Motorola’s revamped Razr, which recently became available in South Africa, will soon be joined by the Razr Fold, the first of the company’s book-style folding smartphones. The handset appeared at CES and is set for launch later this year, but all the details are already known. It seems Samsung has competition on its hands in 2026.
We can make guesses as to how the South Korean company will handle the new threat, but several successive generations of Galaxy Fold suggest that Samsung probably won’t be too stressed. Even if it has largely made the same phone for the past couple of years.
Into the Razr Fold
Motorola can’t just rely on nostalgia to sell this one. The company’s new Fold is an all-new form factor with by-now familiar branding, and there may be mechanical issues for the Lenovo-owned entity to work out in the latter half of 2026. But on paper, the Razr Fold seems to have what it takes to make more established book-style folding phones nervous.
There’s a 6.56in OLED outer display, which opens up into an 8.09in inner OLED screen with Dolby Vision+ and 120Hz support. It should excel at media, if nothing else, and Moto has some experience in making folding displays work. Even if its history has been all clamshell-based up to this point.
Internally, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and 256GB/512GB of storage (RAM is still a mystery right now) should make Moto’s Fold competitive… for a while. It’ll be a slight concern that last year’s heavyweight mobile chipset will power a folding device planned for launch in the third quarter of 2026, but it should retain plenty of power. The price point might also be an advantage, since the upcoming folding handset won’t sport 2026’s Shiny New Silicone™.
The Razr Fold is also not skimping on camera tech, with three rear 50MP sensors planned for the device. A main 50MP f/1.6 and a 50MP 71mm periscope telephoto with 3x optical zoom (both with optical image stabilisation), and a 50MP f/2.0 122° ultrawide should alleviate the usual ‘cameras in folding phones suck’ complaint. A 20MP lens will live inside the folding display, and the outer screen will have its own 32MP snapper.
Final spec and pricing should be the decider for this folding smartphone, as well as local availability. We’re unlikely to get the first two any time soon, but we’ve reached out to Motorola locally to see whether South Africa is on the launch list for the Razr Fold. Whether we are or aren’t, you should know shortly. Samsung does need a little competition on the ground in South Africa.
