Motorola leveraged the CES spotlight to launch Razr Fold, its first-ever book-style foldable and a clear departure from clamshell nostalgia to a productivity-first play. It casts up a huge outer display for day-to-day use, stretches out a sprawling inner canvas for multitasking and… you also get tighter hooks to the Lenovo ecosystem (not that thrilling! beyond device transfer) and on-device AI that it claims actually aims to feel more genuinely helpful in some scenarios rather than gimmicky.
A foldable built for work productivity and play
Closed, the Razr Fold is a normal flagship with a 6.6-inch outer screen that can run full apps instead of glanceable widgets. Open it, and you’re greeted with an 8.1-inch, 2K LTPO panel that the company says was designed around split-screen workflows, side-by-side documents and media that actually fit. LTPO often means dynamic refresh rates to balance smooth UI with battery efficiency, and this form finally provides Motorola with enough room to make multitasking a natural rather than cramped experience.
Stylus support, unsurprisingly, stresses the productivity angle. Combined with Motorola’s desktop-style flavor and Lenovo’s PC experience, the Razr Fold sounds like a tool for note-takers, annotators and creators who need that large tablet-sized space without needing to carry an extra device. Motorola’s latest hinge engineering on the newer Razr models has applied a teardrop-style fold to minimize creasing; replicating this finesse across a book-style form factor will be crucial for comfort and longevity.
Motorola’s unified AI now runs primarily on-device
The Razr Fold also premieres Motorola Qira, a centralized assistant that completes many actions on-device. Whether with Catch Me Up or Next Move, these features are aimed at breaching the walls dividing apps and providing reminders, context, and suggested actions when you need them most. Running such interactions on the device minimizes latency and allows greater privacy by avoiding dependency on the cloud, a development aligned with trends cited in reports by research groups such as IDC that have emphasized growing consumer interest in AI that feels fast and is trusted.
Crucially, Qira also brings Motorola phones and Lenovo hardware closer in line, seeming like where phone-to-PC workflows might go next. Think: answering a call on your laptop, handing off a document to the big screen or getting intelligent prompts that realize you are in a slide deck, not a chat thread. These are the little things that will make AI feel like infrastructure rather than a checkbox.
Cameras try to fracture foldable compromises
Motorola’s camera stack sends a clear middle finger to “good for a foldable.” The Razr Fold features a triple 50MP rear array with periscope telephoto, and dedicated selfie cameras both inside and out. That lead camera hogs the space up front and features a Sony LYTIA sensor at its heart, plus Dolby Vision video and strong stabilization in tow. Foldables have often chosen slenderness over camera hardware; in leaning into a highfalutin periscope and large-pixel shooting, Motorola seeks parity with slab flagships, a direction in which reviews and labs (like DxOMark) have compelled the category to move.
The form factor also makes for some interesting shots: prop it half-open for a steady time-lapse playback, use the outer display as a rear-camera selfie preview or turn the inner panel into a live director’s monitor. These are clear benefits that make a foldable do something a flat phone just can’t.
Where it fits in a rapidly growing category
The Razr Fold squarely lands opposite Samsung’s Z Fold line, Google’s Pixel Fold and the OnePlus Open. Both Counterpoint Research and IDC have observed continued double-digit growth in foldables, while book-style models are becoming a preferred form factor for power users who want bigger inner screens. Display Supply Chain Consultants has also cited industry progress in hinge durability and crease reduction, with rivals targeting about 200,000 folds as an estimate of the press-safety testing done by labs like TÜV Rheinland — a standard that consumers now demand.
Motorola’s pitch involves three pillars: the usefulness of a cover screen, readiness to take notes with a stylus and on-device AI that bridges the phone and PC.
If it gets software polish and heat under control, while also keeping an eye on weight, it’s the thing that can put pressure on incumbents who have iterated more than reinvented for a couple of cycles.
Special edition and what we still do not know
As well as the standard model, Motorola teased a FIFA World Cup Edition Razr with custom branding and software. It’s a wise tie-in for the international market and a signal the company has plans to build cultural cachet around the Razr name that extends beyond nostalgia.
Pricing and release timing are still unknown, and those will determine how aggressively the Razr Fold competes with incumbents. Purchasers will also look for durability ratings, IP protection and long-term update commitments. Today’s top Android flagships now guarantee 7 years of OS and security updates — and that’s the sort of spec you’ll want to think about when comparing products on a spec sheet. If Motorola can meet that ambition and the Razr Fold’s hardware performs as promised, it could finally provide the book-style subset with the serious new challenger it has been seeking.
