You can now get the ThinkPhone by Motorola (from Lenovo) for as little as $400 at Lenovo US, a discount of $300 (about 43%). That is the cheapest price ever for a business smartphone that, despite its age, is still one of the best around.
It achieves the rare balance of being a rugged smartphone (with IP68 and MIL-STD-810H ratings) and classy, which is a sine qua non condition for a business device. Securing a large 6.6-inch OLED display is a carbon fibre chassis that exudes high end. There are a few hints at its ThinkPad legacy like the customizable red key and the logotype at the back.
Unlike most of its competitors, the ThinkPhone offers the ability to buy extended warranty with accidental damage protection as well (including cracked screen) for a small premium (less than $60 at the time of writing for two years).
The ThinkPhone is not a flagship smartphone but even then its Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage should give it enough firepower to smash through most non-gaming tasks.
It does play very nicely with Microsoft's ecosystem by integrating a Microsoft Teams walkie-talkie app and Windows 365 cloud capabilities via Moto Connect, making it perhaps the closest thing in 2024 to a Windows Mobile after the sad demise of Microsoft's own Surface Duo range.
We reviewed it in March 2023, noting it was a "gorgeous slim, and powerful phone that has some excellent business tool features. We wish it was cheaper, had eSIMs and had a MicroSD card slot, but in almost every other respect, it is built for a purpose and probably worth the asking price".
Our reviewer liked the fact the ThinkPhone has powerful remote management features that very few handsets offer. It also runs Android 13 out of the box and will get OS updates for the next three years (till 2026) and security updates till 2027, in a bid to give system administrators more peace of mind.
