Exclusive: The simple reason why Motorola isn’t making a book-style foldable

The Motorola Razr 40 Ultra represents the fourth generation of foldable from the Lenovo-owned company, but despite being the first on the market to release a foldable phone, the company has yet to take on the book-style form factor.

Some might find that a bit of an oddity considering the core components of the clamshell-style foldable – the flexible display, the new hinge system – could be easily used in a larger book-style foldable, giving users a slightly different experience more tailored towards productivity than pure content consumption.

You might wonder, then, why the Lenovo-owned brand hasn’t dipped its toe into the water of book-style foldables just yet. 

My theory was, and still is, to be honest, down to app availability. While the book-style form factor is tempting for those that want to go from a smartphone-sized device to something resembling a tablet, there are huge compatibility issues, particularly with popular third-party apps. 

You see, while clamshell-style phones open into something that resembles a standard candybar smartphone, the book-style internal display is much boxier than developers are used to. 

This means that, depending on the app and particularly if it favours a vertical layout, it might not run well. That’s true even of popular apps like Instagram, which severely crop videos and make it difficult to see an entire image without having to scroll down.

Google is said to be working on third-party app support, making it easier for devs to adapt to the form factor with Android 14, and it’s working with key Android app makers ahead of the launch of the Pixel Fold too.

However, I got the opportunity to talk to Motorola’s Head of Customer Experience, Ruben Castano, about the book-style form factor at the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra launch in Madrid. He explained that there’s a very different reason why the company has yet to dabble in the form factor – and it’s surprisingly straightforward.

“Razr is this [clamshell] type of form factor. It has always been that, and it needs to continue that to be true to what Razr is.”

That does make sense given the original clamshell design of the Razr from back in the early 00s, and the fact that the form factor is synonymous with the form factor works well for Motorola even now. The Razr brand is nostalgic, and people of a certain age (i.e. those like me in my 30s) will have great memories of the phone. 

But it goes further than just not wanting to break the association that fans have for Razr and the clamshell design. As Castano explained, “The book-style form factor is tailored more towards productivity […] Razr is a content creation device. It’s a device we really want to continue building that story of, it adapts to loads of users using it during the day.”

Now that Motorola has cemented its place in the premium foldable market with the Razr 40 Ultra, you might assume that the company has its sights set on the book-style form factor, but no. In fact, if anything, Motorola wants to double down on the clamshell form factor. 

“Now that we have the flex hinge, now that we have multiple ways of consumers being able to create content, now that we have that massive external screen, all of the key ingredients are there to continue building that story,” Castano remarked. 

That’s not to say we won’t ever see any other form factor from Motorola – the company exclusively revealed to Trusted Reviews that the rollable concept is in the hands of consumers for data collection – but the chances of seeing a book-style foldable, at least under the Razr brand, looks to be pretty slim in the near future.

But hey, at least now we know why, right?