Our first look at the Motorola Razr Fold

Motorola’s Razr Fold is more than just the brand’s biggest foldable to date. It’s a chance to prove it can compete with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 and succeed where Google’s Pixel Fold line has largely fallen short. On paper, the differences between the Razr Fold and Galaxy Fold aren’t too huge, but they are easy to spot.

Motorola’s new foldable has a slightly larger screen, a bigger battery plus a more ambitious camera lens configuration.

Motorola says that the Razr Fold features the brightest display and highest refresh rate of any foldable on the market, and that pitch mostly makes the jump into reality. 

During our preview of the device, the screen was vibrant, colourful, and responsive in the way you’d expect. The form-factor is also super slim, at just 4.6mm when unfolded and ultra lightweight at just 240g.

More than just nice to look at, the Razr Fold is being pitched as a device that can go the distance. It’s billed as the first foldable with Gorilla Glass Ceramics 3 protection. It’s also got IP48 protection against water and dust damage, and Motorola claims the device’s titanium hinge has been tested for ten years of everyday use. 

According to Motorola, the Razr Fold will ship with seven years of OS and security updates. In any case, it’s too early to say if these claims will live up to expectations over the long term, but, for what it’s worth, I did manage to drop one of the demo units during my hands-on, and the nearby Motorola representatives didn’t seem all that fussed about it.

While the standard Razr Fold looks and feels a lot like you’d expect — sitting somewhere between the Pixel Fold and the Motorola Edge when it comes to aesthetics — there’s also a FIFA World Cup variant available that offers a more glitzy take on the formula. It’s a little too gaudy for me, but some football fans might be into it.

Either way, the slimness and the premium form-factor on offer feel laser-targeted at the same customers who’d usually go in on whatever Samsung are selling. Motorola has been trying to move up into the premium space for a few years now, and the Razr Fold feels right at home as a result. On the inside, the foldable is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor, 12GB of RAM, up to 512GB of storage, and a 6000mAh battery. Then, on the outside, the device features an 8.1-inch AMOLED screen accompanied by a smaller 6.56-inch AMOLED cover display.

Ultimately, though, the photography piece of the puzzle feels like the key piece of the puzzle here. Where the advantages that the Razr Fold offers with display and battery size are largely incremental, it feels like this particular front sees the manufacturer flexing its muscles and trying to stand out. 

There are a total of five cameras to keep track of here, with the most important ones powered by Sony’s new Lytia sensors. When it comes to the telephoto, ultrawide and main lenses, you’re working with a 50MP sensor. The selfie-camera on the inside of the Razr Fold has a 20MP sensor, while the one on the cover display clocks at 32MP.

Motorola says it worked with the photography performance specialists at DXOMark to secure a score of 164, which puts the Razr Fold in the top 10 of all smartphones and the highest rated foldable to date. That number isn't really something that means a lot to the everyday consumer, but it's definitely something that'll get the attention of those who care about their smartphone photography.

In practice, I was mostly impressed with how the camera on the Razr Fold handled. Images taken using the telephoto lens were particularly impressive, but I was limited to daylight situations, and it's hard to say how the device fares in low-light environments. 

Samsung’s big-screen foldable mostly inherits its photography pedigree from its Ultra counterpart, so it can sometimes feel like a bit of an afterthought. By comparison, the way that the Motorola Razr Fold puts that aspect of the experience in the limelight feels like an admission that it’s no longer enough for a screen to fold when you’re asking for quite so much money.

Of course, the Australian price tag for the Motorola Razr Fold may end up being one of the more intractable barriers to its potential success. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 is one of the most expensive smartphones you can buy in Australia, but being able to pay that price tag off over time via a phone plan makes it a little easier to swallow. 

Unless the Razr Fold can find a local carrier partner, Motorola’s ambitions to become a mainstay of the premium segment may hit a ceiling sooner rather than later as a result. It’s hard to say for sure, given that Australian pricing and availability for Razr Fold have yet to be announced. We'll have to wait and see.

On paper, Motorola’s making a pretty compelling pitch for the dollars of those who might otherwise settle for Samsung as the default when it comes to big-screen foldables. Unfortunately, with smartphone prices expected to continue to rise amid the ongoing chip shortage, that appeal might be a harder sell than you’d expect given the spec sheet involved.

Disclosure: WhistleOut Australia's coverage of Mobile World Congress 2026 is supported by OPPO.

Fergus Halliday

Digital Content Editor

Fergus Halliday is a journalist and digital content editor at WhistleOut Australia. He’s written about technology, telecommunications, gaming and more for over a decade. He got his start writing in high school before interning at magazines like CRN Australia and freelancing for publications like the AU Review, Gizmodo, Kotaku, GamesHub, Press Start, ScreenRant, Superjump, Nestegg, and more.

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