The fact that Motorola took its time entering the Book Fold style foldable phone category is a positive sign. Clearly (and as they say, the proof of the pudding lies in eating it) the effort put in with the Motorola Razr Fold seems to be paying off as the desired refinement benchmarks are likely to be achieved. The evidence from phone use certainly seems to suggest so. As to the varying levels of Motorola’s efforts with the Razer Fold, the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold should be very concerned, the Vivo In a way, that should give you a fair idea of the foldable phone hierarchy that is developing at the moment.
motorola razr fold price ₹Starting at Rs 1,39,999, and typical options include 12GB memory with 256GB storage or 16GB memory with 512GB storage. In comparison, the Galaxy Z Fold7 starts at around ₹Whereas, the price of Vivo X Fold5 is Rs 1,74,999. ₹1,49,999. Both potentially also benefit from discounts and cashback offers associated with certain payment modes. But you can see Motorola’s efforts to deliver that value potential I mentioned earlier. The fact that it’s a collection of the latest hardware defining the spec sheet helps, at least until rivals get generational updates in the coming months.
The little things really do matter. The Razer Fold is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip. The 8.1-inch foldable display is the largest in the category, with Samsung’s 8-inch display not far behind. The key to the Motorola Razr Fold’s screen is its maximum rated brightness of 6200 nits, which is more than double the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s 2600 nits and still significantly higher than the Vivo X Fold 5’s 4500 nits. Support for the Moto Pen Ultra stylus should increase the value for some people, although I haven’t had a chance to test that specific accessory yet. The Razer Fold has Wi-Fi 7 which means connectivity future-proofing is pretty well sorted.
Turns out, there are a lot of world firsts available for the Razer Fold. This is the world’s first foldable with Bose tuned speakers. The world’s first foldable with Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 protection. The cover screen has a very useful 6.6-inch footprint, and matches the Vivo foldable in terms of battery capacity, a 6,000mAh silicon-carbon pack. If I’m not completely mistaken, the Razer Fold also beats the Vivo All this, while maintaining the same thickness ballpark as the Galaxy Z Fold7, although the Razer Fold is significantly heavier. That said, hold it up, and it feels quite balanced.
In terms of color, what you see here is Pantone Blackened Blue (it looks more black than blue to my eyes, but that’s immaterial). I quite like the camera layout and similarity of the back panel (when the Razr Fold is folded) with the Motorola signature and the overall aesthetic of the Motorola Edge 70 Pro. The choice of finish also means it’s great news for the grip, which is important for a phone in this category. Motorola has manufactured a stainless steel teardrop hinge which they say reduces the stress placed on the screen at every fold and unfold moment.
The 50-megapixel troika of wide (this particular Sony LiTea 828 sensor), ultra wide and 3x periscope cameras deliver typically Motorola-esque photography brilliance. The Razer Fold really is the best book-style foldable, with photography being a primary use-case. So much so, that I put Motorola’s choice of hardware and image processing tuning in the same category as the ultra phones – Xiaomi 17 Ultra, Vivo X300 Ultra and Oppo Find X9. To achieve this with such ease and grace is no mean feat. Foldables have generally, since their inception, been comparatively ahead of the curve on the photography front.
If you spend the time making the Razer Fold’s camera app exactly how you want it, it makes it quite easy to get amazing-looking photos. Particularly impressive are the dynamic range, the burst of well-recognized colors that you’ll appreciate almost immediately and the images that can blur the background better than many phones (especially the accuracy of discrimination around the head/hair). I can attest that focus sometimes takes a momentary survey of the landscape before locking, and there is very obvious color distortion in the sky in some photos.
The crowning jewel of a successful first generation for the Razer Fold is its excellent battery life. The silicon-carbon structure has been a game changer for smartphones, but that doesn’t mean customization is any less important – and this is where Motorola has clearly done a great job. Having a large foldable display and a very useful cover lighting up the screen (and very brightly too, when you need it to), and still returning significantly more screen usage time than any other foldable under the same usage load is impressive.
With a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip, tons of memory, and an impressive layering of the Moto AI suite (which gets Google Gemini and Microsoft CoPilot integration), Motorola sorted out the basics of a flagship experience before building a foldable experience with the brightest display ever and the most amazing camera system in the entire ecosystem. While the traditional approach to foldables has been specs first, Motorola has taken top-notch specs and woven a very impressive experience around them – whether it’s the design and great elements, the generally minimal and on-point software layers, and performance that will stand the Motorola Razr Fold in good stead for many years to come. Suddenly, there’s some competition in the book-style foldable space. Perhaps sleepwalking will no longer be an option for rivals.
(Vishal Mathur is Technology Editor, Hindustan Times. When he doesn’t understand technology, he often searches for an elusive analog space in the digital world.)