It's only been a month, and the 2026 Razr is already letting me down

I was excited for Motorola’s 2026 Razr lineup. I’ve had the 2023 Razr Plus for a few years now, and there’s a lot about it I love. Naturally, the 2026 series caught my attention.

I’ve had the base 2026 Razr for a while, and while there’s still a lot about it that I like, there’s one thing letting it down, and that’s the software. I know — having issues with Motorola software is far from a hot take these days, but even so, I’d hoped for better.

Motorola’s software support is a joke compared to what everyone else offers, and the entire 2026 Razr lineup, excluding the Fold, will only get three years of Android updates. If I bought a Razr Ultra for $1,500, I wouldn’t be very happy.

But that lackluster support window is only a part of the problem. What I find infuriating is the quality of the software updates the phones do get.

Last year, Motorola’s Android 15 update made many of its phones unusable until at least two more software updates — as was the case with my 2023 Razr Plus. Even when the show-stopping bugs were sorted out, plenty of smaller bugs still slipped through.

In the image above, you can see that the date and weather information on the cover screen is cut off. This isn’t a visual anomaly from the camera I used to take the photo — this is a visual bug that has plagued newer Razr models for over a year, and Motorola’s Android 16 update still didn’t address it.

Even though the phones launched in May, my base 2026 Razr and my Razr Fold came with the March security patch and didn’t get an update until midway through June. That update is itself already out of date, bringing the phones to the May security patch they should have launched with, and it hasn’t even fixed the issue on the cover screen. That’s another frustrating thing about Motorola’s software policy — not only do you get a small window of software support, but the updates within are few and far between, with security patches released bi-monthly.

This phone is brand new, but it still suffers from bugs that originated almost a year ago, and any chance of getting it fixed is months away at best. That spells bad news for new Android upgrades, too. Android 17’s app bubbles are one of my favorite new features and one I’m excited to try on my Razr Fold, but given the fact Android 16 came out in June 2025 and last year’s Razr models didn’t get an update until February 2026, I’m not going to hold my breath for trying bubbles on a Moto phone anytime soon.

I don’t want to sound like a hater. I’ve loved every Motorola phone I’ve used, from the legendary first-generation Moto G to my 2023 Razr Plus, the new 2026 Razr, and the Razr Fold — and the software is a big part of that. Updates and bugs aside, Motorola’s software skin is one of my favorites because it feels like the perfect middle ground between a Pixel and Samsung’s One UI. The interface and design are smooth and responsive like a Pixel, while features like the camera and flashlight gestures, the cover screen experience on the regular Razr, and multitasking on the Razr Fold are second to none.

I want Motorola to do well. I want to root for it and have it be a proper competitor to Google, Samsung, and Apple. But Motorola makes it hard to do that when its support experience is so disappointing.