Motorola claims it’s been working on its new foldable Razr smartphone for years, but it wasn’t ready to launch the device in December as originally planned. Verizon now says it’s ready to release the device on February 6th, and pre-orders go live on January 26th. However, the phone will cost quite a bit more than your average, non-foldable device.
The new Razr builds on the iconic design that made the old flip phone the best selling smartphone for several years in the early 2000s. The device folds in half like an old-fashioned flip phone, but inside it has a single 6.2-inch flexible OLED screen. Motorola says it spent years engineering the hinge system to prevent deep creases from forming on the screen. The Samsung Galaxy Fold was the first foldable phone to launch, but it ended up delayed because the hinge caused display damage in just a few days.
Motorola’s launch delay was not related to failing review units like Samsung’s Galaxy Fold delay. With just a few days to go before the December 26th pre-order date, Motorola announced it would need more time to produce units to meet demand — we’ll take Moto’s word for that, but people do seem excited about this phone in spite of the modest specs.
The Razr’s design is impressive, but the internals are somewhat less so. The device runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 chip, which has just two high-power cores and six low-power. The flagship 800-series chips, found in devices like the Galaxy S10 and Pixel 4, have four of each. It will also launch on Android 9 Pie months after Android 20 started rolling out to devices.
Verizon is the only place to get the new Razr in the US. If you pre-order next week, you’ll have to drop $63 per month for 24 months to pay off the full price of $1,500. Yes, that’s about 50 percent more than a Galaxy S10+ at launch. We also expect the upcoming Galaxy S20 to be much cheaper than the Razr. In the UK, EE is already taking pre-orders with shipping set to begin around the middle of next month.
The new Razr can’t go toe-to-toe with flagship phones when it comes to raw speed, but people are interested all the same. Maybe that’s partially nostalgia but also the desire for something to break up the monotony. In a world where most phones are the same flat glass sandwich, the Razr is trying something new. Well, old, but also new.
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