I reviewed the ThinkPhone 25 by Motorola and while it's not as fast as its predecessor, it's the superior phone in so many ways

ThinkPhone 25: 30-second review

The ThinkPhone 25 is a follow-up to the original ThinkPhone, sold under both the Motorola and Lenovo branding.

In many respects, the new ThinkPhone 25 takes the philosophy behind the original design and brings it up to modern standards. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 has been discarded to be replaced by the more power-efficient MediaTek Dimensity 7300-ultra, and the cameras have been overhauled to address what was seen as a weakness in that model.

If you’ve seen any rugged phones, the ThinkPhone 25 doesn’t look anything like them. Instead, it seems like an ordinary, if classy, smartphone.

It even delivers the all-important IP68 standard, which allows the phone to be completely submerged in water up to a depth of 1.5M for 30 minutes without a rubber plug over the USB-C port.

The result is an everyday phone that isn’t significantly compromised by being resistant to drops and the environment.

Its only weakness is that it doesn’t have the massive battery capacity that some rugged designs offer, limiting it to about two days of typical use before needing a recharge. However, the smaller battery in the ThinkPhone 25 recharges from empty to full in under an hour, making this device much more convenient to carry.

Easily one of the best-rugged phones I’ve covered recently and probably the one I’d most recommend for everyday carry (EDC) and those who work outdoors.

But sadly, Motorola decided not to sell it in the USA.

ThinkPhone 25: price and availability

• How much does it cost? £450/€321
• When is it out? Available now in Europe and Asia
• Where can you get it? Available outside the USA from online retailers

The Motorola ThinkPhone 25 only comes in a carbon black colour scheme, making this a single SKU offering.

Motorola's decision not to sell the new ThinkPhone 25 in the USA, a region where it previously sold the original ThinkPhone, will disappoint American customers.

This device costs £449 on Amazon.co.uk in the UK and €599 in most European countries.

It might seem expensive compared to the likes of Ulefone and Doogee, but it is cheaper than the original ThinkPhone, which initially retailed for a wallet-busting $900/£899.

While some aspects of that design have been downgraded, many have been upgraded, so half the price seems a good starting point.

While it is much more expensive than the Samsung Galaxy XCover7 (£274) and the Nokia XR21 (£403.75), the specifications of both those devices aren’t at the same level as those of the ThinkPhone 25.

It might not be cheap, but it represents reasonable value for those who want a practical phone with rugged credentials.

• Value score: 3.5/5

ThinkPhone 25: Specs

ThinkPhone 25: design

• Thin and elegant
• Simplified button layout
• Nano SIM and eSIM
• Wireless charging

I’ve gotten used to rugged phones that look like sci-fi TV show props, so the ThinkPhone 25 is something of a culture shock, being curiously like an ordinary phone.

At only 8.1mm at its thickest point and about 6mm over the majority of its form, this is an elegant design where the screen has a tiny border. The profiled camera cluster is ruining this form, but the cameras have telephoto optics; therefore, I’ll cut it some slack in that respect.

The inclusion of user-definable buttons has become standard on rugged designs, but Motorola didn’t take that path. The only buttons on this phone are the power button and the volume rocker. The power button also doesn’t double as a fingerprint reader, as that’s under the screen, making this phone better suited to left-handed owners than those with a right-side sensor.

There is also no 3.5mm audio jack, but Motorola did include a pair of USB-C headphones in the box with the phone and PSU. The phone also comes with a protective bumper, and attaching this makes the camera lenses flush with the camera cluster.

And with every ThinkPhone 25 box is the tool needed to eject the SIM tray. A paper clip will work fine to eject the tiny tray if you misplace this item.

This tray significantly departs from normal rugged phone standards. It is sized only to accept one Nano SIM and no MicroSD card. However, eSIM support circumvents this design's single SIM limitation to a degree.

An eSIM can be added only with a QR code provided by the service provider, and no physical SIM is needed. That’s an ideal feature for corporate customers since they can remotely switch to a different service provider without the phone needing a SIM sent and installed.

The lack of a MicroSD card is either a showstopper or not for you personally, but it is possible to attach an external SSD to the phone via the USB-C port if you need to carry large amounts of data. I’d trust one of those devices more than a MicroSD card.

A bugbear on many recent rugged designs is that those styling the phones make the back open and flat and fail to use this topology with wireless charging.

The ThinkPhone 25 doesn’t make the same mistake, supporting 15W wireless charging and enhanced 68W wired. In testing, it took around 3 hours and 40 minutes to charge wirelessly from empty, but only 50 minutes using wired. The speed of charging enables a good chunk of battery capacity to be grabbed in a remarkably short amount of time. Perfect for those who forget to charge and wake up with a low battery alert.

What’s striking about this design is that it never feels like a rugged phone, yet it has those credentials. Someone reading this will have an especially tough employee on phones, and this might be the device for them. But equally, should you be rewarding device abuse with such a nice phone?

Design score: 4.5/5

ThinkPhone 25: hardware

• MediaTek SoC
• Power efficient
• p-OLED display

There was a time when almost exclusively branded phones used Samsung or Qualcomm processors, and only Chinese devices used the cheaper MediaTek silicon. The reason was undoubtedly cost because it certainly wasn’t performance.

The MediaTek Dimensity 7300-Ultra demonstrates how far this chip-maker has come, as it’s more powerful than the Snapdragon 7cPlus Gen 3, a popular mid-range SoC.

While it won’t outperform a Snagdragon 8+, the Mediatek Dimensity 7300-Ultra (MT6878) has some enhancements that make it more suitable for a rugged design.

First released in Q3 or 2024, this is a 4nm chip with eight cores that supports both WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4, along with a slew of unique features for camera control.

This chip also supports dual 5G comms. In the right regional scenario, the 140MHz cellular spectrum is allowed to enable a 3.27Gb/s 5G downlink via 3CC carrier aggregation.

In short, there isn’t much that’s old-school or below-par on this SoC, even if, technically, it’s slightly less powerful than the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 that the first ThinkPhone was given.

Most of the difference is down to the GPU, as the ARM Mali-G615 MC2 can’t match the Adreno 730 that the Snapdragon got.

But unless you play highly demanding 3D titles on your phone, this isn’t something you will notice because the ARM Mali-G615 is powerful enough for most uses.

The Dimensity 7300-Ultra gains the upper hand because it’s significantly more power efficient than many mobile processors. This is something I’ll talk about more in the performance section.

The other technology in this phone that needs to be discussed is the display, and the one in the ThinkPhone 25 isn’t a typical panel.

Despite being a curious 1220 x 2670 pixel resolution with a 39:18 ratio, the p-OLED technology display is exceptional in several important ways.

Using the latest version of AMOLED tech, this panel can represent 100% of the DCI-P3 colour space at 10-bits deep, and supports adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz.

But it stands out from even the best IPS panels because it has an incredible peak brightness of 3000nits, making it one of the few phones that is truly capable of HDR10+.

This helps a massive amount when using the phone in strong sunlight since the contrast levels available to the panel are massive. It could be even better with an anti-reflection coating or screensaver, but out of the box, it is still workable in most lighting conditions.

The display might make this phone popular with drone fliers, for whom reflections can be a challenging part of flying outdoors.

• Hardware score: 4/5

ThinkPhone 25: cameras

• 50MP and 2MP sensors on the rear
• 32MP on the front
• Four cameras in total

The ThinkPhone 25 has four cameras:

• Rear camera: 50MP Sony LYTIA 700C primary camera, 13MP Ultrawide angle, 10MP Telephoto
• Front camera: 32MP

With 100MP and even 200MP sensors, the narrative of phone makers is that more megapixels are better, even if that’s not remotely true.

For example, the primary sensor in this phone is only 50MP, but the Sony LYTIA 700C is an incredible sensor that also appeared in the Motorola Edge 2024.

What this sensor does is achieved by having two layers of pixels that the light passes through to create an f/1.8 aperture but with a 1.0 µm pixel size.

Taking the concept of pixel-binning to the next level, Sony developed Ultra Pixel Technology to provide 2.0 µm effective captures while using complex optics to deliver optical image stabilisation. This is all from a 1/1.56-inch sensor and stacked into a phone that’s barely 8mm thick.

In the Motorola Edge, the LYTIA 700C was supported by a 13MP ultrawide sensor that also doubled for Macro shooting. However, with the ThinkPhone 25, there is also a 10MP telephoto sensor that allows optical zooming.

This arrangement makes for a remarkably flexible package that supports tons of special shooting modes and features. If that wasn’t enough, this is one of the few phones I’ve encountered where both the rear and front-facing 32MP sensors can capture 4K video.

If you take the resolution down a little, the rear sensors can also capture 120fps slow motion.

This all sounds wonderful, and phone camera specifications often appear more amazing than the images and video they can capture.

However, in this instance, these aren’t just marketing hype. The LYTIA 700C takes some excellent pictures, makes HDR shooting the norm, and is especially impressive in low-light conditions.

I know all this because, during the time I had the ThinkPhone 25, it was exclusively used to do product photography for my TechRadar Pro reviews. That was a preference over my old Nikon D90, a classic DSLR with some expensive lenses.

My only recent pictures that aren’t from the ThinkPhone 25 are in this review, as I’ve only got one.

The quality of this device’s photography elevates it significantly above what I’ve come to expect from rugged phones, being genuinely top-notch.

Finally, this device also supports Widevine L1 encryption, meaning that playback of streamed services like Netflix, Apple and Disney is all at the best possible resolution.

ThinkPhone 25 Camera samples

Image 1 of 13

• Camera score: 5/5

ThinkPhone 25: performance

• 4nm SoC
• Power efficient
• Less powerful than original ThinkPhone

I had originally intended to compare the ThinkPhone 25 to the original ThinkPhone, but I’ve since stopped using some of the benchmarks, like GeekBench 5, and I no longer have that device to retest it with newer tests.

For those curious, based on my results, the ThinkPhone 25 is less powerful than its predecessor, especially in terms of graphics performance. However, it’s also much more power-efficient.

A better comparison is the Ulefone Armor Mini 20 Pro, a slightly more expensive device with a less powerful SoC and greater battery capacity.

Pitching the Dimensity 7300-Ultra against its Dimensity 6300 cousin demonstrates the extra performance of the newer 4nm chip, as the ThinkPhone 25 is much better at general processing and graphics than the Ulefone. In some tests, it literally doubles the performance, making for a more responsive experience.

However, the Ulefone hardware has one winning trick, and that’s the amount of battery capacity available that allows it to run for roughly five hours longer. But with the extra battery, it probably should have run for even longer. It has 44% more battery than the ThinkPhone 25 but only lasts 34% longer. When you factor in the extra weight of that battery, which makes the phone weigh 76% more, maybe the Motorola design is a better solution.

Or rather, if battery life isn’t critical to you, it might be.

I’ve seen some reviewers giving the ThinkPhone 25 a hard time for being, in processing terms, a step back from the original design. While I can rationalise their disappointment, in retrospect, the SoC in the first ThinkPhone was probably overkill unless you play highly demanding games. And, with the exception of the SoC, almost everything else about the ThinkPhone 25 is better than the phone it replaces, and it’s half the price.

If you want to play 3D games, then other choices exist, but not at this price point.

• Performance score: 4/5

ThinkPhone 25: Final verdict

Given the number of phones and tablets your reviewer handles in a typical year, it’s daunting how few of them I’d actually purchase for my personal use.

Unexpectedly, the ThinkPhone 25 by Motorola is one that I’d switch to as my daily phone in a heartbeat because it ticks so many of my mandatory boxes.

It’s lightweight, has a terrific display, reasonable battery life, can handle being outside, and has excellent cameras. Compared to most Chinese-made rugged phones, they seem remarkably elegant and refined, although regrettably more costly.

The price is the only sticking point with this device because while £450 isn’t expensive where phones are concerned, it’s not an impulse purchase for most people.

But if you can afford it, or you can persuade Motorola to forget you have it, or it’s a business phone provided by a company, then the ThinkPhone 25 is an excellent choice for those who like neat and resilient devices that can deliver so effectively.

Should I buy a ThinkPhone 25?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

Ulefone Armor Mini 20 Pro
Another practical, rugged design with an inbuilt camping light, night vision camera and about 50% more battery capacity than the ThinkPhone 25. It’s also much cheaper, but conversely, the cameras aren’t as good, and the SoC isn’t as powerful. For those needing a cheap, tough phone, the Ulefone Armor Mini 20 Pro might be a good choice.

Read our full Ulefone Armor Mini 20 Pro review

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