Motorola Razr Fold hands-on: welcome to the fold

The first official Moto Razr Fold is now real, and I held it in my hands!

The Motorola book-style foldable has been rumored for quite a while, and we were already expecting to see it at MWC 2026. That doesn’t make it any less exciting.

Going into this, I had a couple of questions at the back of my mind. Will its performance be hampered in order to meet a lower price point? And will the camera feel like a compromise, like it does on most contemporary foldable phones?

It turns out that Motorola was actually working to address exactly these pain points. So, from the top, what is it, and how does it feel at first?

We’ve seen this design, but now it has a pinch of Moto flair on top

Motorola loves to decorate all of its phones in interesting textures and apply modern colorways picked by their long-standing partner Pantone.

So, I was low-key excited for a foldable with the fancy warm velvet finish or maybe the wood texture that we’ve seen on the Moto Razr before.

Slight disappointment here — the Moto Razr Fold only comes in two colors. One is Pantone Blackened Blue, which is essentially black, unless you are a painter and can see the really, really dark blue tones in it. The other is Pantone Lily White, which is… well, white.

In other words, Motorola went with the old “Black model and white model” option, which are the safest bets when the manufacturer is not sure how much demand to expect. These colors are usually the safest bets to catch a wider userbase.



But that’s not to say their finish is boring. The Blackened Blue’s back is covered in diamond-shaped etchings that feel really grippy and nice to the touch. Downside — they may collect a lot of dirt easily. The Lily White model has a silk-like textured finish that also felt quite premium in the hand.

The Motorola Razr Fold is only 0.2 in (4.6 mm) thin when opened or 0.4 in (9.9 mm) when folded. It also has a good weight balance and measures at 8.6 oz (244 g).

Compared to a Galaxy Z Fold 7, it’s very slightly thicker and heavier, but that’s a tradeoff I’m willing to take because the Motorola Razr Fold still supports a Moto Pen Ultra. It will require a carrying case if you want it to travel with the phone, but at least we still get the stylus option.

The hardware is promising

The cover screen is a 21:9, 165 Hz pOLED panel that feels pretty natural when used as a “normal” smartphone. It’s also covered by brand-new Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3. A separate branch of the Gorilla Glass models that’s made specifically to withstand violent drops.

There was a demo dummy on site, dressed in Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3, that was dropped multiple times from waist height onto a hard surface with sandpaper on top.

Yeah, ouch, but the thing didn’t break. And, on close inspection, it had micro-scratches on it but no deep gash from the sandpaper.

The screen on the inside of the Moto Razr Fold is an almost-square, 8:7.2 display with a smooth 120 Hz refresh rate. It performed about as well as you’d expect from contemporary flagships. Moto did state 6,200 nits peak brightness, but we will be back to the specs sheet when it’s time to do the full review.



If I am to be honest, I forgot to even check for the crease, as I’ve grown numb to this particular “feature” of foldables. But, looking back at my photos, it is extremely shallow, which is probably why I didn’t even pay attention to it.

Performance beast

No compromise here — the Motorola Razr Fold comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gen 5, 16 GB of LPDDR5X, and 512 GB of storage. I am not even sure how they managed to swing that much RAM in the current memory crisis, but I am low-key worried about the final pricing here.

The battery on board is a 6,000 mAh cell, which sounds intense, but I guess we can only talk about its real performance when we get to review the Razr Fold.

The camera is not a compromise

On to my other worry — is it a “slap-on” camera? No.

Motorola took their time with this one and tuned it with photography expert partners. The main sensor is a 50 MP Sony LYT-828 with an F1.6 lens aperture. The telephoto is a 3x lens with a LYT-600, and the ultra-wide is another 50 MP sensor that was not named.

Numbers aside, I took a few quick snaps and compared to a Vivo X300 Pro, which also has a Lytia 828. The phones were trading blow-for-blow. Not going to announce any concrete victors, I literally just did a few quick eye tests.

Price and availability

Pretty hype hands-on session. Imagine my disappointment when I found out the Motorola Razr Fold will be out “in the coming months” with pricing to be revealed closer to launch.

So… sorry to leave you on a cliffhanger, but I am right there with you.

Do you think the current foldable market has enough room for another premium model to join the fray?