Motorola Razr Fold review: A proper flagship phone that just happens to fold

For what is essentially a first-generation book-style fold phone, the Motorola Razr Fold takes the game straight up to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 – a benchmark for global foldable devices. The Razr Fold has addressed all the shenanigans right from the beginning – it has a creaseless hinge design, a suite of triple rear cameras, a massive capacity battery, fast wired charging, and even support for a stylus. 

What could seal the deal in the Razr Fold’s favour is its price. At Rs 1,49,999, I don’t think there’s a better value proposition in the foldable market today. This phone has got everything.

So, is it a Razr? Maybe not. But the Razr Fold is promising.

First impressions: That’s luxurious!

Unboxing premium Motorola phones lately has been quite the experience – they are well packaged, smell nice and come with a complimentary set of accessories. The Razr Fold comes with a charging adapter and a premium protective case – items that Samsung doesn’t offer. 

As far as the design is concerned, the Razr Fold looks a lot similar to the Motorola Signature, complete with the raised camera plateau, a fabric-styled back panel, which is painted in a PANTONE-validated Blackened Blue colour. It makes the phone an absolute joy to hold while imparting an understated yet premium look.

It is when you fold it closed and slip it into your pocket that you immediately notice its physical presence. At 243 grams and nearly 9.9mm thick when closed, the Razr Fold feels noticeably heavier and chunkier than the ultra-slim competition, like the Galaxy Z Fold 7 or Vivo X Fold 5. My first couple of days with the phone strained my hands to some extent, and it took a while to get used to the heft. Coming from an iPhone Air, handling this phone felt heavy.

However, the Razr Fold is robust – the steel hinge mechanism feels incredibly solid, and a multi-layered IP46/IP48/IP49 water and dust resistance rating only added to my confidence exposing it to a dusty NCR at this time of the year. The hinge is as good as Samsung’s implementation, opening smoothly and holding its angle securely.

A display gala for the eyes

Opening the device reveals a massive 8.1-inch 2K p-OLED inner display. It is vivid, and with a peak brightness of 6,200 nits, I had zero issues reading articles or checking maps under blinding direct sunlight – something that has been historically a concern for foldables. The crease is there, but unless you hunt specifically for it, it doesn’t seem as obvious as older generation foldables.

Equally impressive is the 6.6-inch cover display, which supports up to 165Hz of refresh rate. As a display that’s supposed to deal with the general productivity concerns, it performed its duties well for helping me reply to emails, control music playback, use it as a generic camera viewfinder, text with friends, and manage all notifications. The outer screen is capable enough on its own to deny you the urge to flip open the main display. 

There’s even support for a stylus pen – an accessory that Motorola sells 

A foldable that runs cool and calm

In a classic Motorola fashion, the Razr Fold isn’t getting you an absolute top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 Elite. Instead, you get the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 – a tweaked version of last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen Elite processor. Technically, it isn’t the most cutting-edge processor on the market today, but it’s still a ‘flagship-grade’ processor.

Honestly, Android as a platform doesn’t have anything demanding enough to put processors from 4-5 years under stress, which is why I ain’t bothered about the ‘not-purely-flagship’ chipset. The performance overhead is more than ample.

Backed by 16GB of RAM, apps stay loaded in the background indefinitely, and animations remain perfectly fluid. Where this chip choice truly pays off is in thermal performance, where the phone mostly stayed cool despite exposing it to multi-window multitasking and browsing, editing videos on Instagram Edits, etc. Even demanding video games held up well.

The software, however, is where Motorola have given the Razr Fold a distinct personality. Moto’s Hello UI on top of Android 16 is a neatly laid out interface, laced with utility tools and AI features. The interface doesn’t have any of the bloatware seen on the cheaper Edge-series Motorola devices, but you get to see Moto AI features relying on third-party apps like Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini to offer an all-in-one experience. The combined interface isn’t as useful as Gemini on its own, and there’s a lack of polish.

There’s a taskbar-like section to allow for easy multitasking while on the main display, and the app sidebar on the homescreen offers further quick shortcuts. You get the option to enable resizable floating windows for real-time multitasking, which works effectively.

That said, the Hello UI interface in its foldable avatar isn’t as nicely equipped as Samsung’s One UI – I miss the selection tools for screenshots, the snappier and more flexible multi-window layout, and many more of Samsung’s bells and whistles. Moto’s UI feels basic in comparison.

However, Motorola commits to 7 years of OS and security updates, which makes it suitable for those willing to use it for longer durations.

What about the camera?

Foldables are notorious for sacrificing camera quality to fit into a folding chassis, but Motorola went all out here with a triple 50MP rear camera system.

In daylight and well-lit indoor settings, the camera captures detailed photos with natural colour accuracy. Be it the ultrawide, standard and the 3x telephoto lens, the colour consistency is closer to lifelike, with the post-processing doing its bit to make them look desirable. The stability of the lenses makes the images look sharp and devoid of any distortion.

The only area where the camera shows its limits is in challenging low-light environments. Photos taken at night seem to introduce some noise, and there are occasional struggles with the exposure management.

Video recording is another area where the Razr Fold had me impressed. My shot vlog-style videos in low and daylight looked nice, albeit with occasional grains hampering an otherwise nicely usable footage.

Battery life

The battery life is where the Razr Fold takes top scores. Motorola managed to pack a massive 6,000mAh silicon-carbon battery into this chassis, which translates to an easy whole-day stamina. Note that this mileage includes using both the outer and main display.

With the 80W Turbo Power charging standards, (the included 90W brick supports it), it juices the phone from 10% to 100% in just about 46 minutes.

Motorola Razr Fold: Our verdict

Motorola has been the only company other than Samsung and Huawei to have experimented with foldable phones since the dawn of the foldable screen technology. Hence, I wasn’t surprised to see Motorola pulling off a winning formula on its first attempt, considering the brand’s expertise with the Razr flip phones.

The Razr Fold has a couple of things going for it, with the price being a major factor. Couple it with a fairly neat and clean software experience, a luxurious build, nice screens, great cameras and a reliable battery, it seems that Motorola did its homework well. I am glad to see Motorola

I have a few gripes, considering the premium price tag this phone comes with – Moto AI seems like an afterthought, and the Hello UI Android skin lacks the utility tools that Samsung offers. These are features the brand can address with an update, but they remain a concern for now. Motorola’s questionable software update cycle also remains a point of concern, considering Samsung’s record in this regard has been top-notch.

Barring these nitty-gritities, the Motorola Razr Fold ends up being an easy-to-recommend foldable phone for those seeking a value-for-money proposition without giving up on the basics. You should check it out if you have a budget of Rs 1.5 lakhs to spare.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express Digital.