complicated problems that arise in terms of
the architecture of the device, the [circuit
board], the battery, the antennas – but just
make it pocketable. Make it very compact.
Make it very slim.”
“It was all about creating this compact
smartphone,” adds Steen, “but as we did
that, and we went down this path, we came
into the same design decisions that were part
of the original Razr designs, starting with
the chin itself.”
Motorola still has many of the engineers
that worked on the revolutionary design of
the original Razr, and as the team started to
explore the possibilities and problems of
creating this folding phone, that expertise
not only became invaluable, but started to
reveal to Motorola that what it was making
would be a natural successor to the Razr.
“Once we understood that the chin,
which is one of the most characteristic
elements of the original design, provided so
many advantages to solve engineering and
architecture issues on this new product – of
course, we took more inspiration from the
original,” says Castano.
That inspiration worked inside and out:
antenna design across a split body is harder
than on the large, straight body of a standard
phone, and the original Razr didn’t have
complex GPS or 4G antennas to fit in. But
engineers who worked on the original’s
antenna system were able to take specific
“intellectual property and trade secrets”
(Steen’s words) relating to clamshell design
that Motorola has developed over the years,
and build on those to solve the new problems
that were presented by making a device with
all the latest tech advancements.
FLEXI TIME
The toughest thing to split across two sides of
a phone is, naturally, the display. Part of this
is the pure physics of creating a way to close
the phone completely, with no gap between
the two halves, which involved some
extremely creative engineering – see the
page opposite. But there’s also the screen
itself, which needed to be carefully designed
and customised, because flexible displays are
not exactly off-the shelf components.
“The final battle was driving our partners
- our display partners – to create a display
that was reliable; a display that could be
opened and closed for the lifetime of the
phone,” says Steen. “So we worked
“When the Razr
is closed, it’s fully
protected. There’s
no gap”
extremely closely with multiple display
vendors in getting that display right.
“It has, like, 12 different layers of different
things. You have your basic OLED. You have
what we call a stainless steel plate that goes
below. And then touch panels, polarisers,
different optically clear adhesives, and all
these things go into the stack of the display.”
During development of the Razr, Motorola
had several employees using early versions of
the phone – because there’s no better way to
test something than to try it in the real world- and the team could then meet to talk over
what they had found.
“One of my biggest concerns was: is the
display robust enough to take daily use? But
it’s very, very high quality,” says Steen.
“That’s one of the coatings we worked to
develop – the coating that creates this very
hard surface on the polymer plastic display.
“When the device is closed, it’s
completely protected. There’s no gap. Other
hinge designs have a gap, or particles can get
in there, and so on. Ours is so tight and
closed that it’s very protected. When I stick
it in my pocket, I can have keys and change
and pens or whatever in my pocket.”DROP ZONE
That wasn’t the only testing, of course. The
system of testing something like opening and
closing the screen over and over is called
‘accelerated life testing’, and being sure that
the final screen tech could survive hundreds
of thousands of cycles of the phone being
flipped was a key part. As was drop-testing
it, but that was more complex than usual too.
“This actually required us to change our
process again, because unlike other
smartphones, there are really two ways
to drop this phone – it could be open or
closed,” explains Steen. “So our testing was
to include drop testing when open, and drop
testing when closed. And when it’s open, we46 T3 MARCH 2020
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