The Razr Fold is stuck in the middle

For a phone this good, it’s very hard to recommend the Motorola Razr Fold.

The Razr Fold is the property of the company The first foldable bookand enters the US market with something not currently available in the competition: truly excellent battery life that rivals the best tablet-style phones. No need to worry if you spend a long session gaming or working in a Google Doc on the internal screen. The Razr Fold will help you get through your day with ease and beyond. Foldable devices from Samsung and Google are more likely to cause battery concerns on a day of heavy use.

The Razr Fold also looks nice. The rounded corners, soft-touch back panel and well-thought-out color choices are very welcome from Motorola. No one makes better looking phones than this company at the moment. As a reminder, it’s okay to care about how your phone looks.

But the Razr Fold sets a very high bar for itself by virtue of its $1,900 cost. At this price, it falls short in several ways. This is a phone that puts everything it’s got front and center — great design, a big battery, and a smart multitasking system — but then scrapes the edges. There are very few rough edges for this high-end device.

The Razr Fold’s 6,000 mAh battery is really its biggest asset. It is able to offer a lot of capabilities Thanks to silicon carbon technologyThis allows it to store more energy than traditional lithium-ion batteries. Chinese phone makers are quickly adopting it, while Apple, Samsung and Google have been hesitant — likely due to some concerns about battery technology deteriorating faster than lithium-ion battery technology. It appears that Motorola and its parent company Lenovo don’t share the same concerns, given that this year’s entire Razr lineup uses silicon and carbon technology.

It’s hard to say how justified concerns about longevity are given that silicon carbon hasn’t been used in phones for a long time. In my completely unscientific opinion and limited short-term testing, I can say that the Silicone Carbon absolutely outperforms the phone. I’ve never come close to activating the Razr Fold’s low power mode. Even on a day with a healthy amount of camera use and an hour of internal screen use, the battery was still above 50 percent by bedtime.

Motorola has also come up with an in-screen multitasking solution that competitors can learn from. It feels like a good compromise between Samsung’s “anything goes” approach and Google’s three-app limit. You can open two apps in split screen or have one app take up most of the screen space with another app in the background with just one tap.

What’s more, you can embrace the clutter and open multiple apps in small, “free-form” windows that you can resize and move around the screen. I got up to four apps running in this mode as well as two apps running in split screen before I decided it needed too much prodding. But I like the meet-in-the-middle approach that allows me to invite as much or as little chaos as I want.

Battery and multitasking are very important things to get right on a foldable phone. However, the Razr Fold is disappointing in other ways. For starters, there are too many apps pre-loaded on a device of this stature. Many of them can be uninstalled, but not all. But just on principle, I don’t think anyone should spend time removing large software on a phone that costs that much money.

The Fold is also missing some small but life-improving hardware upgrades. There is no Qi2 magnet built into the back of the phone, and I increasingly believe every phone should have a magnet. The Fold supports wireless charging, but you won’t be able to connect it to a MagSafe-style charger like you can with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

And while I appreciate Motorola making a stylus for the Razr Fold, there’s no way to connect it to the phone and there’s no case for the Fold with a place to store it. I’ve forgotten to bring it with me on more than one trip to a coffee shop where I intended to use it. The pen sells separately for $99 anyway, so it’s probably a fair assumption that if you’ve gone out of your way to get a pen, you’re committed enough to figure out the pregnancy situation yourself.

Aside from being a silicon-carbon battery, the Razr Fold isn’t breaking any new hardware ground. It is less heavy and bulky than Pixel 10 Pro Fold phonebut it lacks the full dust resistance of this phone. Even though the Razr Fold is smaller than the Pixel, it still always reminds me that I’m carrying it when it’s in my bag or pocket. The Z Fold 7which costs $100 more than the Razr Fold, is noticeably smaller and lighter. That’s the whole deal. The Fold is kind of in the no-go zone among incumbents, and that’s an uncomfortable place to be if you’re going to take a raise.

Recent Motorola phones have been pretty weak in the camera department; It’s forgivable on a $400 phone but not one that costs $1,900. There’s some good news: The Razr Fold’s image processing looks better than it did in previous Motorola phones. I see less inclination toward overly bright, washed-out images. Images in bright daylight show great contrast and saturated blue hues. The 50MP ultra-wide chip is a cut above the usual 12MP chip, producing plenty of fine detail.

However, consistency is the main thing, and the Razr Fold’s camera system gets it wrong sometimes. I noticed a stark change in the color cast several times when switching between wide and telephoto. The tendency to enhance shadows too strongly also shows up here and there, especially when I’m using the 2x zoom, or shooting a gray, overcast scene outdoors.

I’m also not a fan of the 20x+ AI digital zoom. Introduces some artifacts when trying to clean text – classic AI. There’s also an oddity in the way it handles small details in a scene, such as distant features on the side of a building. It looks very clean, and the features are softened and blended in a way that looks unnatural. Fortunately, there is some text that appears on the screen when you start it, and you can turn the feature off completely in Settings.

If Motorola had launched the Razr Fold four years ago, I might have felt differently about it. The Galaxy Z Fold was still growing out of its very long shape, and the Pixel Fold wasn’t even there yet. A foldable phone with an advanced design? With battery that lasts all day? That was probably worth $1,900 at the time, considering there was no such thing at the time.

But we’re in 2026, which is an unfortunate time to launch an expensive phone. The memory crisis has certainly played a role in the Razr Fold’s price hike. Samsung and Google will likely launch successors to their foldable phones later this summer, and I wouldn’t be surprised if their prices rise. But here and now, it feels like the Razr Fold is too little, too little, too late.

Photography by Alison Johnson/The Verge