The new Motorola Razr looks at first glance like a clamshell phone from the beginning of the millennium: When folded, it is so small that it sinks deep in your pocket. If you open it, however, opens an elongated, foldable screen. The new Razr, which Motorola unveiled on Thursday, is high-tech. And it's a completely different approach to how to use foldable displays in smartphones.
Samsung and Huawei have each already with the Galaxy Fold 5G and the Mate X their own approaches and brought to market. Both rely on more traditional smartphone formats, which unfold to mini-tablets when unfolded. Latecomer Motorola, however, is trying on a concept with which the group has ever had success, the flip phone.
Motorola / AP
One of the best selling hands in the world: The Motorola Razr V3.
In the early 1990s, when the manufacturer launched the first model in the range, the Razr V3, cell phones were still stupid and the king who could make the smallest device. That the screen was only 2.2 inches tall, bothered nobody at the time, you did not want to surf the net, and Instagram was still several years away from his invention. With the lousy VGA camera of the V3 it would have been no fun anyway.
What was fun, however, was the easy operation of the Razr. If you wanted to accept a call, you simply opened it, closed it again to hang up. This simple operating principle and design has made the Razr range produce some of the best-selling cell phones. No wonder then that Motorola is trying to build on the old Razr successes.
Motorola
When folded, the new Razr should be unusually handy
Unlike Samsung and Huawei Motorola almost inevitably dissolves from the current smartphone design. The new Razr has an almost tiny 2.7-inch screen on the outside. Opened unfolds inside but a 6.2-inch flex display with 2142 x 876 pixels resolution, which corresponds to an aspect ratio of 21: 9, as in the cinema. Unlike Samsung Galaxy Fold 5G, for example, you will not see a thick black bar above and below the screen during movie watching.
Motorola
When unfolded, a 6.2-inch screen unfolds
The Snapdragon 710 processor it powers is considered to be so powerful that it grabs the upper class, its memory is well stocked with 6 gigabytes (GB) of memory, photos, videos and music have 128 GB of memory but apparently not expandable. 5G technology does not exist in the new Razr, but a water-repellent coating, a main camera with 16 megapixels and a selfie cam with 5 megapixels.
Motorola
The quality of the cameras should surpass that of the original Razr by far
When it comes to color selection, Motorola makes it easy for its customers: The new Razr is available exclusively in black. Just as simple is the Android operating system, which is without any changes, so as it comes from Google, is loaded onto the device. This allows a fast availability of updates. Unfortunately, it is still delivered with the already outdated Android 9.
But this Android can be completely bypassed, as US journalists have found out. Because Motorola has incorporated into the new Razr a hidden retro mode. When activated, the screen of the Razr V3 2004 user interface is imitated.
It has an Easter egg - Retro RAZR fashion. What I would do to have this simplicity again! pic.twitter.com/M3v0WSN0IT
- Stefan (@skatsa) November 14, 2019And so realistic that, for example, to select the Bluetooth function their icon does not just tap, but cumbersome to navigate with the counterfeited arrow keys. Only former Razr owners will find it fun and probably only for a short time. But a nice gimmick is definitely this mode.
Less nice, however, are the price and the planned market launch. In the US, according to its technical data, it is more likely to cost the middle-class new Razr 1500 dollars. Motorola has not yet revealed a euro price, but the device is supposed to be "available in selected European markets from December".
However, Germany will not belong to it. In Germany, the market launch is planned to be spongy for the first half of 2020.