The Razr Fold is centered

For a phone that looks so good, the Motorola Razr Fold is seriously disappointing.

Razr Fold is the company the first folded like a bookand it’s entering the US market with something the competition doesn’t have: excellent battery life that rivals the best slab-sided phones. There is no need to worry if you spend a long time playing or working in a Google doc on the internal screen. The Razr Fold will make your day easier and more. Samsung and Google’s specs are more likely to bring battery concerns on a day of heavy use.

Also, the Razr Fold looks great. The rounded corners, soft back panel, and well thought out color choices are very welcome and Motorola. No one is making better looking phones than this company right now. As a reminder, it’s good to be careful about how your phone looks.

But the Razr Fold sets itself at a higher price point at $1,900. And at that price, it diminishes in several ways. This is a phone that puts all its quirks front and center — great design, a big battery, and a smart multitasking system — but then falls back on the edges. And there are a few rough tips for these advanced devices.

The Razr Fold’s 6,000mAh battery is its biggest feature. It can provide a lot of energy thanks to its silicon carbon technologyallowing it to store more energy than standard lithium-ion batteries. Chinese phone makers are quickly adopting while Apple, Samsung, and Google have resisted — perhaps due to concerns about battery technology that degrades faster than straight lithium-ion. Motorola and its Chinese parent company Lenovo don’t seem to share the same concerns, as this year’s entire Razr lineup uses silicon-carbon technology.

It’s hard to say what the concern is about longevity since silicon-carbon hasn’t been used in phones for a long time. In my unscientific opinion and short-term testing, I can say that silicon-carbon beats the ass of a phone. I’ve never even come close to starting low power on the Razr Fold. Even during a full day of using the camera properly and an hour of using the internal screen, the battery was still above 50 percent while sleeping.

Motorola has also found a multitasking solution on the internal screen that its competitors can learn from. It sounds like a good compromise between Samsung’s “everything goes” and Google’s three app maximum. You can open two apps in a split screen or have one app use the window and one second behind with just a few clicks.

On top of that, you can embrace the chaos and open several programs in “freeform” small windows you can change and move around the screen. I found four apps running this way on top of two apps running in a split window before I thought it was very encouraging. But I like this mid-range encounter that allows me to summon as much or as little chaos as I want.

Battery and multitasking are the most important things to enjoy on a foldable phone. And yet, the Razr Fold disappoints in some ways. For starters, there are a lot of apps preloaded on this type of device. Most, but not all, can be released. But in principle, I don’t think that anyone should spend time to remove bloatware from the phone for that much money.

The Fold also needs some minor but life-enhancing changes. There is no Qi2 magnet built into the back of the phone, and I believe every phone should have a magnet. The Fold supports wireless charging, but you can’t plug it into a MagSafe-style charger like you can with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

And while I appreciate Motorola making a Razr Fold stylus, there’s no way to connect a phone and there’s no Fold case with storage space. I forgot to bring it with me on several trips to the coffee shop I wanted to use. The pen is sold separately for $99 anyway, so it’s probably a good idea that if you’re going out of your way to get one, you’re committed enough to figure out what’s going on yourself.

Aside from being a silicon-carbon battery, the Razr Fold doesn’t break new ground in terms of technology. It is smaller and larger than Pixel 10 Pro Foldbut they don’t have enough phone to resist the dust. And even though the Razr Fold is thinner than the Pixel, it still reminds me of what I’m carrying when it’s in my pocket or pocket. Z Fold 7which costs $100 more than the Razr Fold, is smaller and lighter. That’s all there is to it. The Fold is a kind of empty space between the incumbents, and it’s a messy place to be if you pay a lot of money.

Recent Motorola phones have been pretty weak in the camera department; forgiven for a $400 phone but not one that costs $1,900. There’s good news: Editing looks better on the Razr Fold than it has on previous Motorola phones. I’m seeing a tendency to shrink in very bright, washed-out images. Daylight images show interesting contrasts and textures. The 50-megapixel ultrawide is a cut above the usual 12-megapixel chip, producing sharp details.

Consistency is the thing, however, the Razr Fold’s camera system sometimes gets it wrong. I noticed a surprising change in color a few times when switching between telephoto and telephoto. The tendency to aggressively enlarge the shadows also shows up here and there, especially when I’m using the 2x zoom, or taking a gray, cloudy photo outdoors.

I’m also not a fan of AI digital zoom that goes beyond 20x. It displays primitives when trying to clean up words – classic AI. There is also a strangeness to how small it is in situations, such as the far side of the house. They look very clean, and the texture is smooth and blended in a way that just looks weird. Fortunately, there is a text that appears on the screen when it enters, and you can disable the feature in the settings.

If Motorola had introduced the Razr Fold four years ago, I would have felt differently about it. The Galaxy Z Fold was still growing from its tallest form factor, and the Pixel Fold wasn’t there at all. A foldable phone with premium styling? Is it a battery that lasts all day? This could have been as much as $1,900 back then, considering there was no such thing at the time.

But it’s 2026, which is an unfortunate time to launch an expensive phone. Memory issues played a role in the Razr Fold’s high price. Samsung and Google will probably introduce successors to their foldable phones later this summer, and I won’t be surprised if their prices go up. But for now, the Razr Fold seems too small, too much, too late.

Photo by Allison Johnson/The Verge