In India, the trend of foldable smartphones has moved from a luxury item to a competitive space focused on productivity. Once dominated by small clamshell designs, the Indian market now wants larger screens to enable multitasking and entertainment. The Motorola Razr Fold is a major move for a company recognised for its old-school flip phones. Motorola’s first book-style foldable is here, and it hopes to shake up the premium flagship space with an 8.1-inch primary display, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 CPU and a huge 6,000mAh battery, all packed into a slim chassis. We tested the gadget to see whether it can carve out a place among luxury book-style foldables.

Design and Display

Motorola has jumped into the book-style folding category with the Razr Fold, drawing on its significant hinge-engineering expertise from prior clamshell Razr phones.

The device we’re reviewing is the stylish Lily White colour option, a departure from the usual black and grey that we tend to see in the premium flagship space. The frosted surface on the rear panel is a lovely touch, as it reflects light attractively while also efficiently resisting fingerprints, helping the phone maintain a clean and classy appearance during regular use.

Motorola has designed a camera module for its device that is sleek and rounded-square, positioned in the top left corner. The sensors actually are bulky; the phone has a two-tiered aluminium rim, the first tier rising slightly from the frosted glass back, and the second tier holding the individual lenses. This design helps prevent snagging when you slide the phone inside a pocket. Moreover, the bottom contour of the camera island serves as a natural resting place for the index finger while holding the device unfolded in portrait mode, improving one-handed grip stability for such a large device.

The Lily White version has a camera design that stands out visually, with a housing made from high-grade, polished aerospace aluminium in a light silver-champagne colour. This metal finish is a break from the matte, fingerprint-resistant white glass rear panel. The lenses are protected by a single piece of high-transparency, scratch-resistant sapphire glass, resulting in a seamless, jewel-like look that reflects elegance. One striking thing about foldable phones is the way the camera bump tends to wobble when laid flat. The Razr Fold does tilt a little when face-up on a hard surface, but Motorola did a good job with the weight distribution, so it’s surprisingly stable while you’re using the cover screen on a table and doesn’t rock much side-to-side.

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Motorola has delivered a surprisingly polished design, transitioning from a flip to a complete fold, with a smooth, gap-free hinge. The two sections of the gadget can shut completely flat, helping to make for a very slim, pocketable chassis. The transformation calls for a new technical approach, something that showcases Motorola’s breakthroughs in foldable technology.

The Precision Teardrop Hinge, made of stainless steel, is central to its performance, enabling smooth operation with controlled resistance. It also lets the gadget hold at different angles, which is useful for tabletop photography. There is no visible gap between the two parts of the device when it is closed. The device’s crease-minimising technique is also worth noting, since behind the flexible screen is a titanium inner plate that helps distribute pressure evenly across the fold. This innovation helps the 8.1-inch Ultra Thin Glass (UTG) display retain its original shape after folding. Although a crease may still be visible from certain angles, it is almost impossible to feel during everyday use, improving the overall user experience.

It’s a respectable 9.89mm thick when folded, about the same as a standard smartphone. When opened up, it has an ultra-slim profile of only 4.6mm, excluding the camera housing. It weighs a decent 243 grams, giving it a slight heft, yet the weight is so well balanced that it never feels heavy on top.

That’s a big factor for a book-style layout. This balance makes it easier to navigate the cover screen one-handed, giving it the feel of opening the device up to use it as a more expansive two-handed tablet. All in all, the product is a bold and confident first step in a new form factor.

Motorola has created the Razr Fold Lily White model not only as a stunning high-fashion accessory but also to withstand the rigours of everyday use. The gadget is equipped with a cover display shielded by Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3, offering enhanced drop protection over regular glass and retaining a spotless look even without a screen protector. 

The gadget is IP48 and IP49 rated for water resistance, which means it can be immersed in water for up to 30 minutes and withstand high-pressure jets of water. But it’s worth noting that the phone is considerably water-resistant but not completely dust-proof, so users should steer clear of exposing it to fine dust or grit, especially at beaches. In short, the Razr Fold’s design is a step above the classic book-fold, seeming less like an experiment and more like a workhorse you can depend on for your everyday life.

Next up is the placement of the buttons and ports, where on the right edge of the chassis, the device boasts a regular volume rocker above a power button that also doubles as a thin side-mounted fingerprint scanner. This ultra-thin fingerprint scanner can take a little muscle memory to find, but it unlocks instantly on touch. Motorola has also included a hardware button on the left frame to access AI apps. This is a clear indication that the integration of artificial intelligence into daily life is becoming more important. This button lets you quickly activate Motorola’s built-in AI features or your favourite virtual assistant, providing instant access without needing to wake the screen or browse the menu.

There is also a USB Type-C connector that is used not only for charging but also supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 with DisplayPort 1.2 output. This is especially useful for its book-style folding design, making it a great multitasking tool. It also lets users connect the Razr Fold to an external monitor for a desktop-like external display experience.

The slim design does not include a 3.5mm headphone connector but makes up for it with excellent audio hardware. It has a dual speaker setup (top and bottom firing) that delivers surprisingly high-quality sound with outstanding clarity and separation, perfect for consuming video content on its huge 8.1-inch inner display. Furthermore, the gadget has a three-microphone array that has demonstrated excellent performance in isolating voice and reducing background noise during calls and video conferencing.

On the outside, the gadget has a nice 6.6-inch LTPO pOLED display with an appealing 21:9 aspect ratio, making it feel much more like a standard premium smartphone and improving usability compared with the smaller displays on earlier models. The display is very smooth with a crazy 165Hz refresh rate, which makes for effortless access via the user interface, smooth browsing through social media, and a fun experience for casual gaming. 

What’s more, Motorola offers a peak brightness of 6,000 nits, guaranteeing that the screen is perfectly readable even in intense sunlight. Thanks to its fantastic outdoor visibility, you won’t need to shade the screen to view messages in bright settings. The display also supports 10-bit colour depth and is coupled with Dolby Vision, which offers excellent dynamic range and precise contrast, making it perfect for binge-watching on the go. You may even forget there’s a giant tablet hiding underneath.

When you open the device, you get a massive 8.1-inch 2K LTPO pOLED inner display. This is where the Razr Fold really shines, offering the best of both worlds as a mobile workstation and entertainment hub. An immersive 8:7.2 aspect ratio on the panel offers a huge, seamless visual experience. 

The default colour output “Vivid” profile is impressive, with brilliant colours and deep blacks that make watching HDR video content a lot more enjoyable. It’s also worth noting the performance of the inner display, which reaches a maximum brightness of 6,200 nits and avoids concerns with glare, making it good for things like checking out photos or working on spreadsheets, even in strong sunlight.

The internal display is wrapped in Ultra Thin Glass (UTG), providing a premium feel and durability that weren’t frequently found in previous generations of foldables. The refresh rate drops to 120Hz, but adaptive LTPO tech keeps multitasking feeling quick, dynamically adjusting to conserve battery when you’re not doing anything too demanding. And Motorola has done a bang-up job of getting some impressive colour calibration on both the cover and inner screens, so apps can flow from the cover view into the huge inner canvas without a noticeable shift in temperature or contrast, offering a unified and uninterrupted user experience.

Performance and Cameras

The ultra-slim Motorola Razr Fold is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 mobile platform. It also supports up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and includes fast UFS 4.1 storage technology. It doesn’t reach the 3.5 million+ AnTuTu benchmark numbers we’re used to seeing from conventional, bulkier flagship smartphones with overclocked elite CPUs, but it still manages to get an outstanding score of nearly 3 million on AnTuTu. This performance makes it the fastest gadget in the book-style folding category.

The device’s hardware configuration delivers a very fast user experience, with apps launching instantly thanks to solid background memory management. This feature lets users run many heavy-duty apps at the same time without forced reloads, boosting productivity and efficiency.

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The system’s high refresh rates (165Hz for the cover screen and 120Hz for the main screen) contribute to its smoothness and make swiping, navigation and animations incredibly seamless.

The gadget has Triple App Split-Screen functionality, which utilises an 8:7.2 aspect ratio to let users run three apps at once, like a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, a WhatsApp chat and a YouTube video, without any performance challenges. It also has Flawless App Continuity that lets you go between the 6.6-inch cover display and the bigger internal screen without missing a beat, so you can scale your tasks without unexpected app restarts.

For power users, the primary display supports the Moto Pen Ultra pen (sold separately) that lets the smartphone serve as a digital notebook. This tool is great for signing documents on the fly or sketching out ideas.

The gadget is thin, which usually makes it difficult to dissipate heat effectively. To combat this, Motorola has included an advanced split-vapour-chamber mechanism to deal with heating.

The Razr Fold is a wafer-thin 4.55mm when unfolded, yet it can handle sustained thermal loads well during intense gaming sessions. In testing with demanding games such as Genshin Impact and Call of Duty: Mobile on the highest settings, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 handles heavy graphics tasks smoothly without any drop in frame rate. The built-in liquid cooling system quickly spreads heat, reducing thermal throttling and helping maintain stable frame rates even during long gaming sessions; however, the device can still get warm around the camera area.

The Razr Fold has two gameplay modes to suit diverse settings: the Cover Screen and the Main Display. The Cover Screen boasts a 6.6-inch display, a 165Hz refresh rate and a 300Hz touch sampling rate, with very little input latency, perfect for fast-paced competitive shooters. It has a 21:9 aspect ratio, like classic flagship smartphones. Meanwhile, the main display features an 8.1-inch 2K screen, making it more immersive for e-sports, racing games, and competitive games. A 120Hz refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling rate combine to provide a highly engaging experience, along with Bose-tuned stereo speakers. The 8:7.2 aspect ratio widens the view even more, almost turning the gadget into a handheld game console.

Motorola has integrated its new Qira AI engine into the user interface to streamline workflows. There’s an exclusive hardware AI button that gives you immediate access to functions like ‘Catch Me Up’, which gathers and summarises missed notifications or long articles into brief bullet points. In addition, the AI offers context-aware smart recommendations, which suggest logical actions or app shortcuts based on users’ daily habits, thereby enhancing the device’s performance.

Motorola introduced Hello UI, an improved software experience based on Android 16, and it is one of the most fully rounded Android implementations for foldable phones. The Razr Fold is also relatively bloatware-free, not burdened by a lot of pre-installed apps. The layout is simple with only the basic utility applications and a few partner services, which makes it seem light and responsive right from the start.

In regular use, the software performs flawlessly, allowing the UI to handle complex multitasking without any latency, like juggling multiple applications. The device also adds convenience with the reintroduction of Moto Actions, which enable users to simply activate the torch or launch the camera with basic gestures. Hello UI also combines Motorola’s new AI engine into native apps, with the onboard gallery app being especially significant for content creators. Its photo editing tools enhance intense lighting effects while preserving the original facial features, effectively avoiding the overly smooth look seen in many custom Android skins.

Motorola has had its issues when it comes to its update policy in the premium flagship space, but the introduction of the Razr Fold is a big step forward. The Razr Fold will get seven years of Android OS updates and security fixes, a major move towards extended software support. This new commitment means Motorola is now matching the update standards of other major players in the foldable industry, giving consumers the confidence that their device will be safe and up-to-date for the next 10 years.

Motorola’s Razr Fold has managed to break the trade-off between foldable phones and camera quality, with a full-fledged camera system that scored a DXOMARK Gold rating.

The rear camera module features a triple 50MP camera array. The primary sensor is the advanced Sony LYTIA 828. In ideal daylight conditions, the main camera captures colorful, clear photos with excellent dynamic range and no tendency toward oversaturation. The camera system is excellent at focusing and shutter speed, and it can handle unpredictable situations well. For example, capturing our energetic beagle indoors can be challenging, but the LYTIA 828 sensor’s fast shutter speed and 3.5° optical image stabilisation (OIS) work together to capture motion efficiently.

The primary camera performs well in outdoor conditions, producing really rich and saturated photos. Motorola collaborated with Pantone to validate the colours, which adds to this performance with lush greens and blues in ordinary settings that don’t seem artificial. The image processing is leaning toward a bold visual that works for social media.

When shooting with natural light diffused through a window, using the big f/1.6 aperture on the primary sensor is essential for getting a fast shutter speed. This feature helps capture moving subjects clearly. while minimising motion blur.

The 50MP ultrawide lens has an expansive 122-degree field of view, ideal for shooting wide landscapes and intense compositions. This lens has very little edge distortion, ensuring that pictures are crisp and clear at the edges. The 50MP ultrawide lens, which also functions as a macro lens, is excellent at handling indoor group photographs. Using AI enhancement technology improves picture quality by keeping images clear and resolving the problems of low-resolution macro lenses, making it useful for both wide-angle and close-up photography.

The 50MP ultrawide lens, which also functions as a macro lens, is excellent for handling indoor group photographs. However, different lighting settings may cause a slight loss of sharpness at the edges of the image.

The Periscope Telephoto boasts a fantastic 50MP lens and 3x optical zoom, making it a favourite among photography buffs.

The image quality is also superb, offering outstanding sharpness and colour consistency with the primary lens, a major step up in imaging capabilities for capturing intricate architectural elements or subject shots. This lens provides crisp, optically stabilised magnification, perfect for portraits, delivering high-quality photographs. It is also quite good at producing realistic depth of field and spatial compression, which digital crop sensors are often unable to do, enhancing the entire photographic experience.

The Sony LYTIA 828 sensor is very good in outdoor conditions, particularly in low light. The primary camera does a fantastic job of gathering a lot of light, making cityscapes dramatic and well-exposed. Motorola’s AI Video Enhancement Engine and optical image stabilisation (OIS) guarantee that handheld night images are clear. The result is a very crisp detail in the dog’s fur, even in low-light circumstances.

The telephoto lens does a good job in low light, while the ultrawide lens has considerable noise in really dark situations. In low-light spaces like restaurants or cafes, the Razr Fold does a good job with skin tones, preserving the cinematic feel of the ambient lighting while also holding onto the shot’s accuracy without over-brightening.

The dedicated selfie cameras are good, but the gadget’s actual form factor has some major advantages. The 20MP cover camera or the 32MP inner camera are great for daytime selfies, capturing clear, well-exposed photos with a decent field of view. However, if you care about natural facial features and the best portrait lighting, the book-style hinge lets you unfold the smartphone, use the cover screen as a viewfinder, and take selfies with the better 50MP rear camera.

Selfies clicked in low light using outer or inner punch-hole cameras have a bit of graininess to them, which is a common pattern of most front-facing sensors. However, by replacing the primary rear lens, you can overcome this grain problem and get clear, extremely detailed low-light photos. It offers significant advantages compared to the usual slab phones, which usually find it hard to produce equivalent picture quality in low-light circumstances.

Video recording features include support for 8K at 30fps and Dolby Vision 4K at 60fps, delivering smooth, highly stabilised video with excellent dynamic range. The gadget also has a 3-microphone array with audio zoom, making it quite good for outdoor vlogging in windy conditions, even without an external mic.

Lastly, endurance is a key feature. Usually, foldable phones, particularly book-style foldables, tend to trade battery life for a thin design, sometimes using split batteries with capacities of 4,500mAh to 5,000mAh. But Motorola has set itself apart by using its silicon-carbon anode technology in the Razr Fold, which packs a huge 6,000mAh battery into a slim 4.55mm frame. This capacity is the largest available in its category, representing a significant innovation in the market.

In everyday usage, you can expect to get through the day with 35% to 40% battery left, so you won’t have to worry about charging during the day. With heavy usage like multitasking, HD streaming and video recording, the device provides an active screen-on-time (SoT) of around 7.5 to 8 hours. On the whole, it’s better than its closest book-style rivals.

The foldable phone is capable of 80W TurboPower wired charging and comes with a 90W TurboPower charging brick in the box. It can go from 1% to about 12+ hours of standby power in less than 10 minutes, and a full battery charge from 0% to 100% of its 6,000mAh capacity takes roughly 45 to 50 minutes. The Razr Fold model also offers 50W wireless charging, putting it ahead of many rivals in charging speed. It also supports 5W reverse wireless charging, which means you can transfer power to other devices or earphones in emergency scenarios.

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Verdict

Getting into the foldable phone industry is challenging, especially when competing with established manufacturers. The Motorola Razr Fold is the only phone with a cutting-edge teardrop hinge and an ultra-thin 4.55mm profile. It is powered by a 6,000 mAh silicon-carbon battery, which really tackles the battery life issues that are common.

The 8.1-inch display, Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset and split-screen UI are made for multitaskers. The photography department is led by a DxOMark Gold-rated camera with a versatile 50MP Sony LYTIA sensor that excels at capturing high-quality selfies. It also impresses with 80W TurboPower charging, which helps to change the way people think about the longevity of foldables.

However, there are concerns about dust protection and the Moto Pen Ultra, which must be purchased separately. It’s a notable step forward for first-generation foldables, with its attractive Lily White design, dual screens, AI-driven Hello UI, and promise of seven years of OS upgrades. These features put more pressure on competitors.

The base variant with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage is priced at Rs 1,49,999. For those wanting advanced specifications, the high-end model is available for Rs 1,59,999, containing 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. A special FIFA World Cup 26 Edition is also available at Rs 1,69,999, which includes a Moto pen.

While the price is steep, it is not as expensive as rivals like Samsung and Google.

You can buy the foldable phone via Flipkart.

Pros

• 6,000mAh silicon-carbon battery
• Superb dual displays
• Handles intense multitasking and gaming with ease
• Excellent daylight photography
• Great portrait depth
• Long-term software support

Cons

• High price tag
• Visible crease
• It is not fully dust-tight.
• Stylus is not included (sold separately).