The Motorola Razr 5G will not repeat one of its predecessor’s biggest mistakes

The fact that the handset was unveiled way back in November 2019 and commercially released several months later clearly caused the initial excitement around its modernized design to prematurely fade away. Then there was the excessive pricing issue, especially when considering certain questionable design elements and the overall inferior spec sheet to what the aforementioned Z Flip had going for it.

Last but certainly not least, Motorola unwisely restricted the potential mass appeal of the Android Pie-running Razr by making it exclusively available on Verizon in the US.

Bottom line, we can think of many different explanations why this rookie foldable smartphone effort failed to get off the ground, each of which makes sense on its own, combining to form a pretty much infallible recipe for failure.

But while it’s definitely utopian to expect the company to learn from all of its mistakes, it looks like Motorola will not be repeating one of the biggest strategic errors listed above when releasing the Razr 5G. That’s because mobile leaking legend Evan Blass has just shared a terribly blurry render of an AT&T-specific Motorola Razr 5G model on his Twitter feed.

Technically, the upgraded handset hasn’t been confirmed for Verizon availability yet, so Motorola could simply change its carrier partner for the exclusivity of the new foldable. But given the long-standing relationship between the Lenovo-owned device manufacturer and America’s largest wireless service provider, we’re ready to bet the farm that Big Red will not abandon the reborn Razr quite so fast.

Meanwhile, although the details in the newly leaked product depiction are truly impossible to make out, we can easily tell the Motorola Razr 5G will retain its predecessor’s somewhat unnecessary notch and decidedly distinctive chin.

In line with those images from a few weeks ago, it appears that the chin no longer includes a capacitive fingerprint scanner, which almost certainly means the Razr 5G will come with modern screen-embedded biometric recognition technology.

Officially confirmed for a September 9 announcement, the 5G-enabled smartphone could retain the 6.2-inch main display of its 4G LTE-only forerunner before a jumbo-sized Razr 2 5G enters the market next year to challenge the 6.7-inch Galaxy Z Flip 5G powerhouse packing a Snapdragon 865+ SoC.

Speaking of power, we expect this fall’s Motorola Razr 5G to come with a Snapdragon 765 processor under its hood, as well as 8 gigs of RAM. That may not sound impressive by today’s ultra-high-end standards, but it should mark a notable improvement over the Snapdragon 710 and 6GB memory-packing “OG” Razr.

The problem is Motorola will need to price this thing pretty competitively in a head-to-head battle against the $1,450 Z Flip 5G if these specs pan out alongside a single 48MP rear-facing shooter, 20MP selfie camera, and total battery capacity of a little over 2,800mAh. And with the current-gen Razr normally available at an arguably exaggerated $1,500, we don’t have a lot of reasons to be optimistic on that particular front. But who knows, perhaps Motorola does see the error of its ways across the board.