INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The rebirth of the Razr has been rumored for several months now
And honestly, such a product is a bit of a no-brainer
The Lenovo-owned company is embracing the burgeoning (if sputtering) world of foldables with the return of one of its most iconic
models.
While it true that Motorola kept the Razr name alive in some form or another well into the Android era, everything that come since
has failed to recapture the magic of the once mighty brand.
From the looks of things, however, the newly announced Razr is a lovely bit of
The product, which was announced earlier today in Los Angeles, leans into the lackluster criticism that foldables are simply a return of the
once-ubiquitous clamshell design.
Motorola Razr
According to Motorola, the company has been toying around with flexible technology for some
Per a press release: &In 2015, a cross functional team, comprised of engineers and designers from both Motorola and Lenovo, was assembled
to start thinking about how we could utilize flexible display technology.&
The device swaps the horizontal design of its best known
competitor, the Samsung Galaxy Fold
The vertical form factor looks to be a match made in foldable heaven
Certainly it loses some of the uber-thin design that made the original Razr such a hit so many years back, but makes the ultra-wide (21:9)
6.2-inch screen compact enough to fit in a pocket.
As with the Galaxy Fold, there another a small display on the front for getting a glimpse
of notifications and the like
It another design feature that mirrors the O.G
Predictably, the device runs Android — Android 9 (for now), to be precise.
For full throwback appeal, there also a &Retro Razr& mode, that
mimics the original metallic button design for the bottom half of the screen
It a skin that does, indeed, double as a number pad, usable with Android messaging app
Motorola clearly put a lot of love into the design and it shows
If nothing else, the new Razr could go a ways toward proving that retro handsets can be more than just nostalgic novelty for bygone
tech.
After the whole Samsung kerfuffle, you&d be right to question the device durability, though Motorola says it less concerned, citing an
&average& smartphone timespan for the product
Only one way, to find out, I guess
Also like the Fold, price is a pretty big obstacle to any sort of mainstream adoption for this first-gen product
The Razr will run $1,499 when it launches in January of next year.
