MARCH 2020 T3 45ifteen years ago, the most popular phone
anywhere was the Motorola Razr. Before the
touchscreen revolution changed the world of
phones forever, the Razr was the pinnacle of
design – it was the thinnest clamshell phone on the
market, and looked impossibly futuristic thanks to its
keyboard made from a single metal sheet.
Now that the era of flexible screens has arrived, it’s
time for the Razr to become a design icon again. A new
version has just been released, available now exclusively
on EE, with a 6.2-inch folding screen at its heart. Open,
it’s an Android smartphone with generously-sized
display; closed, it’s more compact for carrying that big
screen around.
The 2020 Razr is another technology trail-blazer –
it’s the first folding phone that closes completely, with
no gap at all between the two halves when they’ve been
shut – leaving it, ultimately, just as thin when closed as
the original Razr.
It feels like such an obvious use of folding screens
now, but this phone wasn’t always going to be a Razr.
“If you go back to the very beginning of the design,
our goal was to develop this ultra-thin, folding phone.
We actually did not even start trying to create a ‘Razr’,
if you will,” explains Carl Steen, Motorola’s director of
product management.
“We started looking at foldable display technology
about four-and-a-half to five years ago,” recalls Ruben
Castano, Motorola’s head of design. “And we really
started with an open mind in terms of: what is the best
possible consumer application for this new technology?
“We looked at a whole series of different form factors,
from devices that start as a traditional smartphone, to
something that unfolds and grows into the size of a
phablet or a tablet. We looked at devices that would
actually use the flexible display technology to conform
to the human body.”
Motorola’s way of designing products is to include
customers throughout the process, meeting with groups
on a weekly basis to get immediate input into the
direction it’s taking. And as they reviewed different
potential bendable phone prototypes and shapes with
them, the team started getting consistent feedback:
“I’m very happy with my smartphone today. I would
really like something that actually becomes more
portable and pocketable,” is how Castano summarises it.
“For us, that meant: let’s use this technology to bend a
display in half, and really figure out the veryF
The story behind developing Motorola’s amazing new Razr –
from the secrets behind its amazing folding screen to how the
original Razr’s engineering team helped bring it to life
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