GoKawiilis a senior reviewer with over a decade of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.
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For a phone that gets a lot right, the Motorola Razr Fold is frustratingly hard to recommend.
The Razr Fold is the company’s first book-style foldable, and it enters the US market with something not currently available on the competition: truly excellent battery life that rivals the best slab-style phones. No need to worry if you spend a long session gaming or working in a Google doc on the inner screen. The Razr Fold is going to easily get you through your day and then some. Samsung and Google’s foldables are much more likely to generate battery anxiety on a day of heavy use.
Also, the Razr Fold looks nice. The rounded corners, soft touch back panel, and well-considered color options are very welcome and very Motorola. Nobody is making better-looking phones than this company right now. 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 costing $1,900. And at that price, it falls short in a few ways. This is a phone that puts all of its polish front and center — a great design, a big battery, and a clever multitasking system — but then drops the act around the edges. And there are a few too many rough edges for this high-end of a device.
The Razr Fold’s 6,000mAh battery really is its biggest asset. It’s able to offer so much capacity thanks to its silicon carbon technology, allowing it to store more energy than traditional lithium-ion batteries. Chinese phone makers are quickly adopting it while Apple, Samsung, and Google have been reluctant — likely because of some concerns about the battery tech degrading faster than straight-up lithium-ion. Motorola and its China-based parent company Lenovo seem not to share the same concerns, since this year’s entire Razr lineup uses silicon-carbon tech.
It’s hard to say how well justified the concerns are around longevity since silicon-carbon hasn’t been used in phones for that long. In my extremely unscientific opinion and limited short-term testing, I can say that silicon-carbon absolutely kicks ass in a phone. I never even came close to triggering low power mode on the Razr Fold. Even on a day with a healthy amount of camera use and an hour using the inner screen, the battery was still above 50 percent by bedtime.
I never even came close to triggering low power mode on the Razr Fold
Motorola has also figured out a multitasking solution on the inner screen that rivals could learn from. It feels like a good compromise between Samsung’s “anything goes” approach and Google’s three app maximum. You can open two apps in split screen or have one app occupy most of the screen with a second in the background just a quick tap away.
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