Motorola’s Razr foldable flip phone could launch as early as this summer

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When the Wall Street Journal broke the news last month that Motorola was working on a foldable phone, the mere mention of the Razr branding coming back had me salivating. I mean, Motorola was the king of the clamshell, so if anyone could pull off a foldable device for mass adoption, it would be them.

Adding more weight to the report was that when we reached out to Motorola for comment, we received the short video clip below. That was intriguing for one reason – usually, when we ask for comment on rumors, the company line is “we don’t talk about unreleased products,” (if we get a response at all).

Motorola’s PR having not only a non-standard response, but a video clip queued up to send out, well that all but confirmed the device was in production.

The Razr flip phone could launch this summer

This week, Motorola VP of Global Product Dan Dery, spoke to Engadget, confirming that the foldable phone is coming, along with a few other snippets of information. His vaguely-worded comment on release windows, “[Motorola has] no intention of coming later than everybody else in the market,” points to the Motorola foldable coming somewhere between the Galaxy Fold in April, and the Huawei Mate X in the summer.

Dery also confirmed that Motorola had “started to work on foldables a long time ago,” and that multiple designs had been considered, and in some cases, discarded. Without mentioning names, he almost dismissed the devices from Samsung and Huawei as inherently flawed but beautiful, due to how prone to scratching the plastic OLED film that the screens are made from is. When the screen is on the outside, everything from fingernails to your pocket turns into a potential device killer.

With the competition banking on consumers not wanting to fold away their displays, Motorola’s decision to return to its roots and hide the screen when folded could be a winner or it could kill off the Razr name for good. We’ll see later this year when all the foldable devices hit the market.

What do you think? Want to see a new foldable from Motorola? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.