Motorola confirms foldable phone — potentially a Razr — is on the way

Well this is flipping fantastic.

Motorola has previously been devilishly mum about rumored plans for a new smart, foldable flip phone — it responded to reports that a Razr for the foldable screen era was coming with an animated shruggie.

But now, Motorola VP of Global Product Dan Dery has confirmed to Engadget that a foldable Motorola smart phone is on the way — albeit still somewhat coyly. 

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Dery told Engadget, regarding phones with foldable screens, that Motorola has “no intention of coming later than everybody else in the market.”

“We started to work on foldables a long time ago,” Dery told Engadget. “And we have been doing a lot of iteration.”

Let’s unpack, shall we? 

Dery is confirming that Motorola has indeed been working on “foldables,” which means smartphones with a foldable screen. This confirms that at least something with a foldable screen is in the works.

In terms of timing, rumors first put the new Razr coming as soon as February. It’s, uh, the last day of February. So that’s clearly not happening. But with Samsung’s Galaxy Fold coming in April, and Huawei’s Mate X slated for June, according to Mashable reporter Ray Wong, that means a foldable Motorola some time in… summer? That’s what Engadget is guesstimating.

So what evidence is there that a foldable will look like a Razr? Dery said that Motorola would not pursue a design that had the foldable screen on the outside, which is what Samsung and Huawei have created. Instead, its “intention would not be to put the display outside. When you know the scratching issues you would be facing, you will have something that is very rapidly not usable.”

Dery also told Engadget that multiple folds — like a folded Z shape — are still too technologically remote. So it’s looking like Motorola is going for a smartphone that folds in half with the screen on the inside. That could give you something tall and narrow, or… could it look like a Razr? 

European patent filings from Motorola give hope that Motorola’s foldable will indeed be a Razr redux. Photos of the patent, filed in December 2018, show the familiar Razr design, but with one, sleek screen within, and a cute, compact exterior when folded.

A Razr with a foldable screen inside wouldn’t really give you a screen bigger than most smartphones today. But it would allow you to carry a smartphone-sized screen at half the surface area, when folded. Considering how big and bulky foldable phones are seeming (lookin at you, Samsung), the impulse to make something even more compact could be compelling.

For Razr lovers like me, just itching to flip again, it definitely is.