The iconic Motorola Razr flip phone is getting a futuristic facelift and we cannot wait for it.
Motorola has confirmed that it plans to reboot the Razr this summer as a folding phone with a touchscreen, CNET reported, citing sources close to the situation.
Speculation has been building over the last few months that Motorola, which is owned by Chinese tech giant Lenovo, will launch a redesigned Razr phone.
A source with knowledge of Motorola’s plans told CNET that the foldable Razr would have a different design compared to other folding phones currently on the market.
Samsung’s $1,980 (R27 896) Galaxy Fold, debuted earlier this month, packs a 7.3-inch display when opened and a 4.6-inch display when closed.
Meanwhile, Huawei’s $2,600 (R36 631) Mate X, revealed this week at the annual Mobile World Congress conference, has a screen that measures 8 inches diagonally.
The Galaxy Fold is slated to launch April 26th and the Mate X will hit the shelves later this year.
A recent report from The Wall Street Journal claimed that the rebooted Razr device could be priced at $1,500 (R21 133).
Dan Dery, Motorola’s vice president of Global Product, told Engadget that a folding phone has been in the works for ‘a long time.’
‘We started to work on foldables a long time ago,’ Dery explained. ‘And we have been doing a lot of iteration.
He added that the company has ‘no intention of coming later than everybody else in the market.’
Motorola recently filed a patent showing off a folding device that looks similar to the iconic flip phone, aside from a folding screen on the inside and another medium-sized display on the outside of the device.
While the Mate X and Galaxy Fold unfurl to become a larger device, Motorola’s patent shows a phone that would be folded to become more compact and portable.
Sketches of the device show that it would keep some of the familiar elements of the 2000s-era Razr, as the large chin at the bottom of the phone, as well as the hinge allowing it to flip open and closed.
Dery told Engadget that the company was pursuing this type of design so that the screen would be less likely to become damaged.
‘When you know the scratching issues you would be facing, you will have something that is very rapidly not usable,’ he said.
However, Dery said the firm is also exploring a device with a single screen that folds twice, leaving a third of the display visible when not in tablet mode, according to Engadget.
That device is unlikely to be Motorola’s first folding phone, though, as the design is quite complicated, he added.
With the new price tag, it would cost more than double the original $600 Razr.
It wouldn’t mark the first time that Motorola has attempted to resurrect the Razr name.
In 2011, the company partnered with Verizon to launch the Droid Razr, a smartphone that didn’t replicate the original flip phone design, but instead featured a 4.3-inch display and claimed to be the ‘world’s thinnest smartphone’ at 7.1mm thick.
-Daily Mail
