Motorola is planning to take another stab at foldable phones with a third-generation of the modern Razr flip phone, the mobile giant’s parent company Lenovo has apparently confirmed.
Despite a middling reception for the first two Moto Razr reboots, which had struggled to keep pace with rivals like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3, a third coming is on the horizon.
That’s according to Chen Jin, who is the GM of the Lenovo Mobile Business Group in China, who is essentially the man in charge of Motorola’s smartphone arm too.
According to translated comments within a Weibo post first spotted by Android Police (via The Verge), Chen Jin is pledging a new version of the Razr with a more refined design, improved user interface and a faster processor.
It’s not immediately apparent how this device would be an immediate improvement on the first and second-generation Motorola Razr foldable phones, which arrived in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
The latter of the two improved the specs and added 5G connectivity, but couldn’t quite lift the phone beyond the obvious style and nostalgia value it initially propositioned us with.
The machine-translated comments speak of how the first-ten Razr offered the world’s first vertically folding screen with star orbit hinge technology developed independently by Lenovo. Chen Jin says Lthe company is “silently” developing the third model in the series (bit of an oxymoron, but it may have been lost in translation). He also says the phone will be introduced to the Chinese market first.
We’d hazard a guess, given the timing of these comments, that the next-gen Razr will arrive at February’s Mobile World Congress expo, which is scheduled to commence on February 28 in Barcelona. However, failing that, we’ll probably see it at some point in 2022. Whether it’ll have any more success than its predecessors remains to be seen.
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In our first impressions of the 2019 version, our own Max Parker wrote: “The Razr 2019 is a phone brimming with nostalgia and this is both a positive and a negative. Due to way it folds you’re not really getting anything over-and-above a regular 6.2-inch phone – aside from the fact it’s very small in your pocket. Is this enough of a benefit to forego a truly high-end, multi-camera system and battery life that won’t need babying? I am yet to be convinced. What I can say with confidence is that this is a gorgeous, fantastically well-built smartphone that feels a lot more complete than the Galaxy Fold.”
Hopefully the 2022 version can make the next step.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
