Motorola has been perfecting the flip phone for years now with their incredible and fashion-forward Razr family, and with the new Motorola Razr Fold, the company is finally stepping into book-style foldable territory – the arena Samsung has more or less owned in the U.S. After spending time with the Fold, can we testify that it was worth the wait?
Beautifully built
The Motorola Razr Fold is gorgeous. Motorola sent us over the Pantone Lily White finish, which has a soft, silk-inspired sheen that creates a nice grip. There’s also a Pantone Blackened Blue version with a woven diamond piqué-inspired texture.
The curves are nicely contoured, easy to grip, and the build quality is impressive. At 4.55mm thin when open and 9.89mm closed, the Razr Fold feels substantial without being chunky. Motorola says this is the first smartphone ever to use Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3, with a stainless steel teardrop hinge holding it all together.
The inner crease on the Razr Fold is a bit more visible than Oppo’s Find N6, but we’re grasping at straws here, because most people will hardly notice it.
IP48 and IP49 protection ratings round things out. That means it’s not fully dustproof or waterproof but it can withstand immersion in up to 1.5 meters of fresh water for up to 30 minutes.
Our one gripe? The camera bump is big. This is not atypical of the fold form factor – the Z Fold 7 is similarly thin yet has a similarly big camera bump, and it’s unfortunate because when you lie the device open and flat, it wobbles.
We’d also have loved it if Motorola brought over bolder Pantone colors and texture options that are similar to those found in the Razr series. After all, the Alcantara and woven finishes on the Razr flips are some of the best material work in any phone, and Motorola’s book-style fold deserves that same treatment.
Two stunning displays
The 6.6-inch external Extreme AMOLED runs at 165Hz with a peak brightness of 6,000 nits and it’s excellent. It behaves like a normal candy-bar phone for everyday tasks. Unfold it open and you get an incredible 8.1-inch 2K LTPO inner display that hits 6,200 nits, which Motorola says is the brightest interior display on any foldable. Both panels are Pantone Validated and support Dolby Vision and HDR10+.
There’s a desk display mode, a laptop mode for typing on a flat surface, and a tent mode for hands-free streaming. Flex View lets you prop it at any angle. Once you start using these often, going back to a regular candy bar phone feels limiting.
But what really impressed me is how the Razr Fold handles transitions. You can fold the screen at any point and your content seamlessly hops over to the external display – and back again – without skipping a beat.
Easy multitasking
You can run up to three apps at once on the main display, and the split-screen controls are intuitive, allowing you to drag, drop and resize easily. If you pair it with the moto pen ultra (sold separately), the inner display becomes a real workspace with pressure sensitivity, tilt detection, and low latency.
The Razr Fold is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM. That’s flagship level and keeps everything running fluidly, and you get plenty of storage – 512GB.
Great cameras
The camera system earned the DXOMARK Gold Label for imaging excellence, and that ranking tracks. You get a 50MP Sony LYTIA main with OIS, a 50MP ultrawide with macro, and a 50MP periscope telephoto with 3x optical that stretches to 100x via Super Zoom Pro. The main sensor shoots 8K video at 30fps with Dolby Vision recording across the board.
In real-world shooting, the main camera delivers bright, crisp, accurately exposed images with colors that feel true to life. The periscope telephoto is the standout, though – paired with Motorola’s AI-assisted Super Zoom Pro, it pulls usable shots well past 10x and surprisingly clean ones at 30x and beyond.
Low-light performance, which historically has been a weak spot for Motorola, has also taken a real step forward thanks to a dedicated Night Vision mode that keeps shots properly exposed without that muddy, over-processed look. The selfie cameras are the only soft spot in the system, but since the cover display lets you frame selfies with the much better rear cameras, that complaint mostly takes care of itself.
Long battery life
Battery life is excellent and very impressive for a fold. Although we haven’t spent time with the Fold long term, during our brief time testing the 6,000mAh cell handled full days of use with juice to spare, and there’s 80W TurboPower wired charging support to top it up fast. Wireless and reverse wireless charging are both onboard.
Who’s it for?
Between its beautiful design and clean easy-to-use UI, the Motorola Razr Fold is more ergonomic and frankly more fun to use than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7. That said, if Oppo’s Find N6 was available stateside, that would be a true competitor – but it isn’t.
All in all, although it’s not perfect, Motorola pretty much nailed it on the first try with its first fold — and that’s no small thing.
The catch is the price. This isn’t a simple phone – like most folds, the Motorola Razr Fold is a flagship phone, a tablet, and a small laptop in one, and it’s priced accordingly. That means it’s not for everyone. But if you’ve been waiting for a refined book-style foldable that looks great, doesn’t make any compromises, multitasks like it means it, and lasts all day and then some, the Razr Fold is an excellent choice.
The Motorola Razr Fold is available for pre-order for $1899 and a Moto Pen Ultra Smart Stylus is included for free.