Motorola could be planning to launch a second-generation Razr foldable this September. This is according to Lenovo South Africa general manager Thibault Dousson.
“There’s a new iteration [of the Razr] coming up. There’s one in September I think, coming up,” Thibault said in a tech podcast. You can listen to this quote at the 18-minute mark of the 49-minute long podcast here.
The Lenovo executive didn’t reveal anything else about Motorola’s upcoming foldable smartphone. However, he did refer to it as the “generation two” foldable phone again in the podcast.
It’s unclear if this device will retain the original Razr’s clamshell folding design or Motorola will go the Samsung way and launch its second foldable in a completely new form factor. If it keeps the clamshell form factor, the device will most probably launch as the Motorola Razr 2 or Razr (2020).
Motorola Razr 2 coming on September
Motorola launched the Razr foldable in November last year betting high on the nostalgic factor. After multiple delays, the device eventually went on sale in February.
It did attract a lot of attention, mostly because of it being the world’s first clamshell foldable smartphone, but received a mixed reception once it reached the hands of the consumers.
The device was criticized for its build quality, poor battery life, sub-par camera performance, and not-so-premium specs at an ultra-premium price.
So Motorola has a lot of aspects to address with the Razr successor for it to attract buyers again. The company is hopefully working on them and will rectify most of the issues in the Razr 2, or whatever the company ends up calling it.
At $1,499, the original Razr was too expensive for what it has to offer. The smartphone uses a Snapdragon 710 chipset with 6GB of RAM and 128GB storage. It is certainly not the best Qualcomm chipset Motorola could offer with its first foldable phone.
For its successor, the company could tap on the Snapdragon 865 if it wants to go all flagship, or the recently announced Snapdragon 768G if it chooses to stick to a mid-range chipset. It may also use a MediaTek or Samsung chipset, for that matter.
The 16-megapixel rear camera needs a drastic upgrade too, and so does the device’s battery capacity and overall build quality. The Motorola Razr also features a foldable plastic OLED panel as its main display.
Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip, meanwhile, uses an ultra-thin flexible glass. It remains to be seen which display technology the Lenovo-owned company chooses for its next foldable smartphone.