While Motorola didn’t announce new smartphones at MWC, it showed off the 5G Moto Mod which looks pretty sweet, albeit for the US market only for now.
What it has confirmed, during the conference, is that the company is working on a new phone, and it’s a foldable that quite likely looks like the old Motorola RAZR handsets.
Speaking to Engadget, Motorola Mobility confirmed that it would be joining the foldable phone craze, and it would be doing so “no later than everybody else in the market”.
This puts Motorola on track for a mid-year launch of the new handset, and with the company typically holding a launch event around August each year, it seems plausible the new foldable could launch then.
The interview with Engadget confirmed that the new design would be slightly different to the foldables launched by Huawei and Samsung; it wouldn’t feature a full-sized external screen, rather just a smaller one saving the full-size for the internal screen.
A recent patent filing gives us a pretty good idea what this might look like, and I have to say it looks interesting at the very least.
“We have been testing a plastic OLED device with plastic film on top,” Motorola VP of Global Product Dan Dery told Engadget. “The fact that you’re touching [that kind of display] with your nails is scratching it. It has a short life right away, it starts dying the day you unpack it.”
This is something we’ve been a bit worried about with the other foldable phones shown at MWC 2019; the screens do not look especially sturdy, and in the case of the Mate X, the screen looks very easily damaged. Motorola has as much confirmed that its phone – for now – isn’t especially sturdy, and it’s further investigating this. That’s a positive, I guess.
The retro thing has worked well for HMD Nokia, and with the popularity of the RAZR line, it could work very well for Motorola too.
It’s an interesting idea if they can get it to work. A much smaller pocket friendly form factor with a “normal” 5.5-6″ screen when needed.