Motorola’s wild-looking Signature 27 runs Qualcomm’s new Extreme chipset

Motorola is the first company to announce a phone running Qualcomm’s top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip. The Signature 27 looks set to be Motorola’s most advanced flagship in some years, though we’re still waiting for the full specs, price, and release date.

Any prospective buyers will first have to get over the design, which seems guaranteed to earn mixed reception. The aluminum phone has a thin body, available in either black (sorry, “Pantone coal smoke”) or green (“Pantone capulet olive”), with a woven tactical texture on one and a “feather-inspired” finish on the other. Either way, it slopes upwards into what Motorola calls a “camera plane,” with four lenses and a flash in an odd arch layout. It’s certainly unique.

Only a handful of the Signature 27’s specs have been confirmed, but they’re more appealing to me than the design. The B&O logo by the cameras gives away that Bang & Olufsen has helped design the audio, though the specifics are still unknown. There’s the promise of seven years of Android updates, still rare for Motorola. The cameras will include a 200-megapixel periscope telephoto and a 50-megapixel main camera — the latter is more exciting for using Sony’s LOFIC-enabled Lytia 910 sensor, also seen in this week’s Vivo X500 Pro Max, where it enables 17 stops of dynamic range. Hopefully Motorola’s phone matches that.

Motorola says more details about the Signature 27 are on the way, with a global launch due before the end of the year. Unlike the first Motorola Signature, from earlier this year, that will include the US.