Very popular before the arrival of smart phones, the Motorola Razr is ready to counterattack the market.
The “flip-phone” is about to be marketed again, this time as a high-end smart phone with a folding screen, by the company Lenovo. The Wall Street Journal mentions a selling price of about $ 1,500.
Lenovo and Verizon signed an exclusive agreement to begin selling the Razr in the United States in February, according to the WSJ . The device is still in its testing phase and no launch date has been announced yet.
Motorola launched its first model Razr, the ultrathin V3, in 2004. The cell phone became a real symbol, while world stars like soccer player David Beckham and popular singer Fergie joined the product. More than 130 million of these phones have been sold worldwide.
The arrival of the first iPhone model in 2007, however, completely cut the grass under the feet of Motorola and other popular models of the time as those produced by Nokia and BlackBerry, equipped with a physical keyboard rather than touch.
Motorola has tried to revive the Razr in the past, without success, which has led the company to adopt the Android operating system, then sell its cell branch to Google in 2011.
Lenovo, a Chinese computer manufacturer, bought Motorola Mobility from Google in 2014 and now plans to produce 200,000 units of the new high-end Razr.
For Verizon, this partnership will allow the company to include the Razr among its line of devices that will be the first to be compatible with the new 5G ultra-fast network in the United States.
Motorola is not the only company in the market to evaluate smart folding devices. The giant Samsung should also market a phone of its kind in the first months of 2019.