Skip to main content

Motorola’s newest folding phone is cheaper than the iPhone 15

The open Motorola Razr 40, seen from the back.
Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Motorola is finally putting its most affordable foldable phone on the shelves in the U.S. The Motorola Razr (2023) will be up for preorder from Motorola’s official website starting October 12, while AT&T, Boost Infinite, Boost Mobile, Consumer Cellular, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Xfinity Mobile will get it a week later.

The most alluring aspect of the Motorola phone is its asking price, which puts it strictly in the midrange segment despite offering sophisticated foldable phone engineering. For a limited spell, the device will go for an irresistible sticker price of $600. It will also be sold unlocked via Amazon and Best Buy, in addition to Motorola’s own storefront.

T-Mobile subscribers, both new and old, can get the Razr (2023) for free when exchanging a phone tethered to the Go5G Plus and Go5G Next plans. Xfinity Mobile is giving $400 off for its customers, while AT&T will sell the Razr for just $2 per month without any trade-in caveats for select plans.

Even without the carrier offers and a lower introductory price, the official retail price of the Razr (2023) has been set at $700, which still undercuts the likes of Apple and Samsung. The iPhone 15 starts at $799, while the Google Pixel 8 will set you back $699.

A person opening the Motorola Razr 40.
Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

At that asking price, the Motorola Razr (2023) is the most affordable foldable phone from a mainstream brand out there. But it still has quite some identity of its own, rocking a vegan leather build with a sturdy metallic chassis that comes in multiple peppy colors and impressive work done to minimize the display crease.

“I haven’t noticed the crease at all,” Digital Trends’ Andy Boxall wrote in his review of the Motorola Razr (2023). It offers a 6.9-inch FHD+ pOLED display with a neat 144Hz refresh rate and 1,400 nits of peak brightness. On the outside is a 1.5-inch OLED cover display that is also sufficiently bright but serves more like an at-a-glance screen for checking on notifications and alerts. A less distracting screen, if you will!

Motorola’s foldable device draws power from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, ticking alongside 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. Authentication duties are shouldered by a side-mounted fingerprint scanner integrated into the power button. The battery capacity is 4,200 mAh, and it supports 33W fast charging, which once again surpasses what Apple has to offer.

A person holding the closed Motorola Razr 40.
Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

The primary camera relies on a 64-megapixel sensor, while the 13MP ultrawide camera is also capable of taking macro shots. For selfies and video calls, you get a 32MP selfie camera on the Motorola Razr (2023). Camera features include night vision and audio zoom, but you don’t get the ability to capture 4K videos.

But at a starting price of $599 — and even $699 once the initial promotional pricing is gone — the Motorola Razr (2023) punches way above its weight class, not just with the sheer strength of the specs sheet, but also because it offers the flexibility of an adorably pocketable foldable phone. It just so happens that it looks damn good while at it. The only chink in its armor is that Motorola’s software support assurance isn’t quite up to the mark, but for a foldable this cheap, that’s hardly reason enough not to consider it.

Editors' Recommendations

Nadeem Sarwar
Nadeem is a tech journalist who started reading about cool smartphone tech out of curiosity and soon started writing…
World’s top folding phone maker revealed — and it’s not Samsung
A person folding up the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5.

Data from analysts at Counterpoint Research has revealed that Samsung has lost its crown as the world’s top foldable smartphone brand based on the number of shipments. In the space of a year, Samsung has slipped from having a 58% share of shipments to 23%, and it's Huawei that has taken the top spot, overtaking it as the new leader with a 35% share of the folding phone market.

Losing the top spot is bad enough, but according to the dat,a Samsung is the only brand not to have shown any growth in foldable phone shipments over the past 12 months. While Huawei is now the top manufacturer by number of shipments, even it did not register the largest growth according to Counterpoint Research’s data. Instead, Motorola’s shipments grew by a massive 1,473% to take 11% of the market, and the company notes the Razr 2023 is its top model in North America.

Read more
The iPhone’s new AI features may come with a gigantic catch
An iPhone 15 Pro Max laying face-down outside, showing the Natural Titanium color.

Imagine paying a minimum of $999 for a new iPhone 14 Pro in 2022, only to discover that it can’t run the full iOS 18 experience in less than two years. It might sound dystopian, especially for a product known for its long shelf life that's largely the result of an industry-leading software update policy at Apple.

Yet, it seems that nightmarish surprise will be here in just over a week. Bloomberg recently reported on some crucial AI-driven features coming to iOS 18, with Siri being one of the main recipients of all that innovation. But iPhone users might have to pay a pretty price for it all.

Read more
This Android phone has a camera feature I’ve never used before, and I love it
Gray Vivo V30 Pro Aura fill Light held in hand.

We have all had some amazing moments ruined by flash. That is why the flash's utility on our phones has largely stayed out of photography and been limited to ensure that we don't stub our pinky toes while grabbing a snack from the kitchen in the middle of the night.

But as we know from large studio setups, good lighting is vital for images; high-end cameras aim to address the limitation of low light with larger camera sensors and lenses with wider apertures. For phones, unfortunately, the physical dimensions of a camera module do not facilitate that liberty to a great extent. Vivo, which is known for some prodigious phone cameras, has an intuitive solution to the problem -- and it involves using a smarter and refined version of the flash.

Read more