Foldable phones look primed to take an evolutionary step in 2023. Google, the lord of Android, is now in the game with the Pixel Fold. Samsung leaks suggest that its Galaxy Z Flip 5 will solve nagging woes by embracing a gapless design and finally making the secondary screen more usable. But it looks like Motorola will own the year with its upcoming clamshell-style foldable phone, the Moto Razr 40 Ultra.
Industry insider Evan Blass (aka @evleaks) has shared a fresh batch of high-resolution renders depicting the phone in a trio of shades — including black, a peppy shade of magenta, and an understated teal green shade. Motorola’s next offering looks astoundingly different from the previous clamshell foldable in the Razr series, and we're all for its aesthetic makeover.
But what really stands out about the phone is the large secondary display at the back that also surrounds the camera lenses, plus the visibly gapless design when the two halves are shut closed. Ever since the first-gen Razr foldable arrived on the scene, Motorola has kept refining the design, paying special attention to the secondary display by stretching its screen real estate and making it more functional.
For the Razr 40 Ultra, the company has turned almost the entire top half into a cover display, giving the appearance of two camera lenses floating independently in a sea of pixels. It looks clean and geometrically sound, unlike the approach that Samsung appears to be taking with the Galaxy Z Flip 5, which has the cover display area avoiding the camera island and taking an odd shape.
Blass' older leaks suggest that Motorola will be offering a healthy bunch of home and lock screen customization options for the cover display. Plus, it appears that these customization tricks will play to the tunes of Android’s Material You theming system. We dearly hope that Motorola also lets users run apps, or at least some of them, in their full functional glory, instead of just offering a rudimentary level of interactivity.