This Motorola Razr foldable will debut before the end of the year

Motorola missed a planned launch date for its first foldable phone, but the company still plans to announce its device by the end of the year, CNET told a person close to the company. . It's unclear when the device will arrive in the stores, but the press and the public at least will see the phone in 2019, making Motorola the latest handset maker to enter the mobile phone market. foldable.

The device will follow the Samsung Galaxy Fold, which will be released on Friday, and probably the Huawei Mate X, which has not been released yet.

Collapsible documents are developed in a variety of shapes and designs. One thing they all seem to have in common is the delayed launch dates. Samsung and Huawei both missed their initial sales plan.

Motorola, a unit of China's consumer electronics giant Lenovo, is currently working on a secret foldable phone that is supposed to revive the Razr brand. Unlike Samsung's Galaxy Fold or Huawei's Mate X, which folds from phones to tablets, Motorola's foldable phones are expected to fold inward, like its popular Razr flip phones, according to a patent filing. filed in 2017.

Although Samsung and Huawei have unveiled their devices during events that took place late last year and early this year, Motorola has spoken very little about its foldable screen. One officer confirmed the existence of the device at Engadget in February and said that Motorola had "no plans to come later than everyone else on the market". CNET later announced that Motorola was planning to introduce the phone during the summer.

But summer has come and gone, and Motorola still has not declared its content.

This is not alone. At the beginning of this year, foldable phones seemed to be the future of smartphones. In a world where phone designs are largely installed in rectangular glass tiles, foldable screens represent something truly innovative: a device that represents a phone when you want something compact or a tablet when you need more display space. It is believed that almost all companies in the handset market are interested in foldable products.

Samsung and Huawei, the world's two largest phone manufacturers, both had major plans to introduce collapsible devices by mid-2019, competing for the top ranks with technology. The designs generated a lot of buzz and we were all excited about the phones again. Then the reality hit.

Samsung's woes

Earlier this year, Samsung appeared to be on the verge of becoming the first major handset manufacturer with a foldable phone. Its $ 1,980 Galaxy Fold has a 4.6 inch screen when it is folded and a separate 7.3 inch screen when it is unfolded in a tablet. You will be able to start using applications such as Flipboard on the small front screen, then pick up where you left off when you switch to the big indoor screen.

Critics have widely appreciated the device, but Samsung canceled the sales date for the Galaxy Fold in April, four days before its launch, after several reporters discovered flaws in their control units. Some peeled off a thin top layer of the screen, which was an essential protective coating and not a removable screen protector. Others have had trash put themselves under the screen itself, causing bumps and bulges.

"It was embarrassing," said Samsung's co-CEO, D.J. Koh told reporters late June in Korea. "I pushed him before he was ready."

After reviewing the issues for about three months, Samsung in July said it solved the problems of the original device. Samsung started selling its renovated Fold in September in countries such as South Korea and the United Kingdom. The foldable product hit the United States on Friday, with a new customer service plan to address the potential problems of buyers of folded products.

The delays of Huawei

Huawei, meanwhile, has not yet started selling its foldable phone, the Mate X. The $ 2,600 phone, designed to work very fast 5G networks in China and other regions, made its first appearance at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. At the time, President and CEO Richard Yu had stated that if he did not need to develop 5G networks, he could ship the Mate X immediately.

Unlike the Fold, which opens as a book to reveal a foldable screen inside, the Mate X has its foldable screen on the outside. It should only be open when you want to access a screen the size of a tablet.

Huawei could start selling its foldable Mate X phone as early as October, Yu said earlier this month during a briefing at IFA Electronics in Berlin. He blamed the delay on the deployment of 5G and the need to give developers time to adapt their applications to the new screen size.

But he also acknowledged that building a foldable phone was not really easy.

"The manufacture of this phone is not only very expensive, but it also raises volume and mass production issues," Yu said.

Samsung and Huawei are not the only companies working on foldable software. The Royole start-up in Fremont, California, became the first company to introduce a foldable phone with its Flexpai in October 2018. CNET columnist Lynn La said, during her brief stint with the device at 1318 dollars, that "it looks refined and polished product."

Xiaomi has introduced a foldable phone prototype in videos, but it's unclear when the product could be launched. Another Chinese manufacturer of Chinese handsets, TCL, introduced its concept at the year's shows this year, but said it was not planning to launch anything until 2020. Potential folds of Apple, Google, LG and Lenovo are for the moment nothing more than rumors.

The popularity of Razr

The struggles experienced by Samsung, Huawei and other handset manufacturers are probably the same obstacles that Motorola faces.

Foldable screens are more delicate than normal smartphone screens. They are plastic (the collapsible glass is not yet available), which means they can easily scratch.

Overall, the devices have sustainability issues, as Samsung has found. Although he said that he solved the problems encountered by the journalists during the first version of the Fold, a TechCrunch reviewer discovered a defect after using his redesigned model for one day only. No problem regarding consumer devices has been reported in Korea, the UK and other markets where the Fold has already been launched.

Samsung has stated that it encourages "Galaxy Fold owners to read the maintenance instructions included in the box and in the product manual available online." The products used as part of these instructions are covered by warranty." Some of these tips include taking care when folding the device to place no objects such as cards, coins or keys on the screen and not pressing the screen with a hard or sharp object like a pen or a fingernail.

Motorola will also likely monitor consumer reactions to the first collapsible orders from Samsung and Huawei, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies.

"You have to position the device very carefully," said Milanesi.

The original Motorola phone Razr was one of the most recognizable phone brands and allowed the company to experience success in the mobile phone market. The ultra-thin phone was launched for the first time at the exorbitant price of $ 500, as the exclusive phone for Cingular Wireless (now AT & T). It has become one of the most popular phones in history, selling more than 50 million units two years after its debut in 2004..

But Motorola did not take advantage of the success of the Razr and had trouble competing with Apple and other smartphones. Google bought Motorola in 2012, and then sold it two years later to Lenovo. Motorola is widely outspoken on well-equipped budget phones like the Moto G franchise and its Moto Z franchise, which can be upgraded to the 5G via a Moto Mod connection. But it also aims to integrate more high-end devices, especially with regards to 5G.

While Razr is a recognizable name, Motorola does not have the luxury of a huge marketing budget and a product line comparable to its competing competitors, said Milanesi.

And even these companies found that consumers could be afraid of paying thousands of dollars for delicate phones. It was therefore essential to position the initial products as devices intended for early users and others wishing to experiment with foldable designs. There are trade-offs with foldable appliances, like lack of resistance to water and dust.

"Companies are racing … it's the future," said Milanesi. "But they are not attentive enough to say that it is not for everyone."

When Motorola finally unveils its first collapsible movie this year, we'll discover what society has learned.