I spent much of the past couple years quite enamored with both the hardware and software of Samsung’s book-style foldable phones. That changed with the release of the Galaxy Z Fold 7, and I’ve since switched to the Motorola Razr Fold. I’d be lying if I said every aspect of this phone is better, but I’m quite surprised by the extent to which most of it, frankly, actually is.
Many of the advantages of the Razr Fold aren’t specific to this phone. Over the past few years, Motorola has been gradually making better high-end phones and learning how to one-up Samsung along the way.
Motorola knows better than anyone how to best modify Android
Stock Android is great, but there is room to innovate
I love Motorola’s approach to shipping Android software. For the most part, its phones look like they run stock Android. I have Google Pixel phones on hand for comparison, and the differences between the interfaces is vanishingly small. You can’t look at a screenshot of a home screen and immediately distinguish a Moto phone from a Pixel the way you can with Samsung or OnePlus devices.
There are some Motorola-specific apps that are easy to swap out, but they manage to blend in with most other Android apps in a way that Samsung apps don’t. The UI enhancements are typically improvements for the better. Motorola has added multitasking for up to three apps, which beats what you get on a Google Pixel Pro Fold. Some weird Google decisions, like combining the Wi-Fi and cellular data quick toggle, were never present on Motorola devices.
It’s time to care about charging speeds
45W charging is nice, but it still lags behind
Credit: Bertel King / How-To Geek
It’s not quite easy to define what “fast charging” means here in the US. Apple, Google, and Samsung sell most of the phones that people own, and many of those devices peak at 25W. Meanwhile, various Chinese brands have blown past 100W.
Now that OnePlus is exiting the American market, that leaves Motorola as your best option for a phone that you can charge for a mere 15 minutes and expect to last the rest of the day. My Razr Fold has 80W charging. My three-year-old Moto Edge+, with 67W charging, still charges faster than Samsung’s most recently announced phones in 2026.
All-day battery changes how you live your life
I’m ready to embrace silicon carbon
I love portable power banks so much that we have batteries all over the house and are more likely to reach for one than a nearby wall charger. I have a tiny battery that plugs into the bottom of my phone and is easy to carry with me when I’m going to be out and about all day.
With a 6,000mAh battery in my Razr Fold, it’s time to change up my habits. My family recently spent a full Saturday at Colonial Williamsburg, followed by an entire Sunday at Busch Gardens. Despite taking many photos, recording short videos, and reading ebooks outdoors on my internal screen with the brightness cranked all the way up, there was never a moment that I felt concerned about running out of power.
Meanwhile, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra both have 5,000mAh batteries, and these are the largest that Samsung packs into a phone.
Good gestures can be reason enough to buy a phone
Twisting and chopping are easier than pressing buttons
Most of my colleagues have memories of owning a Motorola phone, and those of us that did all think back to Motorola’s gestures fondly. The ability to turn on a flashlight by making a chop motion with your phone sounds gimmicky, but it is immeasurably convenient.
When I was carrying around a Samsung phone, being able to double tap my power button to launch the camera felt good enough, but it just doesn’t compare to the ability to launch my camera by twisting my wrist twice. Now that I’m back on a Motorola phone, I now pull out my phone and take photos with much more confidence that I’ll be able to capture the shot
Motorola proves you don’t have to compromise by buying a foldable
I can have the best camera, a big battery, fast charging, and a stylus
Credit: Bertel King / How-To Geek
Since their inception, folding phones have commanded higher price tags than their flagship slab counterparts while simultaneously offering weaker specs. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 has inferior cameras to the Galaxy S26. It also has a smaller battery and slower charging. Plus, in pursuit of thinness, Samsung ditched the digitizer that enabled S Pen support, which is why I didn’t love the Z Fold 7 the way so many others did.
In contrast, the Razr Fold is, by nearly every metric, the most powerful phone I’ve ever owned. All three of its rear cameras are 50MP and match those of the Motorola Signature. It has a gargantuan battery while still being super thin, and it works with an active pen. I’m writing these words with my Moto Pen Ultra as we speak.
It’s time to consider Motorola a premium brand
Motorola has long been best known for its budget phones. The Razr Flip series gives us reason to think differently, despite those phones deliberately undercutting Samsung’s flip phones in price. While the Razr Fold is still cheaper than a Samsung phone when you consider that it starts with 512 GB of storage and how aggressively Motorola offers discounts, there’s little reason to think of this as a less premium device. The big caveat remains whether Motorola will do a better job of rolling out updates to its highest-end phones going forward or whether its promise of seven years of software support will remain just that—mere words.