It's hard to believe that foldables have been around for long enough (and gotten good enough) that I can use one that's totally fine and think to myself, "Eh, you can do better."
That's been my experience during early testing for the new Motorola Razr Fold. The $1,900 device has pretty much everything you'd want in a book-style foldable: it's reasonably comfortable in the hands, the displays are high quality, and it's got a battery that dwarfs the competition. But in actually using it, I've still found myself preferring the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 from a year ago, while also considering the upcoming, heavily rumored iPhone Fold.
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The first impression: This is a serious foldable with serious competition
Here's my takeaway from early testing: the foldable market is getting really crowded, and with such a high price, I'm not sure the Razr Fold has done enough to stand out against the competition just yet.
What I liked: It feels great in the hand, is easy to use, has killer displays, and boasts strong performance from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset.
What I didn't like: Not as thin as the Galaxy Z Fold 7, and like the competition, it has a steep price tag; my testing unit also experienced a battery issue.
Key specs:
Processor: Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset
Battery: 6,000mAh
Displays: 6.6-inch pOLED cover display (up to 165Hz refresh rate) / 8.1-inch LTPO OLED (up to 120Hz variable refresh rate) with HDR10+
Cameras: 50MP wide, 50MP ultrawide, 50MP telephoto, 20MP inner camera, 32MP cover camera
Charging: 80W charging, 50W wireless, reverse wireless charging
AI tools: Google Gemini, Perplexity, Moto AI, Microsoft Copilot
Brightness: 6,200 nits
Price: $1,899.99
Motorola Razr Fold feels good, but not quite as good as Galaxy Z Fold 7
Last year, I fell in love with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 primarily because of its form factor. It was easily the thinnest and lightest book-style foldable I'd used at the time, and now. It's a new measuring stick for this type of phone in my mind, and that's also the first place where the Razr Fold comes up just short.
To be more specific, Samsung's foldable last year weighed just 215g and measured in at a mere 4.2mm when unfolded and 8.9mm when folded. Motorola's device, on the other hand, weighs 243g and measures in at 4.5mm when unfolded and 9.89mm when folded. In the grand scheme of things, those aren't huge disparities, but having used both devices, you can definitely feel the difference.
The Razr Fold is noticeably heavier and a little more bulky, and in a world where Samsung has shown how thin book-style foldables can be, I'm not sure I can ever go back.
Having said all of that, this is still a reasonably comfortable phone to hold and use, especially compared to older, meatier foldables. Razr Fold's Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset keeps everything running smoothly, with social media and streaming apps working pretty much flawlessly in my limited testing so far.
The 8.1-inch AMOLED inner display with a 120Hz refresh rate is also crisp and clear, as is the 6.6-inch outer display, which has a blistering fast 165Hz refresh rate. As with pretty much every other book-style foldable on the market, this is the best way to watch videos and read things on a phone right now.
While I haven't done a ton of stress testing with the multitasking features yet, they do work pretty intuitively. Like some other foldables in this category, there's a horizontal app toolbar along the bottom of the inner display. While running one app, you can simply drag another one from the toolbar up into the main display itself, choosing where you want it to go. You can go halfsies or you can even turn one app into a free-floating window that you can resize and reposition to your heart's content, while the other one stays open behind it.
This isn't especially groundbreaking, but it is useful and works well.
TBD if its most distinctive features give it an edge
I still need more time with the Razr Fold before writing a full review, and part of that has to do with the phone's biggest potential edge over the competition: its battery.
The Razr Fold has a huge 6,000mAh battery inside it, significantly larger than the 4,400mAh cell inside my beloved Z Fold 7. If the Razr Fold can deliver notably longer battery life than other foldables, that could be a huge feather in its cap. Unfortunately, I am not in a position right now to judge that, as the review unit Motorola sent us has an issue where it will not charge correctly. I've been told this is not a common problem and Motorola is sending us a replacement, but this does mean that I simply can't analyze the battery right now.
One other potential advantage this phone has over something like the Z Fold 7 is that it natively supports the Moto Pen Ultra stylus accessory. I am not a stylus user by nature, and I haven't spent enough time using the Moto Pen Ultra on the Razr Fold yet to see if it's a game-changer, but Samsung sacrificed official S Pen stylus support on the Z Fold 7 last year in order to make the phone thinner. You can still use third-party pens, but Motorola having an official option that should work nicely with the phone is a big leg up for a lot of folks.
After a handful of days testing the Razr Fold, it's clear that this is a solid foldable phone that doesn't have anything catastrophically wrong with it, at least as long as the charging issue I encountered is an isolated incident. I'll have more to say on this soon.
Motorola just happens to be in an unlucky position here, with other major phone manufacturers having already matured in this space over the past several years, all while Apple takes its sweet time cooking up something that will almost certainly be very good, too.
The Motorola Razr Fold was released in the U.S. on May 21 for $1,899.99. You can order the foldable from Motorola and Best Buy.