Motorola says its foldable phone is coming just around the bend

Samsung and Huawei came out swinging recently with the launch of the Galaxy Fold and the Huawei Mate X, respectively. But as you’d expect, other Android phone makers are also plotting to capture a slice of this very niche emerging tech market. Motorola says its foldable entrant isn’t far behind…

Engadget got a chance to sit down with Motorola VP of Global Product Dan Dery, who offered some sparse details on Moto’s plans for the category. The first of which is that, yes, Motorola is indeed actively working on a foldable device.

“We started to work on foldables a long time ago,” Dery said. “And we have been doing a lot of iteration.”

Rumors about Motorola’s foldable phone workings aren’t new. Last month a patent surfaced showing a device that seemed to merge the classic Moto Razr design with the modern foldable designs we’ve seen announced this week.

Not long after, The Wall Street Journal followed up with the deets. The phone that report described sounds a lot like what the patent itself revealed. The WSJ added that its starting price would be around $1,500, which seemed obnoxious last month but now looks reasonable compared to the almost $2,000 of the Galaxy Fold and the ~$2,600 of the Mate X.

The Motorola Razr phone is making a comeback. The once-popular flip phone is being revived as a smartphone with a foldable screen and a starting price of roughly $1,500, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some quotes throughout the Engadget piece seem to offer vague hints that would align with this vision. Dery said things like its “intention would not be to put the display outside. When you know the scratching issues you would be facing, you will have something that is very rapidly not usable.”

It sounds like there are actually a couple different concepts that Moto is working on: one that is closer to launch and likely close to what the WSJ described, and another one that’s a bit farther off that has a z-shaped dual-hinge design, though that one “isn’t practical for Motorola’s first foldable phone,” Dery apparently conveyed to Engadget.

As for timing of the one that’s near? Dery says that Motorola’s bendable phone is right around the bend: Motorola has “no intention of coming later than everybody else in the market,” he said. What’ll it be called? No word on that, but I feel Moto Y would be fitting. And for that future z-shaped design, maybe the Moto Z name could get a new home?