Gadgetory

the line between form and function just became razor thin the Motorola RAZR only from the near singular I still have people to this day that tell me odd they remember when it came out and you know what they were willing to give up to get a razor it was something that people just had to have really became kind of a cultural thing it became something everyone saw my name is Paul Pierce at the time the development of razor I was the design director for product design focused on the development of the razor product at the time you saw cell phones went into bags because they were thick and kind of unmanageable this was one of the first ones we saw sliding in the pockets even skinny jeans and thin pockets we got started in 2003 and a couple things happen then converged at that time this chipset allowed us to get the circuit board and the battery into the same plane so instantly we lopped off a big portion of the thickness of the overall device for us the inspiration was really around the idea of Star Tech and this notion that's ten millimeters we had created a prototype of 10 millimeter clam foam and I think all of us reacted it the same way when we saw was like up man this is pretty unbelievable look at the breakthrough at the end of the day razor I believe was ended up at thirteen point nine millimeters it allowed for an emotional connection with users it allowed for an experience that resonated and stayed with you we hoped it would be something you would then take and share with a friend and you see that primarily manifested in the keypad hi I'm Kevin senior editor here at cnet.com today we're gonna take a first look at the Motorola RAZR v3 C and down here in the navigation keys like the original eraser they are flat with the surface of the phone and they almost resemble a touchpad what you're looking at is just some of the very early prototypes and if you notice like the design here this is different than where the final design you can tell by the cutout shape this was one of the earliest prototypes in the end this is this was like the production keyboard that we ended up with just getting the silicon you know in the gaps at the proper height making that work getting the spun metal finish on the keypad was really difficult I'd want it to be all pink and I'd like to figure out how to make the keypad pink this is a brass and nickel approach to a keypad we didn't have the ability at the time to get the color into it but as you can see on the prototype we were looking at trying to understand how to get more of a unified color approach when used to text used to hit one key multiple times and you'd move around the keyboard so the idea of holding something really thin and trying to manipulate the keyboard make that work wasn't as easy to do as when we added the volume of the chin unable to you to hold on to it that was one of the things I think we like to share is like you know from design we were dead set against the chin but it became really well understood as this was fundamentally better for the user and in the end it became a very iconic element of a design it was intended to be a relatively low volume high priced product so we thought that might limit somewhat of the audience that it would get to but once it hit once we saw the reaction you know it became something that people had to have and none of us probably understood exactly how iconic it was going to be you look at kind of the progression timeline this is really first generation this is maybe 1.25 again came out relatively close to time of launch but again camera variation this we started to extend some software functions we started to extend a few of the things with cmf we made variations and then this is what we had called razor 2 at the time and the richest mural with cnet.com at the Motorola mobile experience in New York City where they've announced the successor to the razor the razor to first off you have a bright 2 inch screen on the outside personally believe we spent a little too much time riding the the razor it was something that we started to do too many refreshes we started to do things I felt like we held on to it a little too long when people ask me about it and they I don't typically tell people I was a part of that I know my mother likes to tell people I was a part of that team instantly people share their memories of RAZR the first time they saw it the fact that they had one they had multiple ones and that honestly makes me feel good that it was something that still stands out people remember it talked about it I think people are kind of yearning for and remembering back to that razor when it flipped open and the sound of that the feel of that where is that today and it seems like an opportunity