Cutting edge

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

ifteen years ago, the most popular phone anywhere was the Motorola FRazr. 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.”