaper for this new phone to exist this might be like a $5.99 to 7.99 brand new new folding phone and that's also really interesting plus also because it doesn't have the huge outside screen it has room for a larger battery 4200 milliamp and a larger primary camera 64 megapixel camera so a little lighter on the wallet a little bit more space for other things kind of interesting also speaking of wallets this one's a little bit lighter in your pocket too you can get it at shop. md.com but that's it let me know what you think of the giant outside screen on The Flipping phone is it truly second gen is this where we're going with them all or is this kind of Overkill I'll hang out in the comments for this one I'm really curious what you guys think either way thanks for watching catch you later peace\n"