The Motorola Razr Could Return as a $1,500 Foldable Smartphone (techcrunch.com)

The iconic Motorola RAZR might be making a comeback as a $1,500 foldable screen smartphone, and it could launch as early as February, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. From a report: The price point puts the handset north of even Apple and Samsung's flagships, at $1,500. Of course, there isn't really a standardized price point for the emerging foldables category yet. The Royole FlexPai starts at around $1,300 -- not cheap, especially for a product from a relative unknown. And Samsung, the next on the list to embrace the foldable, has never been afraid to hit a premium price point. Ultimately, $1,500 could well be standard for these sorts of products. Whether or not consumers are willing to pay that, however, is another question entirely.

Comments

NO!

[Zorro]

NO cellphone is worth $1500!

Does it include Star Trek Beaming or Time Travel? No? Then it isn't worth its weight in gold!

Re:NO!

[AmiMoJo]

There is a narrow window where a small but significant number of idiots will pay silly prices to have the first flexible phone.

Re:NO!

[Nidi62]

There is a narrow window where a small but significant number of idiots will pay silly prices to have the first flexible phone.

Too bad they are already late to the party. Apple came out with a flexible phone in 2014.

Re:NO!

[TWX]

Honestly if a smartphone could serve as a laptop replacement for the kind of work that I would use it for, it might well be worth that $1500. That kind of work involves datacenter and telecommunications closet equipment service, like consoling in to systems.

I have experimented with using a borderline-phablet smartphone, a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a USB-OTG cable to let me use an FTDI serial console cable. It works OK, but is limited by the way that Android handles mouse functions, and some other operations are a bit more difficult because of how Android has restricted access to the hardware. Termux can't talk to the serial port, I have to use a different Anrdoid application for terminal use than I do for SSH use. Additionally I have yet to find a good portable Bluetooth keyboard, the closest one has a weird layout and requires hitting function-modifier keys to access common characters for my job (pipe, slash, backslash, brackets) and was so fragile that it broke within a year.

Fundamentally the biggest problem is that for the functionality that I want, it simply doesn't pack down small enough. If I still have to drag my laptop bag along then I may as well bring my laptop.

Re:NO!

[jellomizer]

That was a great feature, the phone was designed to mold itself to the owners butt, making it more comfortable to carry over time.

However I never got why people put their phone in their back pocket. It is like hold on a moment while I pull something from my butt and put it next to my face.

Re:NO!

[burningcpu]

I used to keep my cell phone in the only sane location I could think of, the front left pocket of my jeans. However, as the width of these phones has increased, this location became less tenable.

I've adopted the butt phone placement and broken a phone screen because of it. But I don't think I can go back, until we start having smaller screens again, or a technological feat that obviates this need.

For a phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultimately, $1,500 could well be standard for these sorts of products. Whether or not consumers are willing to pay that, however, is another question entirely.

Jesus, that is getting into the price point where you could buy one hell of a desktop machine.

People and their damn phones. No way I'd spend anywhere near that on a phone. Then again, I don't understand why people are so obsessed with their phones as I don't use a smartphone.

I can't tell you how often I see a family of 4 in a restaurant, and absolutely everybody has their face buried in their phone -- there's some "quality family time" for you. Great way to show your kids how to be capable of having a conversation, spend your entire meal reading work emails.

I've also seen way too many managers who can't listen to an answer of the question they just asked in a meeting they called. I've pretty much reached the point where I say "if you pick up that phone again, I'm walking out because I'm tired of repeating myself because you have the attention span of a child". Honestly, you called the meeting for us to give you information, if you can't get through the meeting without asking everyone to repeat themselves half a dozen times, call me when you're willing to focus on one thing for more than 30 seconds. I walked out one time, and I'm told it took almost 10 minutes for the manager to notice.

Smartphones make people idiots. Smart phones that cost $1500 make them bigger idiots.

Motorola Phone Pricing drops fast

[leonbev]

If the pricing works like any of the older Motorola phones, the phone will only cost $1,500 for about three months and the price will quickly drop after that.

Within a year, the phone will be "free" if you sign up for a 2 year contract extension.

Re: Royale FlexPai

[jddj]

Can I get the Royale with Cheese?

Currently being done.

[DrYak]

or the T-Mobile Sidekick with the modern network bands. That phone had an even better keyboard than the Blackberry

Gemini PDA by Planet Computer is trying to bring back the hardware keyboard to PDA/Smartphone. Okay, it's more Psion-style (clamshell) than slider, but it's something you can buy right now.
(with a choice of different OSes, too - if you don't like being a lollipop for Google to suck).

Livermorium is currently working to bring a slider keyboard smartphone on the market soon-ish. With some patience you could have the slider formfactor you would like. (Some leaks here and there seem to point to some of the designers that had contributed to Nokia's sliders have been helping that too)

Re:Betteridge says NO

[lactose99]

Cheaper to buy two $500 phones and a small metal hinge.

The thing about the Razr was

[rsilvergun]

When you pulled one out everyone saw you had one. It was the iPhone of it's day. A bit of expensive kit to show people how much money you had to throw around. I'm not sure they can recapture that. Apple tried with the X line and failed.

Re:Betteridge says NO

[Joce640k]

I made a triple one with duct tape for hinges.