Razr 40 Ultra: Updates are a mess for Motorola's flagship Razr foldable

Nearly six months have passed since we reviewed the Razr 40 Ultra, which Motorola sells as the Razr+ (curr. $699.99 on Amazon) in North America. Since then, Samsung released the Galaxy Z Flip5 with Android 13, which it has already started updating to Android 14. Predictably, the Razr 40 Ultra remains on Android 13 with no Android 14 update in sight at the time of publication.

Unfortunately, the state of updates for Motorola's latest Razr remains in as much of a mess as it did three years ago with the Razr 5G. While Android Central reported earlier this month that its Razr+ had received build T2TZ33.18-75-9 with the November 2023 set of security patches, other smartphones remain adrift on their launch software. Specifically, some units appear unable to pull over-the-air (OTA) files, which proved the case with our retail unit.

Based on a lengthy Lenovo forums thread, Motorola's engineers are resolving these issues on a case-by-case basis, with an employee informing affected users:

Ultimately, we had to download the Rescue and Smart Assistant (RSA) to upgrade our unit to build number T2TZ33.18-75-9. However, doing so wipes the device in the process and returns it to its factory settings. Worse still, the RSA tool is exclusive to Windows, with no equivalents offered to Linux and Mac users. For these reasons alone, RSA is not an alternate update method to OTA downloads. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether our unit will continue receiving OTA updates from now one. Please see our Razr 40 Ultra/Razr Plus review for full device details.