Motorola ThinkPhone Leak Reminds Us They Roll With Lenovo
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It's a fairly well-known fact that Motorola — which started off as an American company — is now under the ownership of Lenovo, a Chinese firm. Despite Motorola's Chinese ownership, the company still has a fairly strong brand recall in the West. It is not usually counted among the "typical" Chinese smartphone brands like OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Huawei. Incredibly, this is not the first time Lenovo has achieved something similar. For those unaware, before Lenovo acquired IBM's desktop and laptop business in 2005, IBM used to sell the popular ThinkPad lineup of premium business-focused laptops. Despite the Lenovo takeover, the reception to Lenovo's ThinkPad lineup has been largely positive and did not adversely affect ThinkPad's strong brand recall.
It is increasingly becoming clear that Lenovo is interested in using the brand value of its ThinkPad lineup for Motorola smartphones. The company has already tried this in the past after it brought its business-grade end-to-end security solution — ThinkShield — to smartphones a few years ago. Going forward, however, it seems Motorola is getting a bit more serious with the "Think" branding on its smartphones.
A new report by the good folks at The Tech Outlook indicates that the company may launch an entirely new lineup of business-focused smartphones under the "ThinkPhone" sub-brand. The publication has also released what it claims are the first leaked renders of the Motorola ThinkPhone — along with some of its key hardware specifications.
Everything we know about the Motorola ThinkPhone
According to TheTechOutlook, the Motorola ThinkPhone could draw many styling cues from Lenovo's ThinkPad lineup. And just like the ThinkPads, the phone could be positioned at the premium/business end of the price spectrum. The publication claims that the Lenovo ThinkPhone could feature a 6.6-inch OLED panel that supports a 144Hz refresh rate with support for HDR10+. In addition, the triple camera array at the rear could feature a 50MP primary, 13MP ultrawide, and a 2MP depth sensor — while a 32MP front-facing camera will take care of the selfie. There is also talk of the ThinkPhone using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset with 8GB and 12GB RAM options. The report adds that the internal storage capacity on the priciest variant tops out at 512GB.
Some of the images published by TechOutlook also seem to indicate that the ThinkPhone integrates with Lenovo's ThinkPad laptops. The blurry photos, however, make it difficult to discern the on-screen text to understand the nature of this integration. There is no word about a possible announcement date for the Lenovo ThinkPhone. If Lenovo does intend to launch this device, there is a good chance of that happening at the upcoming CES 2023 and the Mobile World Congress expos scheduled in the first few months of 2023.
While Motorola has been silent about its plans for a ThinkPad-inspired smartphone lineup, it is important to note that the company did trademark the ThinkPhone brand a little less than a month ago at the U.S. Patent Office.