Motorola confirms a new foldable version of the iconic Razr smartphone is coming this year

BARCELONA, Spain — A caller mentation of the foldable Motorola Razr volition beryllium launched this year, according to the CEO of Chinese exertion elephantine Lenovo which present owns the brand.

The Razr is 1 of the brand's astir iconic mobile phones and was archetypal launched by Motorola successful 2004. It became 1 of the astir fashionable flip phones of the 2000s.

Motorola revived the Razr marque successful a caller foldable signifier successful 2020, becoming 1 of the archetypal smartphone makers to motorboat a instrumentality with a bendable screen.

The Razr retains its folding feature. But alternatively of a hinge, similar the archetypal device, the surface tin bend, allowing the telephone to fold.

Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang told CNBC Wednesday successful an interrogation astatine the Mobile World Congress successful Barcelona, that reception to the Razr "is good" and that Motorola volition motorboat the adjacent mentation of the foldable telephone "very soon."

"I deliberation it's overmuch better," Yang said of the yet unlaunched device.

He provided precise fewer details but said that improvements would absorption connected the hinge and the applications connected the device. Smartphone makers from Samsung to Honor that person launched foldable phones person focused connected the hinge to marque definite it is robust and besides does not nutrient a enactment successful the surface of the device. Yang said this is wherever the adjacent procreation of Razr telephone would spot improvements.

Over the past fewer weeks, a fig of players person launched foldable smartphones for the planetary marketplace including Chinese vendors Honor and Oppo.

Foldable devices accounted for lone 1.1% of full smartphone shipments successful 2022, according to probe steadfast IDC, and are lone expected to summation to 2.8% successful 2026. But they are seen by electronics makers arsenic a mode to propulsion successful to the higher extremity of the smartphone market.

Yang said that the prices of foldables are rather precocious astatine the infinitesimal but volition trim successful the aboriginal which could marque the marketplace bigger.

"When the exertion becomes mature, past the terms could spell down past you tin thrust higher volume," the Lenovo CEO said.

Motorola is known for experimenting with antithetic shapes of smartphones. At MWC, the institution showed disconnected a alleged "rollable" smartphone where the show rolls up.