The smartphone market is either dense or empty. Apparently, marketers have some kind of special calendar, in which the most successful days for launching new products are marked in red. And companies follow the schedule, no matter what happens.
Well, seriously, last week there were presentations of three companies at once. Samsung introduced new smartphones with flexible screens Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 and Z Flip 4. Xiaomi rolled out its answer in the form of Xiaomi MIX Fold 2. And on the same day as Xiaomi, the new Razr introduced Motorola. Thus, in a week, 3 companies at once showed new smartphones with a flexible screen.
I would like to ask: why do this? Obviously, this is too much, which is harmful for brands. Since people begin not just to look at the product, but immediately compare it with competitors. If you have a strong product that will kill everyone, or you are Xiaomi, which presents smartphones for the home market, where Samsung has zero share, then you can still do this. But if you are Motorola, which is trying to compete with Samsung in the US market and is completely beaten by it, and the Chinese market has a similar situation, but with Xiaomi, you need to quiet down under the bench and not flicker.
By the way, the only sign of sanity in history was shown by OnePlus, whose presentation was scheduled for the same day with Apple. Then the brand, not without self-irony, postponed the presentation, writing on social networks that they also plan to look at new iPhones that day.
If you’re wondering why dates collide like this, it’s for a pretty simple reason. Companies do not know well what other companies are doing. For example, many Huawei employees often did not hold a single Samsung in their hands, just as Samsung employees have never seen Xiaomi smartphones in person. Accordingly, it turns out that companies live in a vacuum bubble.
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A little history of the new Razr
But back to Motorola. Over the past few years, the company has been doing well in the US home market, and in a number of foreign markets too. In a sense, Motorola is lucky. First HTC left, then Huawei, and recently LG. So Motorola is good at picking up breadcrumbs.
In November 2019, the company showed the first Motorola Razr (2019). A smartphone with a flexible screen that puts pressure on a sense of nostalgia.
Smartphone was good. First, unlike its main competitor in the form of Samsung’s Galaxy Flip, it did not have a gap between the halves. Second, the Razr had a good-sized external screen (2.7 inches versus the Flip’s 1.1 inches).
Well, the main miscalculations were everything else. Unlike the Flip, the Razr had no flagship cameras, had a Snapdragon 710 chipset, had no 5G modem, had a poorer screen, and had build quality issues. Also the price tag was amazing. Most journalists who saw it live agreed that it was more of a concept than a finished product.
Razr defenders said that the Razr from the 2000s was not distinguished by top-end hardware, but was more of an accessory. Let, but since then the role of the smartphone has changed dramatically. From a dialer and a music player, a smartphone has become a universal gadget for everything. And now even the most stylish guys are not ready to buy a smartphone simply because it is beautiful.
Functionality, both direct and imaginary, is important. As an illustration of the latter, we can take the Galaxy Flip from Samsung, where the company puts the top-end chipsets, despite the fact that there is no room for a proper cooling system and the smartphone “throttles” (throttling is a drop in performance under load) up to 40-45% of the maximum performance.
The first Razr, despite being introduced in November 2019, only went on sale towards the end of February 2020. So, when the second generation, the Motorola Razr 5G, was introduced in September, it was perceived as a bit strange. It seems that only the first generation went on sale.
The new smartphone showed that Motorola does not learn from mistakes. There were still mediocre cameras, an average chipset (Snapdragon 765G 5G), but 5G appeared and the price became much more pleasant.
However, there was practically no reason to buy a Motorola Razr 5G compared to the Galaxy Flip. Samsung has won both in technical characteristics, and in price, and in perception.
Another obvious problem for Motorola is supply issues. Both times the company held presentations, and then the smartphone disappeared from view for so long that people simply forgot regarding it. The market got scanty parties.
Over the years (Motorola has taken a break during the pandemic), Samsung has only strengthened its leadership in the segment of smartphones with a flexible screen. Let’s see if Motorola has found good reasons why the buyer decides to vote for the Razr with money.
Motorola Razr (2022)
For now, the new Razr 2022 is exclusive to China. At the same time, the exact date of the start of sales is not specified. And given the fact that the site does not have a complete list of characteristics, there is a suspicion that the smartphone is still being worked on. A mistake was made immediately in positioning: in all the pictures there are only fashionable girls. This can still be allowed by Samsung, which has a conditionally “male” smartphone Z Fold. But Motorola shouldn’t do that. It limits the target audience out of the blue.
In fact, there is a young man in one picture, and I didn’t notice him right away, because I thought that this was some kind of section regarding an artificial intelligence assistant. This comrade looks painfully drawn.
Specifications
- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, Adreno 730 graphics
- Operating system: Android 12, MYUI 4.0 shell
- Memory: 8/12 GB, storage 256/512 GB, no memory card slot
- Main screen: 6.7 inches, P-OLED, resolution 1080 x 2400 pixels, 144 Hz, 1 billion colors, HDR10+
- Screen external: 2.7 inches, G-OLED, resolution 573 x 800 dots
- Battery: Li-Po 3500 mAh, charging 33 W
- Main camera:
- 50 MP, f/1.9, (wide), 1/1.55″, 1.0µm, PDAF, OIS
- 13 MP, f/2.2, 121˚ (ultra wide), 1.12µm
- Recording 4K@30fps, 1080p@30/60/120fps, gyro-EIS
- Front camera: 32 MP, f/2.5, (wide angle), 0.7µm
- SIM card: 2 Nano-SIM
- Network and data transfer: 2G, 3G, 4G LTE, 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5, NFC, Type-C
- Navigation: A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO, QZSS
- Sensors: fingerprint scanner (under the screen), accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity, lighting, compass
- Other: splash proof, no 3.5mm jack
- Dimensions: 167 x 79.8 x 7.6 mm, weight 200 g
- Price: from 900 dollars
The new Razr has been significantly redesigned, although it retains the dimensions of the previous generation. So, the main screen is still 6.7 inches, and the external screen is 2.7 inches. But in a couple of years, flexible screens have taken a step forward, so Motorola (as recently Xiaomi) showed off new folding mechanisms that allow you to bend the device even more.
Let’s start with the external screen and design. The screen size remains the same, but the design has been improved. The smartphone has a camera with two lenses. If earlier they tried to disguise the cameras, now it is an independent design element.
It is not entirely clear what material the back panel is made of. Looks like matte plastic. But I hope that Motorola will not make such a mistake. And it will be either frosted glass or metal (but most likely not).
It’s interesting how the Chinese sign cameras: 32 megapixels on Chinese posters turn into 3200 something in hieroglyphs. According to the characteristics of the camera, they seem to look decent.
But you still shouldn’t expect anything special from the cameras, because, frankly, Motorola has always had problems with photo processing algorithms: when blurring in portrait mode, the ears were rubbed if headphones were inserted, and detail was lost for the sake of noise reduction . The new “moto” will probably be the same. Look at the example photo below. Motorola once more boasts of “noise reduction”.
Motorola did a great job with the screen. Now here the refresh rate is 144 Hz. This is a screen with 10-bit color depth, which certainly did him good. Support for Dolby Vision was not delivered, but at least there is HDR10 +. Plus, Dolby Atmos sound has been added, so the device probably sounds a little louder and richer than before.
If earlier Motorola professed pure Android, now it finally took up its mind. Still, pure Android is for geeks, and it’s inconvenient for a normal person to use it. I bought a smartphone, and there is not even a widget for the weather. Everything you need to look for and buy in the app store yourself. Now Motorola has its own shell, and the company is even trying to play with productivity modes. Actually, this is a development for tablets, which was also transferred here. Well, let. It will not be worse.
All the main characteristics of the smartphone were brought together in one slide. Here it is worth highlighting that they are finally using a top-end chipset. However, like the Galaxy Flip, you shouldn’t expect much performance here: the chipset is hot, and the smartphone is small. A proper cooling system is unlikely to fit in it.
For once, Motorola didn’t seem to mess up with the price. The price tag for the first model was exorbitant. The Razr 2022 is priced at $100 less than Samsung’s Flip 4.
Conclusion: Flip 4 or Razr 2022?
Frankly speaking, Motorola is still inferior to Samsung. So, Flip 4 has IP68 protection, the back panel is not made of plastic, but of Gorilla Glass Victus +.
Plus, Samsung emphasized that it has worked to ensure that the smartphone survives drops and scratches better.
By the way, the glass back is needed, as wireless charging is built into it. Plus, the smartphone itself can wirelessly recharge other gadgets. The batteries of both smartphones are tiny, but enough to charge the headphones.
Let Moto have a 144Hz screen, and Samsung only 120Hz, but in terms of brightness and saturation it will be inferior to Dynamic AMOLED 2X, which is installed in Flip 4.
The main question is: what regarding the reliability of the screen? I think everyone knows that previous models of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip frayed the screen at the fold. There is no such information regarding Motorola, but Razr’s sold nothing at all.
What do you think of the new Razr 2022?
