Amidst the regular release of new desktop parts, laptops and some more eccentric products, CES 2023 also saw a couple of new smartphones revealed too. One of these new smartphones though sees the launch of a new marque by Lenovo, who own the Motorola brand. Meet the Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola.
You’ve probably heard of the ThinkPad name before; originally started by IBM, it was eventually taken over by Lenovo and even recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. Seeing as Lenovo now owns both the Thinkpad brand and the Motorola name, it seems to make sense then that they would be morphing the two into a brand new smartphone, the ThinkPhone.
Right off the bat, you’ll notice perhaps the most defining feature of the Thinkphone: its woven Kevlar back similar to that of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptops Lenovo makes, along with the ThinkPhone by Motorola logo on the bottom right, complete with the signature red dot over the eye. There’s even a ‘Red Key’ side button which I guess kind of tries to remind you of the good ol’ red TrackPoint nub on the keyboards of ThinkPad devices.
Elsewhere though, the ThinkPhone is somewhat a little underwhelming, especially for something that’s supposed to be the best out there for business and enterprise users. You’re looking at a 6.6-inch, FHD+ OLED 60Hz display with Gorilla Glass Victus over it that Lenovo tries to claim will be great for viewing content such as ‘complex dashboards’ to ‘endless email threads’. You’re also not exactly getting the latest hardware under the hood, with last generation’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor here mated to up to 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. At the very least, you are getting Android 13 with a guarantee of three OS version upgrades with four years of security patches too.
On top of that, you’ll find a triple rear camera setup, with a 50MP, f/1.8 main camera flanked by a 13MP, f/2.2 ultrawide shooter and a depth sensor, while upfront there’s a 32MP, f/2.45 camera—unless you’re in China, in which case you’re getting a 16MP, f/2.45 front camera instead. There’s also a 5,000mAh battery keeping the lights on with 68W fast charging along with 15W wireless charging. Other features of note include IP68 water resistance, stereo speakers and support for WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC and 5G. The ThinkPhone comes in at 188.5g and measures 8.26mm thick.
Being a smartphone for enterprise users does at least mean that it comes with a suite of software with business users in mind. These include an assortment of security improvements and features such as a Moto Secure app that can be accessed remotely by IT administrators and Moto KeySafe, a chip that adds additional security layers to better protect sensitive data such as passwords and PINs.
You’ll also find something called Think 2 Think, a connectivity suite that seems to mostly be a rebranded version of Motorola Ready For, essentially a suite of features for wireless connection between the smartphone and a Windows PC, specifically a ThinkPad in this case. It offers a unified clipboard and notifications, file sharing between devices, screen mirroring, easier hotspot connections and the ability to use the ThinkPhone as a webcam for your video calls.
For those of you corporate, business suit-wearing readers who want a Thinkphone of your own, there’s unfortunately no details just yet on the price of the Lenovo Thinkphone by Motorola. Instead, the only availability details so far confirmed is that the device will be making its way to the US, Europe, Latin America, Australia, the Middle East and a number of countries across Asia within the coming months.
