The 6,000 mAh battery on the Razr Fold should worry Samsung and Google: Here’s why

If there’s anything standing between foldables and the mainstream smartphone market, it’s their battery life, and Motorola has taken it upon themselves to fix that. Almost all the smartphone giants have their book-style folding available in the US, and they all justify the premium with complex hinges, flexible displays, and other engineering marvels, but somehow, that doesn’t extend to their batteries.

You can open the foldable to double the screen size; that’s your whole tone. But does the battery life also double? Unfortunately, it isn’t. Between the two most widely available book-style foldables in the US – Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Google’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold – the average battery life remains below that of a typical mobile phone.

But aren’t smartphones still open for more than 10 hours on screen while using silicon-carbon battery technology? This is the gap that Motorola is stepping into with its first book-style folding device: the Razr Fold. For the first time, a foldable is entering the US market with a 6,000 mAh battery that supports 80W wireless charging, at least.

If it can deliver, the Razr Fold could close that gap before Samsung or Google come close.

The collapsible battery problems have always had

Consider the battery in the Fold 7 or Pixel 10 Pro Fold actually working: two displays (cover screen and folding screen), a flagship-tier chipset borrowed directly from slab phones, and at least two to three rear-facing cameras, and constant Wi-Fi or cellular connection.

It is because of this combined power draw that foldables require larger batteries to provide the same endurance as conventional phones. A few years ago, when the technology was not as mature as it is today, using a 4,000 or 4,400 mAh battery in a foldable device was par for the course.

To me, it feels like OEMs, especially in the US, are deliberately holding back on battery capacity in foldables, while Chinese brands like Honor and Oppo continue to push the boundaries.

This is the core problem that the Motorola Razr Fold can solve.

Who does the Razr Fold compete with?

I’ve used the Fold 7 briefly, and by most measures, it’s an impressive piece of technology. The smallest book-style folding in the US is just 4.2 mm when open. However, with a 4,400 mAh battery that offers about six hours of screen-on time on average, that didn’t make the phone last all day, at least for me.

The phone also takes around 90 minutes for a full charge, thanks to only 25W wired charging support. You can’t just plug it in 20 minutes before you leave your home; you have to plan around it.

Google’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold took a significant step forward with a 5,015 mAh cell and up to 39W charging, offering between seven and eight hours of screen-on time, which lasts a full day of use.

But that’s enough, right? Not really. Now that we’re in the era of more than 7,000-mAh battery phones (I’m talking about the OnePlus 15 and OnePlus 15R) that deliver almost two days of battery life between charges, a foldable connection around 8 or 9 PM feels like a bit of a change for a $2,000 purchase.

If foldable phones are going to stand a chance against traditional phones, manufacturers have to step up their battery life, which is why the Razr Fold has my attention.

What should you expect from the Razr Fold?

The Razr Fold’s 6,000 mAh battery is about 36% larger than the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s and about 20% larger than the Pixel 10 Pro Fold’s. The company achieved this using the same technology in modern Chinese flagships: silicon-carbon battery chemistry, which packs more energy into an invisible area without adding bulk. The result is a book-style fold that opens to just 4.7 mm, slightly thicker than the Fold 7, but not by a margin that should bother anyone.

Now, this is the part where I use years of experience to make a guess without trying to sound overly optimistic. The Razr Fold, with its 6,000 mAh battery and slightly more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip than the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Fold 7, should offer eight to nine hours of screen-on time under mixed use.

If Motorola has properly developed the software to be able to fold on the big screen, and that’s good if, given that this is the first folding of the company, the screen time can be moved even past nine hours.

In this way, foldables can match the battery life of modern flagships. However, if that doesn’t happen, I would be disappointed, and seven to eight hours is where the phone will last, with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, despite the fact that it has a much larger battery.

Please don’t drop the ball, Motorola

Charging speed is equally important here. The Razr Fold’s 80W wired charging speed is more than three times what Samsung offers on the Fold 7 and double what Google offers on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. The caveat, here, is that none of this has been proven yet, and we will have to wait a few weeks to find out the truth.

It is good to know that the company also promises to use more than 12 hours from less than 10 minutes of connection. For convenience, and to leave the competition confused, the Razr Fold also supports 50W wireless charging. While achieving those speeds requires Motorola’s proprietary hardware, I’d definitely pay for that kind of speedy convenience.

In addition, the Razr Fold’s 6,000 mAh battery, paired with 80W wireless charging and 50W wireless charging, is a certain combination worthy of American consumers. If it delivers, it will bridge the gap between the battery life we ​​get from regular and foldable smartphones, making the Razr a must-buy and forcing Samsung and Google to go back to the drawing board.