Motorola Razr Fold vs Xiaomi 17

Motorola Razr Fold

Historically the foldable Achilles heel — but Motorola invested in hardware and software here, and DxOMark ranks it the best camera in any foldable.

• DxOMark rates the Razr Fold the #1 camera among foldables — roughly 8th overall across all phones — with a Gold Label.
• A 50MP main (f/1.6, OIS), a 50MP ultrawide (12mm, 122° FOV, f/2.0) and a third 50MP camera — all selfies can use the best 50MP main.
• This is without question the best Motorola camera I've ever used.
• Comes up just short of modern flagships like the iPhone 17 Pro, Find X9 Pro and Xiaomi 17 Ultra, with a DxOMark score of 164 points.
• Took it for a street-photography spin and came away genuinely impressed — the camera hardware was what caught attention.
• Highest-quality camera in a folding phone in the US — better than the Pixel 10 Pro Fold and Galaxy Z Fold 7, which use older sensors.

Xiaomi 17

A capable Leica-tuned main and telephoto pairing lets the compact 17 shoot above its class, but the ultrawide is a clear step backwards and default autofocus on people can be unreliable.

• The main and zoom cameras are nothing short of excellent, though against the Vivo and Pixel 10 Pro it isn't such a clear-cut win.
• The ultrawide is downgraded — poor quality, narrower field of view and still no autofocus.
• The ultrawide lens is just 17mm wide, so the images aren't very wide at all.
• Reviewers loved the Leica tuning on the base Xiaomi 17, even where exposure occasionally clips highlights.
• The 60mm-class telephoto is good, but after a month you find yourself wishing it had more reach.

Motorola Razr Fold

Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 with 16GB RAM — fast for everyday use and surprisingly good in long sessions, but the choice of the non-Elite chip in a $1,899 phone is the headline criticism.

• Motorola stuck Qualcomm's excellent Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 (16GB RAM, 512GB) inside its first full-fold flagship.
• With a phone this expensive it is a bit disappointing Motorola couldn't go all the way with the Elite chip.
• In a 20-minute stress test the Z Fold 7's 8 Elite was ~10% better on the first loop, but the Razr Fold ran better through the 20 minutes and ended ~20% ahead on sustained performance with similar thermals.
• Recording 4K120 for a long time makes the Snapdragon CPU run quite hot, though it cools down fairly fast.
• The non-Elite chip, 243g weight and IP49 dust rating could be causes for concern, even if the experience is smooth.

Xiaomi 17

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 makes the 17 one of the fastest compact phones around, but sustained-load behaviour is the single most contested topic in the coverage.

• Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 on a 3nm process, claiming ~20% better CPU performance and ~35% better battery efficiency than the previous generation, with a Geekbench 6 single-core score of 3,367 and multi-core of 9,830.
• If you look at benchmark scores, it is a significant upgrade over the 8 Elite that powered the Xiaomi 15.
• After a month it still feels just as snappy as day one, with high-end titles running at top settings and sustained performance over long sessions holding up well.
• In a prolonged CPU stress test the Xiaomi 17 did worse than expected, dipping to less than 40% of maximum and spiking continuously rather than holding stable.
• In Honkai Star Rail the Xiaomi 17 began throttling after about 3 minutes of gameplay, with the device becoming extremely hot to the touch.

Motorola Razr Fold

The standout: the largest battery in the book-foldable space delivering class-leading endurance, plus 80W wired charging — three times faster than the Galaxy Z Fold 7.

• Lasting an impressive 14 hours 31 minutes, the Razr Fold is officially the best notebook-style foldable for battery life (16h10m with refresh-rate optimized).
• The Galaxy Z Fold 7 managed only 10h44m in the same test, with a 4,400mAh battery versus the Razr Fold's 6,000mAh cell.
• I found the battery basically impossible to kill in a single day, even with the Fold's hotspot supplying an entire office internet connection over 12 days.
• It charges at 80W wired — over three times as fast as the Galaxy Z Fold 7's 25W — plus 50W wireless and 5W reverse, with a 90W charger and a case included in the box.
• The 6,000mAh cell is colossal — about 20% larger than the Pixel 10 Pro Fold's — though there's also more display to power.
• If you use the camera a lot or run games, the battery does drain quite quickly and you may need an afternoon top-up.

Xiaomi 17

The headline reason to buy a compact 17: an oversized silicon-anode battery and very fast charging that together solve the usual small-phone endurance problem.

• The massive 6,330mAh battery is truly exceptional for a compact flagship (the China version is 7,000mAh).
• You can get a full day of use, up to ~7 hours of screen-on time and sometimes more depending on usage.
• In a one-month real-world test, 6–7 hours of screen-on time on regular days was normal, dropping to 5–6 hours on heavy days, with up to ~16 hours in benchmark testing.
• Reached close to 9–10 hours of screen-on time on regular use — a genuine full-day battery phone — with 100W wired and 50W wireless charging faster than the iPhone 17 or Galaxy S26.
• 100W charging takes the 6,330mAh battery from 0–100% in as little as 45–46 minutes.

Motorola Razr Fold

The surprise strength — Motorola's foldable software is widely called the best balance of Pixel simplicity and Samsung multitasking, undercut only by Motorola's update-timeliness history.

• Motorola nailed the software — it feels like the perfect middle ground between the Pixel and Samsung approaches to book foldables, with a laptop mode that turns the bottom half into a trackpad.
• The Razr Fold is winning me over with something not on the spec sheet — superb multitasking software.
• Given Motorola's awful track record for timely updates, you've got to be ready to live with the little launch bugs for a while.
• Motorola promises 7 years of Android version and security updates — best-in-class and a huge jump from last year's 3-year commitment.
• Counterpoint: Motorola is only committing to 3 years of Android upgrades and 5 years of security patches, so versus Samsung's 7 years it's really no contest.

Xiaomi 17

HyperOS 3 on Android 16 is fast and visually polished but draws repeated criticism for bugs, bloat and missing basics — and the China ROM many global buyers import has real Google-service gaps.

• Runs Android 16 with Xiaomi's HyperOS 3, which is a very aesthetically pleasing UI.
• Feature-rich HyperOS 3 with a promised 5 years of major upgrades, but the software feels cheap with lots of bugs and you have to calculate screen-on time yourself because there's no built-in counter.
• Xiaomi confirmed the entire Xiaomi 17 series gets 6 years of security updates with end-of-life in February 2032.
• On the China ROM there is no Google Play Store out of the box, and you can't get into the Google Discover page — a real friction point for global buyers.
• Proprietary apps like settings, file manager and security ship with built-in ads.

Motorola Razr Fold

At $1,899 it undercuts the Z Fold 7 and is the only premium book foldable many US buyers can actually purchase — value hinges on whether the non-Elite chip and update questions matter to you.

• At $1,899.99 / £1,799.99 it undercuts the Galaxy Z Fold 7 by about $100/£100, and the pre-order Moto Pen Ultra bundle adds real value — the sum of its parts is the best foldable on the market.
• If you're tired of Samsung-only or have no interest in the Pixel Fold, this may be the best folding phone you can get in the US right now — the Oppo Find N6 and Honor Magic V6 aren't available there.
• It could be called a disappointment, especially compared to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold and Honor Magic V5 — it should have offered something more compelling to stand out.
• If Motorola drops the price by even two or three hundred dollars within the first few weeks, this phone suddenly becomes a much stronger contender.
• It competes fairly well with the Oppo Find N6, which is amazing to see.

Xiaomi 17

At roughly $630 the 17 is aggressively priced for a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 flagship, but reviewers disagree on whether it's a category-beater or merely a strong-value option in a crowded field.

• At around $630 it's a phone that's scaring the big brands on price-to-performance.
• For being cheaper than the iPhone, the Xiaomi 17 is a really compelling — and noticeably cheaper — option.
• Outside of being a rare compact flagship, the Xiaomi 17 doesn't offer anything significantly better than its competition.
• With a top-tier processor, Leica cameras, great display and a huge fast-charging battery, the Xiaomi 17 is one of the best price-to-performance phones of 2026.
• For a compact phone it didn't feel like a downgrade when switching from an iPhone 17 Pro daily driver.