The Motorola Razr V3—the classic phone that started this hype train moving. Remy Overkempe / Flickr Motorola's short animation announcing the event depicts the original Razr hinge. CNET Here's what the device underneath looks like after the original hinge is peeled away in the animation. CNET An illustration from a Motorola patent that represents one concept for a potential Razr reboot. Companies often patent products they don't release, though, so this should not be seen as a look at a final product. WIPO Another illustration from the patent. WIPO Another illustration from the patent. WIPO Another illustration from the patent. WIPO Another illustration from the patent. WIPO Another illustration from the patent. WIPO Another illustration from the patent. WIPO
Motorola and parent company Lenovo have invited press outlets to a product unveiling event on November 13 in Los Angeles that has enthusiasts speculating about the potential imminent announcement of a new Razr phone.
As reported by CNET, an invitation went out with taglines like "an original unlike any other," "you're going to flip," and "highly anticipated unveiling of a reinvented icon." Accompanying the invitation was an animated image depicting the original Razr phone hinge design being peeled back to reveal another, partially obscured device that is clearly meant to look like a foldable device. Given that, it's hard to imagine this event as anything other than a Razr event.
Despite a dearth of reliable information or confirmations, the Razr reboot has become one of the most anticipated smartphone releases among gadget enthusiasts. It's understandable; the Razr V3 was the first cell phone to achieve pop culture icon status, thanks to aggressive, fashion-oriented marketing, among other things. More than 130 million Razr phones were sold over several years after it was announced. It's one of only a few specific phones even today that many consumers in the general public could recall by brand name.
There have been numerous rumors from all sorts of sources—both reliable and not—that this new Razr phone has been in development. But there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about this product announcement.
A report by The Wall Street Journal in January claimed that Lenovo-owned Motorola planned to launch a new Razr as a foldable phone similar in some basic ways to the Samsung Galaxy Fold. The report claimed that Motorola would produce 200,000 units but that it planned to charge $1,500 for the device, and that it might be exclusive to Verizon. If you're skeptical that a carrier-exclusive phone from a low-market-share manufacturer priced at $1,500 could move that many units, you're not alone.
That report claimed the phone could launch within just a couple of months, but then it didn't. In February, Motorola VP of Global Product Dan Dery discussed the company's foldable phone experimentation with Engadget. "We started to work on foldables a long time ago," he said. At another point in the discussion, he said Motorola had "no intention of coming later than everybody else in the market." But it has still been several months, and Samsung's first commercial foldable phone has already launched. And in that interview, it was clear that Motorola was still experimenting with different form factors, technologies, and solutions at a basic level, suggesting that a launch was likely not imminent anyway.
There have been numerous supposed leaked renders and patent filings, but neither is a reliable source for information on a final product. And in one particularly concerning incident, Motorola parent Lenovo gave a presentation in May to Chinese media outlets about the upcoming Razr but appeared to re-use imagery from a fan concept video by Waqar Khan and shRead More – Source
