Best Foldable Phones 2025: The top book-style and clamshell foldables

Samsung may have been the first company to truly bring new-age flip phones to the masses, but it’s Motorola that’s taken the torch and run with it, emboldening the concept with key areas of innovation that have culminated thus far in the outstanding Motorola Razr 60 Ultra.

The key headline here is that both the internal and external displays have been given several upgrades. For starters, the internal display is now slightly bigger, moving from 6.9-inches to 7-inches, so you have more space than ever to help make gaming and watching films feel even more immersive.

The brightness of that internal display has also shot up to 4500nits, making it easier than ever to use outdoors against direct sunlight. The 4-inch external display hasn’t been left behind either, with that also seeing a brightness boost, going from 2400nits to now 3000nits, which really goes a long way towards making the more compact screen pop.

Even with those screen upgrades in tow, Motorola hasn’t forgotten about the one thing that should always be the focus of any foldable device: durability. Thankfully the company has introduced a new titanium-infused hinge which not only feels more sturdy than before, it has also allowed the phone to now carry an IP48 dust and water resistance rating, which significantly outperforms the IPX8 rating of the Razr 50 Ultra.

Powering all of this is the super fast Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which has a sizeable 16GB RAM to lean on for everyday operations. You won’t have any issues playing the latest games here, and with 512GB storage as standard, you won’t be running out of room where apps are concerned either.

2023’s Honor Magic V2 was already thinner and lighter than much of the foldable competition, but the newer Honor Magic V3 takes that to the next level. It’s even slimmer, now just 9.2mm and, with a weight of 225g, it’s the first foldable to truly enter candybar smartphone territory, and it’s noticeable in everyday use.

The Magic V3 feels like a regular smartphone when it’s folded, complete with a fully specced out 6.34-inch OLED screen that sports flagship tech including a 120Hz LTPO refresh rate and a whopping peak brightness of 5000nits. You could happily use the cover screen and ignore the inner panel completely – though that’s not exactly the point.

That’s especially true with the Magic V3’s internal screen, which is easily one of the best around. The crease, while still present, is incredibly shallow at 78um – for comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 has a depth of 217um in its crease, so it’s a huge improvement. Not just that, it matches the spec of the cover screen including that same impressive peak brightness. Safe to say it’s an absolute joy to use, with a big 7.92-inch canvas perfect for browsing and split-screen multitasking.

Despite its industry-leading design, the Magic V3 boasts a 5150mAh silicon-carbon battery that’s much larger than any other book-style around right now, and that leads to impressive battery life, with our reviewer usually getting around seven hours of screen-on time out of the device before needing a top-up. And, with 66W wired charging support, you can get a full charge in just shy of an hour. There’s also 50W wireless charging if that’s more your thing.

The Magic V2 runs the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor as much of the competition, which unsurprisingly leads to rapid everyday performance when coupled with a healthy 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage as standard.

The only potential weakness is Honor’s MagicOS 8 software, which offers quite the departure from stock Android 14. While there are handy elements like XL folders on the home screen, MagicOS lacks the polish and finesse found in the likes of the OnePlus Open, and it’s not quite as capable in the AI department as the Z Fold 6 either.

All that, and it’s still £100 cheaper than the likes of the Z Fold 6 and Pixel 9 Pro Fold in the UK. What more do you want?

If you’re on the hunt for a book-style foldable with superb software, you’ll find no better than the OnePlus Open.

Its approach to foldable tech is genuinely useful, with elements like Open Canvas multitasking software that lets you use three apps in full-screen mode with ease, a handy app toolbar that can display over other apps, the ability to close the foldable and carry on what you were doing on the cover screen with a swipe and much more. It is a great experience, and one that we hope other foldable manufacturers emulate in future.

It also helps that the OnePlus Open has pretty impressive hardware on offer. While the likes of the Z Fold 6 offer a tall-and-narrow and short-and-squat cover display respectively, the OnePlus Open sports a regular 6.3-inch 20:9 display with all the premium bells and whistles you’d expect from a flagship display, including an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, impressive peak brightness of 2800nits and a pixel-packed resolution.

This all means there’s no compromise using the cover display in place of the larger internal one for anything from replying to texts to casually scrolling on Instagram.

Of course, it’s all about the foldable inner display, and OnePlus has knocked it out of the park here too. There’s a much shallower central crease than the competition, so much so that it’s hard to see unless you’re looking at it off-angle, and there’s barely any change in tactile feedback as you run your finger over it. That makes the 7.86-inch OLED panel an absolute joy to use.

That stellar performance continues with the camera setup, boasting a trio of rear lenses that, unlike most of the competition, are all designed specifically for use in foldables. That translates to strong performance from not only the 48MP primary and ultrawide sensors, but the 64MP periscope lens in particular, delivering great shots at 3.5x, 6x and although images are pretty terrible at the full 120x, it does a good job up until the 25x mark.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is starting to get a little long in the tooth, but it still performs pretty well in everyday tasks. Throw in fast 67W SuperVOOC charging with a charger in the box and OnePlus’ signature volume slider, and you’ve got a very tempting book-style flagship that costs less than others on the market.

Samsung continues to dominate the foldable market despite increased competition from the likes of OnePlus, Motorola, Google and others.

Samsung’s latest edition of its flagship foldable – the Z Fold 6 – offers a few key changes for the first time in a few years, with a slightly wider (but still narrow) 6.3-inch OLED cover screen, flat edges and squared-off corners to give it a look not too dissimilar to the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

These are welcome changes that make the Z Fold 6 feel more like the premium bit of foldable kit that it is. It’s still relatively chunky (12.1mm) and heavy (239g) however, and Samsung has yet to deal with the infamous crease on the 7.6-inch inner screen, remaining one of the more noticeable options around, so there’s still room for improvement.

Importantly, it boasts the custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy and boosted cooling capabilities that make it, along with the Flip 6, the most powerful foldables around right now, making light work of high-end gaming, split-screen multitasking and just about anything else we could throw at it during testing.

That custom Snapdragon chipset also helps to power Samsung’s Galaxy AI experience, with a sprawling number of AI-powered features available on the foldable. It ranges from simple tasks like rewriting texts and emails in different styles to more advanced capabilities like real-time translation in phone calls and the ability to transcribe recordings. Throw in seven years of OS upgrades and it’s an experience that’ll only get better over time.

The 4400mAh battery remains the same as last year, and that means that battery life is only okay. It’ll get you through lighter days of use just fine, but on heavier days, you’ll likely need a top-up during the day. And, with relatively slow 25W charging, it takes well over an hour to fully charge.

With a 6.3-inch outer panel that feels just like using a Pixel 9 Pro and an 8-inch inner panel with a tweaked aspect ratio, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a welcome refresh from its predecessor, the Pixel Fold.

There is one issue with the inner panel and that’s the noticeable crease in the centre. How big an issue this is depends on your personal preference however as we know it is possible for a foldable to be near-creaseless, like the Honor Magic V3, the crease feels like a bitter pill to swallow.

Otherwise the Pixel 9 Pro Fold runs on Google’s Tensor G4 processor which prioritises AI performance over sheer power. While this means the handset scored fairly low during our Geekbench tests, in reality we found that it performed well in everyday use, with apps opening quickly and games playing well too.

Overall the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is made up of five cameras, including three rear and two 10MP selfie lenses. The rear trio might not be as powerful as the Pixel 9 Pro or Pixel 9 Pro XL but thanks to Google’s image processing capabilities, shots have a contrast-heavy finish with natural-looking results.

Naturally as part of the Pixel lineup, the 9 Pro Fold is packed with heaps of AI powered tools, especially for photo editing. Remove unwanted distractions from images with just a tap thanks to Magic Editor or with the Pixel 9 exclusive Add Me, you can ensure the photographer is never left out of a group shot again.

That’s not where the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s AI prowess ends. The handset comes preloaded with apps including Pixel Screenshots which collects and organises your screenshots and Pixel Studio for generating images based on user prompts.

Although the Pixel 9 Pro Fold packs a smaller battery than its predecessor, we did find the handset could just about get through the day on a single charge.

If you’re keen to experience the AI and photography capabilities of the Pixel lineup but want a more unique handset, then the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is an ideal choice.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 is perhaps the most well-known clamshell available right now. It’s also ideal if you’re concerned about the fragility of these foldable devices thanks to some much-needed upgrades in durability.

Visually, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 looks very similar to the Z Flip 5 that came before it. However, the hinge is stronger and more impact-resistant this time around, feeling tighter and more stable than most flip phones. The device is also dust-resistant for the first time and about as water-resistant as it gets with its IP48 rating.

The 3.4-inch cover display remains a major upgrade compared to the smaller screen on the Z Flip 4, though this display has been overshadowed by the larger and more useful screen on the Motorola Razr 50. Unfold the device and you’ll find a tall and narrow 6.7-inch inner display with a 120Hz refresh rate that we found to be clear and crisp.

Cameras have also been a major point of improvement this time around, with the Z Flip 6 sharing the same 50-megapixel main sensor as the Galaxy S24 Plus, along with a refreshed 12-megapixel ultra-wide lens. There’s no zoom lens here, but the main camera is a strong performer in pretty much any situation from bright daylight to nighttime and an ultra-wide lens is something rivals like the Razr 50 Ultra miss out on.

The Z Flip 6 is also powered by the same custom version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 found across the rest of Samsung’s line-up, making this one of the most powerful foldables around capable of benchmarking alongside some of the best flagship devices. The foldable is packed with useful Galaxy AI features, including a translation tool that makes the most of its dual-screen folding form factor.

Finally, the battery offers a full day of regular use, though charging it quite slow compared to many devices on the market.

However, if you’re looking for a solid all-round foldable experience, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 delivers with a new, more durable design and improved camera experience.

Editor’s note: Motorola has released the Razr 60, and we’re in the process of reviewing the new affordable foldable. It’ll likely replace the older Razr 50 in our chart, but we can’t say for sure right now. 

The Motorola Razr 50 is a fantastic entry-level foldable that addresses practically every complaint we had with the Razr 40 while also matching the Razr 50 Ultra in many key areas.

The Razr 50 features a clamshell design, an attractive vegan leather rear and a spacious 3.6-inch 90Hz cover screen, making the outer display more useful than that on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 at a fraction of the cost. The build quality has improved too, with an IPX8 water-resistance rating and a hinge mechanism that feels just as rigid and premium as that on the Razr 50 Ultra.

The larger cover screen makes it possible to run full-screen apps without unfolding the phone, while the 6.9-inch 120Hz pOLED inner display with an FHD+ resolution and a peak brightness of 3000 nits. The crease is also significantly less noticeable this time around, putting the dip more in line with the Z Flip series.

The cameras have also been given an upgrade, with the dual layout including a 50-megapixel main sensor and a 13-megapixel ultra-wide camera, along with a 32-megapixel selfie camera in the display. This is the same main camera found in the Razr 50 Ultra, producing vibrant and detailed daytime shots with a good amount of natural bokeh.

Powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7300X, this foldable offers solid mid-range performance and comes paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage as standard. There are some AI features to get excited about, including the Image Enhancement Engine and Google Gemini access on the cover screen, though its AI features aren’t as expansive as that of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 or even the Razr 50 Ultra.

Finally, the Razr 50 is equipped with a 4200 mAh battery that offers a full day of use and can charge fully in just under an hour. If you’re on the hunt for an affordable foldable, the Motorola Razr 50 won’t disappoint.