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Is Apple Sleeping? Motorola Returns to Human-Focused Design Dominance with Their Incredible Folding Smartphone

They've brought back the Razr, and it looks to be a doozy

By Rain Noe - November 15, 2019

If there's a flip phone design that you miss, it's likely Motorola's old Razr, or maybe even the Star-Tac. The flip phone era was fun to experience, from a design perspective, because there was plenty of room for designers to experiment; then everything went Glass Rectangle in 2007, and nowadays manufacturers compete on bezel size and technological features we neither want nor need.

Well, Motorola is showing that they're back in the design game with the resurrection of their Razr brand--which handily combines the smartphone and flip phone form factors:

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So how did the designers pull that fancy hinge off? The answer is four years and 26 prototypes. Check out how it works:

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I think the outer screen that shows notifications, in the phone's compact form, is brilliant. It's the kind of human-focused touch that Apple no longer possesses, and Motorola's design team (and whatever executive backed them) deserves props. Let the other manufacturers chase technological demons inside the glass rectangle. I don't care about face recognition, don't need a better camera, don't care about meaningless size differences on the millimeter scale. What I want is a phone that actually fits in a pocket and where the screen only gets big when I need it to. And Motorola appears to have delivered.

Next we'll have to wait and see if the thing is actually durable. Fingers crossed.

o

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Is Apple Sleeping? Motorola Returns to Human-Focused Design Dominance with Their Incredible Folding Smartphone

Bradley Johnson

7 months ago

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I wouldn't say Apple is sleeping as much as they're resting on their laurels, and it seems to be working for them (at least for the time being). I'm not interested in this Motorola phone at all, though I am pleased to see a company testing something new.

I definitely want a better camera. Photography is an important part of my life, but I'm not always able to lug around a 4lb camera, so my phone usually does most of the work.

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Jason Depenbrock

7 months ago

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What skinny jeans are you wearing Rain?! We’ll have to wait and see if they fixed the issue of dust entering hinges and plastic screens scratching like no tomorrow. Honestly this phone confuses me as it is a 1500 phone that appeals to most people in its nostalgic practicality. Best use of foldable screens so far, but these flexible displays seem more of a gimmick until they move past the rectangle in your pocket to a place i would actually want a flexible display.

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Rain Noe

I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.