back to article No Motorola Razr comeback orders in 2019: Costly foldy nostalgia mobe pulled back

We've got some bad news for the deeper-pocketed nostalgia-tinged tech fans out there: Motorola is pushing back the launch of its foldable reboot of the Motorola Razr. Preorders of the revived flip-phone were expected to open on December 26, with the first units trickling out on January 9, but those dates have been ditched in …

  1. John 104

    At $1,500, this has now become the idiot tax item of the decade. Retro cool? Sure. Foldable? Neat. Worth that much more than a bog standard $500 phone? No way.

    1. Ogi

      I don't know. A few years ago if you told me a "bog standard phone" was $500, I would have thought you mental. That was a price for the top end stuff, and usually not worth the money unless you really just wanted to show off.

      Funny how things change. For my part, I still consider spending more than $250 a phone mad, but I admit it is hard to find anything decent below that price point anymore.

  2. Teiwaz

    Foldable

    Get the feeling phone companies think foldable screens are going to be the next big must have...So they're being cautious in case they poison the well prematurely, but still rushing to be first to get a stake in the new gold rush.

    Novelty thinking.

    I think customers are mostly well past novelty thinking, a smart phone has become a necessity more than a novelty for most, with suitably modest budget concerns for many.

    Douglas Adams 3 Rules of Technology : the current generation of just or near adults have grown up with mobile phones as 'just the way the world works'

  3. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    The Original Razr Rocked...

    This one, wouldn't have it if they gave it to me.

    I still have my first Razr. If I could find a decent replaceable battery, I'd still use it.

    1. Danny 2

      Re: The Original Razr Rocked...

      Downvoted (sorry) because define 'decent'. Plenty of BR-50's out there.

    2. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

      Re: The Original Razr Rocked...

      I remember it being a really cool phone until it synced up with AT&T and lost all of it's features. Those were the dark days when you had to pay telcos extra monthly fees to use apps that came with the phone. It couldn't even play audio with the SIM card in it (extra $4/month).

  4. gnasher729 Silver badge

    128GB of ROM?

    Am I reading this right? What would you put into 128 GB of ROM? All of Motorola’s TV adverts ever in HD?

    1. rcxb Silver badge

      Re: 128GB of ROM?

      By "ROM" they mean disk-type SSD storage (in contrast to RAM). A common misnomer with smart phones.

      You can certainly go through 128GB of storage on your phone. Throw your entire music collection on there, plus several graphics heavy apps/games and 128GB doesn't look very big.

      And if you store any video locally on your phone, you'll run out mighty quick.

      1. Groove-Cat

        Re: 128GB of ROM?

        yeah but this is a tech rag. El Reg should know their RAM from their ROM..... TSK!

        you guys starting drinking already? ;)

      2. Alumoi Silver badge

        Re: 128GB of ROM?

        128GB your entire music collection? Damn, and I thought mine at some 2TB is a small one.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: 128GB of ROM?

          You don't need lossless FLAC on a phone. 128K MP3 is good enough for most situations :-)

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: 128GB of ROM?

          2TB , seriously? What do you have, every piece of music ever recorded?? 128GB will store 200 uncompressed CD albums make that 1000 with decent compression which is quite enough for any normal person.

          1. DiViDeD

            Re: 128GB of ROM?

            You can never have too much music!

            That said, old TV series (think really old - Adam Adamant, The Prisoner, Quatermass, Doomwatch kind of old) and movies have always been my downfall. After unannounced and arbitrary removal of items from streaming services,I prefer to have my own copy of everything. Even my 4TB drives are pretty full.

            Now all I have to do is put aside the 250 or so years I need to watch them all.

    2. Captain Scarlet
      Mushroom

      Re: 128GB of ROM?

      Nope, Motorola keep giving me notifications I can't disabled on the G7 Power (Without replacing the OS) of new phones such as the Motorola One.

      Tbh things like that hack me off, I already have a phone from you and basically spamming me in this way, not updating the bloody phone enough (Only received 2 security updates, also told by support updating was down to Android when its not) mean I no longer recommend Motorola and will be looking elsewhere when I do come to replace it.

  5. TrevorH

    "with just 6GB of RAM and 128GB"

    That's 384 times as much RAM and 650 times as much storage as the first mainframe computer that I worked on and that ran the entire UK network for a very large insurance company.

    1. Joe W Silver badge

      Yeah, but folks back then knew how to program..

    2. David Bird

      384 times as much? luxury!

      The factor for the Honeywell Level 6 I programmed (in assembler) would be about 92,000.

      1. TimMaher Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: 384 times as much? luxury! You were lucky!

        Try patching a an 8k weekly payroll in Kienzle 2xxx assembler, by hand.

        My coat has a hollerith punch in the big inside pocket and some chads in the others.

    3. DiViDeD

      Re: ... ran the entire UK network for a very large insurance company.

      Yabbut, how did you know which policies were valid if they didn't have a dancing hamster with varying facial expressions to indicate status? Did you have to, like, read words, like a savage?

  6. Danny 2

    Peddle has hit the metal

    Chuck Peddle, the designer of the 6502 processor, has died. Just to prove Motorola over-pricing isn't new, this from Wikipedia:

    In 1973, Peddle worked at Motorola on the development of the 6800 processor.

    Peddle recognized a market for an ultra-low-price microprocessor and began to champion such a design to complement the $300 Motorola 6800. His efforts were frustrated by Motorola management and he was told to drop the project. He then left for MOS Technology, where he headed the design of the 650x family of processors; these were made as a $25 answer to the Motorola 6800. The most famous member of the 650x series was the 6502, developed in 1975, which was priced at 15% of the cost of an Intel 8080, and was subsequently used in many commercial products, including the Apple II, Commodore VIC-20, Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari 8-bit computers and arcade video games, Oric computers, and the BBC Micro from Acorn Computers.

    1. DJV Silver badge

      Re: Peddle has hit the metal

      Sad to hear he has passed on. His spats with Jack Tramiel were quite legendary back in the day.

      I loved the story about him having his wife sell the 6501 chips from a jar - apparently, the ones at the bottom were all duff!

      https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-history/the-legendary-chuck-peddle-inventor-of-the-personal-computer/

  7. Don Jefe

    Production Profits Pointlessly Small

    “Demand is high” is a meaningless marketing statement. The fact is every major element of the modern phone production line is geared to unibody devices.

    From a manufacturing standpoint a flip phone is effectively two devices. They have to dedicate a line to produce half of a single device when the same line could be turning out complete devices instead.

    That’s an expensive prospect and that can be seen in the high price.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Production Profits Pointlessly Small

      That logic applies all foldable. They may not be here yet, in a reliable form. They may take a while to gain a foothold and evolve some decent reliability, but they will get there and they will become standard, unless some other form of "disappearing" screen tech comes along, such as mid-air holograms.

  8. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Fashion piece

    This phone looks great and it's unique. It will do well with people who want to look nice but don't really need much of a phone. The same people might spend over $10000 on a mechanic watch that performs worse than a $25 digital watch.

    It's not for me. I'm a nerd. I need hundreds of GB storage, my odd collection of software tools, and a headphone jack that might be used as a signal generator or playing loud music.

  9. 89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921

    I hate huge phones, they never fit into clothing. I'd like a pocketable foldable around the same size of the original RAZR with a damn dirty line separating the two screens. FTFY Motorola.

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