When you think of a foldable flip phone these days, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4. But Motorola may have a strong competitor coming soon that will beat the Z Flip 4 in one particular area: the cover display.
Twitter user Evan Blass (who has a private account) posted what appears to be renders of a next-generation Motorola Razr phone. You’ll find a lot in common with its predecessor, including the same flat design with a dual-camera layout. However, the biggest change is with the cover display, which takes up pretty much the entire outer part of the phone — including the areas around the camera lenses. The images themselves do look a little rough, however, so this may not be indicative of the final product.
You can also see from the renders that Motorola may have the software be adaptive to the display. This is seen with the two navigation buttons that appear in the lower left half, and full-size notifications showing up right above the buttons.
Again, this is all speculative and not a final product. Still, this would be very impressive if Motorola is able to pull this off. It’s not the first time that Motorola has the advantage over Samsung in terms of larger cover displays on its flip phones. The current Razr and its predecessors have always had large, functional displays where you could run entire apps and do things like respond to your messages, all without having to open the phone.
By comparison, the tiny cover display on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 can only show notifications and limited widgets. However, through some workarounds, you can do things like play entire games on that tiny screen. Oppo’s Find N2 Flip has a slightly larger display than Samsung’s device, but it is also pretty confined.
Rumors suggest that Samsung will be updating the cover display on the Z Flip series to be larger, so Motorola may not have much of a one-up in a few months’ time.
I’ve been skeptical of folding phones, but since I used a Galaxy Z Flip 4, I saw a lot of possibilities with the form factor. However, the small cover display of the Z Flip 4 is one of the biggest drawbacks, so I would love to see an Android phone with a large cover display like this Motorola rendering.
