Commercially resurrected about four months ago, the iconic Motorola Razr technically stepped into the modern era of mobile technology way back in November 2019, beating Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip to the official announcement punch.
Unfortunately, the specs were a little underwhelming, the price point decidedly excessive, and the build quality mediocre at best, making the revived Razr a pretty horrible investment in a fledgling segment of intriguing concepts with flawed designs.
With all that in mind, it’s certainly not surprising to see the 2019-unveiled foldable device sold at a massive discount and hear a refined sequel might be right around the corner. Codenamed Odyssey, this “next handset” expected to adopt the “classic Motorola RAZR branding” is today tipped to “launch at the end of August” by none other than Evan Blass, possibly the most reliable mobile tech leaker in the whole wide world.
Blass actually mentioned that mysterious codename once before, but the tipster seemed unsure back in April of the real marketing identity of this unreleased product. Interestingly, the Razr 2 moniker is not mentioned this time around either, so we should probably take other Razr-derivative labels into consideration as well.
Something like the “New Motorola Razr” sounds plausible, as does the Razr (2020) or even something as simple as the Razr 5G.
Built-in 5G connectivity is only one of the major upgrades pretty much guaranteed to help the second-gen modern Razr keep up with Samsung’s soon-to-be-refreshed Galaxy Z Flip, alongside a jump from a mid-range Snapdragon 710 to an upper mid-range Snapdragon 765 SoC, a significant increase in screen size to 6.7 inches, memory and storage bumps to 8 and 256GB respectively, the integration of a 48MP primary camera (instead of a 16MP rear-facing shooter), and a battery capacity enhancement to a little over 2,800mAh.
Sadly for Motorola, that’s unlikely to be enough to eclipse the capabilities of the Galaxy Z Flip 5G, let alone the Galaxy Fold 2, so the Lenovo-owned company may also need to reduce the $1,500 starting price of the Razr (2019) for a considerably better Razr 5G (2020).
That sounds like a bit of a stretch, but fortunately, we might not have long to wait and see if Motorola can pull off the impossible. Late August, by the way, is earlier than the already early launch date initially rumored last month, but of course, it remains to be seen if the Razr 5G will also hit stores by the end of summer, which is roughly when we expect the first Galaxy Fold 2 and Z Flip 5G units to ship to their early adopters.
