2022 Moto Razr gets big price cut, 144Hz display, flagship SoC

Lenovo’s Motorola division still hasn’t given up on a modern reboot of the Motorola Razr.

The company announced the “Moto Razr 2022 “last night, although it looks like it will only be available in China. The good news is that there has been a big price drop this year, with the phone now priced at 5,999 yuan, or about $900. Previous Razr reboots have sold in the $1,400 range, and the second generation version was actually more expensive (~$1,830) in China than in the US.

In this version, the internal screen has been greatly improved; now it’s 144Hz, 2400 x 1080, 6.67″OLED. At the heart of this ultra-fast display is the flagship Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC. This is another huge upgrade for the Razr as the previous version had a mid-range chip. The phone has 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a 3500mAh battery and 33W charging. That’s a lot of upgrades from the mid-range and more expensive second generation version. However, if Motorola wants to compete with the $1,000 Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, from which this phone seems to have borrowed a lot, these changes were necessary.

The design is completely new – it looks more like a Samsung Galaxy Flip than a Razr. Previous versions mimicked the original Razr with a large chin that was as thick as the entire phone when folded. This new Razr is a completely flat interior screen area when open. The large chin on older Razrs made it awkward to use gesture navigation, which requires you to swipe up from the bottom of the screen, so this change is a step in the right direction. However, it looks like there’s still a raised perimeter around the edge of the screen, so all those “swipe”navigational gestures won’t be as easy as on a regular smartphone.

Another Razr oddity that has been omitted is the top tier. The previous two phones had a large trapezoidal notch at the top for the earpiece and front camera. The Razr now has a more conventional punch-hole camera. The top and bottom edges of the phone’s screen still don’t look straight, but the odd non-rectangular shape has been toned down considerably. Normal Android phone screens are rectangular because that’s what the OS is designed for, but the previous two Razrs had really wild display shapes with curved, non-parallel top and bottom edges. It appears to have been scaled down this year, but the screen is still a bit rounded and Android will have to compensate with a larger status bar and navigation bar.

The outer display is still a 2.7-inch 800 x 573 OLED display, which is useful for notifications and custom gadgets like the clock and media player. Next to the external display are two “rear” cameras, the main one at 50 megapixels and the ultra-wide angle at 13 megapixels.

This is the third foldable Moto Razr and the product line has had issues since its inception. No company’s foldable smartphones are very durable, and when the initial reboot of the Moto Razr was launched in 2020, numerous reports of display issues quickly began to come in. Our test unit broke almost immediately after we folded it, and the touchscreen became unusable after the first day. The second generation Razr also arrived in 2020, just seven months after the first. Motorola was so concerned about devices breaking during shipping that they changed the boxes at the last minute and warned that your “new”device could be shipped folded and with fingerprints on it. Even Samsung,

There is no word that this phone will enter the international market. Many companies only ship foldable smartphones to their home market in China because the technology is still immature and prone to failure. Not surprisingly, Motorola followed the same path. In China, the phone will go on sale on August 15.

Listing image from Motorola