I hesitate to call this a review since I did not use this Motorola Razr as my primary phone for any substantial amount of time. However, I did acquire it fully intending to put it through its paces as far as accessibility was concerned, particularly when it came to the external display with Talkback use. That being said, I will also share my impressions of the hardware and the general software experience when it comes to accessibility. The device I used was a Motorola Razr Plus 2024 running Android 15. While all my hardware impressions will only pertain to this specific device, and my software experience for the external display should be very similar on all Motorola Razr devices, the rest of my impressions on accessibility for the regular interface on the internal display should also apply to most Motorola devices running Android 15.
Table of Contents
Hardware
This Motorola Razr Plus 2024 does have a great build to it. It does not have flat sides like most devices these days. It is rounded on all of the edges and corners. The volume keys and side key (for voice assistant or power menu) are located along the right side, the volume keys being closer to the top of the phone. The SIM tray is along the left side of the device near the top of the phone. The model I was using had a vegan leather back and it felt very durable. I would probably feel comfortable using this without a case. It has a very satisfying flip motion to it while opening and closing. Also, the crease on the screen when open is about average for a modern folding phone. It is definitely noticeable, but you will forget about it when using the phone.
Speaking of not using a case, the reason I have to use a case on most phones I use is because I cannot use the Braille keyboard in “Screen Away” mode without my fingers touching the very edges of the screen and causing it to malfunction. It is different with this phone however, maybe because the screen does not go edge to edge, and the sides are not completely flat, but rounded. I am able to type in “Screen Away” mode with no case on this device perfectly.
The Motorola Razr Plus 2024 runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, so the performance is great. Absolutely no issues there even while using TalkBack. It feels like a slightly more responsive Pixel when unfolded because the UI that Motorola uses on their phones is very close to stock (at least while unfolded).
The fingerprint sensor is great. It is not under the display, but on the side key. It will take a little while to get used to the placement of it because it is almost flush with the device and a little hard to find by touch alone. However, it is very fast and reliable.
The haptics are very nice, about as nice as a Pixel device if you’ve ever used one and better than the haptics on a Samsung device in my opinion.
The microphones work well. No complaints here. It seems to understand everything I was saying when it came to voice commands or voice typing. Also, recordings sounded fine whether it be an audio recording sent through a messaging app or a video recording made with the camera. I am usually a stickler in this department, so saying that it is adequate is a good thing.
The speakers are great for a flip phone. Listening to media on it was much better than I expected. However, there are issues with the accessibility channel like on most devices these days. Not only does the speech from the TTS engine just sound bad, but the volume seems to fluctuate up and down for some reason, and I could not figure out the cause of it. But you don’t have to take my word for it, here is a sample recording I made demonstrating both the speech sound and media sound.
The display was nice enough to my eye. It does not seem to get quite as bright as a current Pixel or Samsung flagship device, but it still gets very bright on both the external and internal displays. One thing worth pointing out is that adjusting the brightness slider on one display will also adjust the brightness on the other display. This is different from Samsung’s approach of letting you set the brightness level for each display separately.
Software on External Display (Cover Screen)
TalkBack Limitations
I’ll start by saying that the external display on this Motorola Razr device does work with TalkBack for the most part. You can focus on and interact with all if not most elements that you come across. All multi finger gestures do work on the external display, assuming that you can fit all of your fingers on it and perform the gesture with room to spare.
The problem is that you cannot see or interact with any TalkBack pop-ups. This means that while the phone is folded shut, you cannot bring up the TalkBack menu or get image descriptions. You can technically get image descriptions if you have it assigned to a gesture that you can perform, but the pop-up that gives you the actual description itself will not appear on the external display and you will have to unfold the device to read the description. For the same reason, you cannot hide the external display. The method that TalkBack uses to hide your screen is that it literally puts a solid black pop-up over the screen rather than turning off the display. This means that when the screen is hidden, it is only the internal screen that is hidden and not the external screen.
Navigation
Similar to the internal display, the external display has its own lock screen that appears when you lift the phone or double tap the screen depending on how you have adjusted these settings. Once you have unlocked the device, you will be taken to the home screen. From here, you can swipe left or right with two fingers to navigate through all of the panels. These panels can be chosen and rearranged by the user. Since the developers put little or no thought into naming this interface, TalkBack refers to it as “secondary display launcher app”. Swiping down from the top of the screen with two fingers will bring down the quick settings panel. This is where you can find your brightness slider, power menu button, and the same quick tiles you have assigned to quick settings on the internal display. To customize which panels appear as part of this interface and what order they appear in, you will need to first perform a pinch-out gesture (slide two fingers toward each other and release). This will take you to a zoomed-out view of all of your panels. The panels on this page are all unlabeled, but the “Edit” button is labeled and this is where you would go to edit these panels. Once you are in the interface for editing, you will have to figure out which unlabeled buttons will add or remove panels, and when rearranging the panels you will have to double tap, hold, and drag with no audible feedback of where you are placing the panel. At least the panels themselves are labeled correctly while in edit mode.
Home Screen
In addition to the status bar, the home screen on the external display includes a clock with date, weather information, four customizable app shortcuts, and a button to take you to your notifications. The four customizable app shortcuts will always have the label “app shortcut” no matter which apps you choose to put there. So if you are going to use this feature, you will have to memorize them by placement.
To find and review your notifications you will need to explore the home screen until you find the notifications button. I say explore because you cannot put this button in focus by swiping. It is located near the bottom left of the home screen and labeled “notification indicator area” (elegant, I know). The notification shade itself is pretty accessible. You can read all notifications and even dismiss them with actions. You will just have no audible confirmation that anything has happened because the TalkBack focus does not automatically land on anything else when the current notification disappears. Then to leave the notifications area, you will have to swipe down with two fingers on the screen. TalkBack’s home and back gestures will not take you out of here.
Optional Panels
In addition to the home screen, some other panels you can add to the external display interface include apps, widgets, weather, communications, games, calendar, timer, stopwatch, Google News, Google Stocks, and Spotify. These panels are usable in my opinion, but also suffer from unlabeled buttons or mislabeled buttons at times.
Apps Panel
The apps panel on the external display can be thought of as a launcher. You are able to add any app or app shortcut to this screen. Thankfully, once you add apps to the screen they are labeled (unlike the 4 app shortcuts on the previously mentioned home screen). The app shortcuts that you add are labeled as well, but only by the shortcut name and not by the app. For example, if you add a shortcut to text a contact and a shortcut to call a contact, both will just be labeled by the contact name and you will have to remember by position which is using the phone app and which is using the messages app.
The customization of these apps and app shortcuts are similar to the previously mentioned panels. You will have to use unlabeled buttons to add the items and you will receive no audible feedback when rearranging them.
While you can run any app on the external display, in most cases, the first time you try to open the app you will be presented with a dialogue letting you know that the app was not designed for the external display. Once you allow it anyway, you will be able to open that app from that point on.
Widgets Panel
The last panel I will touch on in this article is the widgets panel. This is pretty self-explanatory, but any widget that you can add to a launcher, you can add to this panel. Also, the widget will be as accessible on this display as it would be in a regular launcher. And you can also expect a similar experience when customizing this panel as I described earlier with the apps panel.
Software on Internal Display (Main Screen)
The interface on the main screen of this Motorola Razr does not have nearly as many accessibility issues since it is mostly stock Android, but I will share with you the issues I was still able to dig up.
Home and Recent Apps Screens
The launcher is just as accessible as what you would find on a Pixel phone. You are able to add apps to your home screen and rearrange those apps using either actions, or the drag method. Both correctly announce where you are moving the items and folders that you will be creating.
The recent apps screen also does not seem to have any issues as far as I could tell. Actions do work. Motorola has added a button near the bottom of the screen to close all apps. And you are able to swipe with one finger and have the screen automatically scroll between open apps as long as you are using the default launcher. This is the case on most recent Android devices. If you are using a third-party launcher, you will have to use the slide with two fingers method to scroll through the list of recent apps.
Quick Settings and Notifications
As is the case on most current takes on Android, you can choose to have the notification shade and quick settings panel be completely separate interfaces, or use the traditional approach of the notification shade expanding into the quick settings panel. To modify this behavior, you will need to go to the not terribly obvious Settings > Home and Lock Screen > Control Center.
The notification shade seems to have no issues at all. Everything seems to be labeled correctly and you can dismiss and interact with notifications normally.
However, there are some issues with the quick settings panel. The first being that both the “Settings” and “Power Menu” buttons are labeled “Open Settings”, so you will have to verify which is on the left or right before you will know what the button will do when you press it. If you are going to be using the modern quick settings panel that is separate from the notification shade, you will run into additional accessibility oversights. The first being that both the “Media Volume” and “Brightness” sliders are labeled “Brightness”. So you will have to remember which controls which by position. Also, the “Sound Mode” and “Auto-Brightness” buttons below these sliders are not labeled. However, you are able to label them with TalkBack. The media player widget on the modern quick settings panel also suffers from unlabeled buttons. These also can be labeled, and you only have to label them once no matter which app is playing audio.
As far as customizing the quick settings tiles for either quick settings panel style, you are able to use actions to move tiles or add tiles, but not to remove them for some reason. You will have to double tap, hold, and drag to remove quick settings tiles. You can also double tap, hold, and drag to either rearrange the tiles or add tiles, but there is no audible feedback while moving them so you will not know where they have been placed until after you perform the action.
Additional Notes
Customization
Customization on Motorola devices can be pretty frustrating. When you try to change fonts, colors, clock faces, or similar items either on the internal or external displays, most all of these are unlabeled. Even simple color selections are unlabeled. That being said, it is possible to do with the help of TalkBack image descriptions. So if this is something you like to do, it is possible, but will take much longer than it should.
Features
Although this is very close to stock Android, Motorola has added additional functionality and I just wanted to point out a couple of my favorites. Within the sound settings, you are able to set your volume keys to control media when the screen is off. So while media is playing and your screen is off, you can press and hold one of the volume buttons to go forward a track or backward a track. There is also a nice vibration to let you know you have triggered the action. Something else I was impressed with is the flip to open camera gesture. I know this has been on Motorola phones for a while but this was my first time testing it out and it seemed to work very well and it never was accidentally triggered. For those who do like having a quick way to open the camera, this frees up a double press of the side key to do something else if you would like it to.
Jieshuo
For Jieshuo users out there, I was able to get it up and running. I did not test it extensively by any means. However, I was able to install the APK with the default package installer. The only hiccup was that Jieshuo Lite could not be installed because Play Protect flagged it. So you may need to turn off Play Protect temporarily. For whatever reason, this was not a problem when installing Jieshuo Plus. After installing, you are able to enable restricted settings from the “More Options” menu within the app info page for Jieshuo.
Conclusion
I was not impressed with the accessibility of the Motorola Razr Plus 2024 at all. I did not get the sense that Motorola ever went out of their way to ensure anything worked well with talkback, especially on the external display. that being said, at least they did not go out of their way to give you a version of TalkBack that is not feature complete (like Samsung does). however, if you really want a flip phone and don’t want to go the Samsung direction, this device is usable in my opinion.
Comments