While I wasn’t too impressed with its most recent pseudo-flagship phone, it seems Motorola has much bigger ambitions for its next handset, thanks to the addition of a super-high-resolution 200MP camera.
In a post on Weibo (via 9to5Google), the general manager of Lenovo (Moto’s parent company) teased an upcoming device by showing a photo of a huge lens next to a message about ushering in a new era of mobile photography. While the post doesn’t shed much light on potential specs, it does mention a 200MP sensor, suggesting it uses Samsung’s ISOCELL HP1, which was initially announced last fall.
That said, while putting a huge sensor on a phone is certainly intriguing, it’s important to remember that there’s a lot more to taking a great photo than packing in as many megapixels as possible. Recently, I’ve noticed that many Moto phones, including the $1,000 Edge+, struggle with low-light photography, routinely taking blurrier or more underexposed photos than competing handsets. And while the ISOCELL HP1 supports an impressive 16x pixel binning technique that allows a 200MP sensor to capture a 12.5MP image with enhanced light sensitivity, it will still fall to Motorola’s processing to deliver a sharp and well-lit image. to produce the final photo.
Current rumors claim that Moto’s upcoming 200MP phone could be the Frontier, which was spotted by TechnikNews in January. The phone is expected to have a triple rear camera module with a huge main lens along with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip, 125 watts of fast charging and a 6.67-inch OLED display with a 144 Hz refresh rate. Unfortunately, while this is all speculation, we should know more soon as Moto teased an announcement date for the phone sometime in July.
Speaking of phones with new Qualcomm chips, in a separate post on Weibo, Motorola teased another upcoming device — this time a foldable one — that will feature a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip. While it’s too early to say for sure, all signs point to this device being the highly anticipated Razr 3, which is welcome news for flippy phone fans as the previous Razr has been somewhat neglected since its last refresh in late 2020.
But for me, the biggest takeaway is that it finally looks like Motorola may be ready to take a break from ditching the countless iterations that have clogged its device portfolio over the years. And if all this results in a truly new flagship phone and a proper update to the Razr, then that’s worth keeping an eye out for.
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