Blast from the Past: Oversights in the Motorola Razr V3 Interface

Before any organized effort like Bleuprints, I wrote these scattered design muses under the label "blurbs".
Here is one I wrote in 2007, towards the end of my experience with the Motorola Razr V3, and prior to owning the Razr V3xx (a future device that would finally fix some of the issues I mentioned). The iPhone solved many of the gripes I had with mobile phone UI's in general, which was largely why I loved it so much. Its announcement prompted me to write out what had been frustrating me about the status quo during my ownership of the Razr's.

"Oversights in the Motorola Razr V3 Interface"
August 3, 2007, from yours truly, Gordon

The following are some highlighted interface oversights I noticed when I first got the now widespread Motorola Razr V3 back in 2005. I've upgraded my firmware multiple times with the hope that perhaps Moto developers had addressed these issues since then, but to no avail. I've contacted Motorola directly, and they respond as though they don't see these as shortcomings.

Why is this important? Well, first off, Motorola clearly isn't listening, and hasn't provided easy feedback channels to their developers, and that's a shame because the shape of this anodized aluminum exterior and its keypad design are absolutely gorgeous. Yet more importantly, this mobile operating system appears to be used on most other Motorola phones, like the clamshell V551 that my sister owns.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Above: Clock hidden from view during phone call

During a phone call, someone might ask you if you can meet them at 4pm. You check down at your phone, your sole time piece nowadays, only to discover that the "Calling" half-screen is blocking the clock from view. Yet Motorola does not allow you the option to move the clock anywhere beyond the lower right hand corner. With all that space at the top, they could have allowed the time to be positioned anywhere at the top, where the date currently sits.

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Above and Below: Inconsistency - Inability to rename pictures in viewing mode menu

You've taken some photos with your camera phone, and you want to name them. Yet sometimes the tiny thumbnails in the main pictures gallery (Fig. 3) are unidentifiable for naming, so you select a picture and "View". Now that it's clearer what this photo was (Fig. 5), you access this individual photo's menu (Fig. 6), only to realize that there's no "Rename" option. In order to name this photo, you must select "Back" twice, access the menu, and rename from this main menu (Fig. 4). That's two extra steps every time. If you're naming the last ten photos you just took, that amounts to a lot of wasted time and finger movements.

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

Fig. 8

Above: Extra steps in saving freshly taken camera pics

Every time you've just snapped a photo with your camera phone, a screen (Fig. 7) pops up asking whether you want to "Store" or "Discard". This decision has some logic behind it, because you'd want to discard bad takes immediately. Some cameraphones prefer to save your snapshot right away and let you decide how to use it later, such as with Nokia. That way, you won't lose your snapshot if someone happens to call you right as you're trying to save it. Saving is not even a one-step process because Motorola assumes that you want to send every photo you take in a text/e-mail message. So to save a photo, you must "Store", arrow down to "Store In". If it's a passing moment you're trying to capture, you can forget about making the subsequent shots in time. Or let's take it up another level - about half the people I see on vacation snap photos with their phones. Imagine if you asked someone to take a photo of you, and then you wanted the conventional "one more" shot. Unless they're familiar with this Motorola interface, you're in for some extra minor hassles - "Did I take it? How do I save this?".


Exterior: Gorgeous and well thought-out

Quirks in the interface aside, this device's innards are housed in a slim exterior (finally, reduced pocket bulge), an anodized aluminum surface like the iPod Mini and iPod Nano 2G (finally, grease resistance and easier to the touch), no bulgy stick antenna on the top (finally built in as part of the look on the bottom), and a styled keypad (notice the consistent typeface usage, the green button symbolizing "talk" with a telephone icon with an emanating wave of talk, and the red button symbolizing "off" with the hung-up handset resting on the body of the phone), to name a few. Sure, there are a few decision quirks on the exterior end as well, such as the "Internet" key, which most people would find less useful than a "camera" key (later adopted on other Razr models). You can tell that the designers behind this weren't sloppy with the curves, as you can tell by how how neatly and naturally all the lines sweep and come together at the hinges/camera and battery door, and the between the top lid and bottom antenna. Nothing juts out, not even the integrated loop for string-attached decorations. This was the phone that melted away my original perception of the flip phone as a bulky, generic grease magnet of gray boredom, and I thank you Motorola for getting that part right. Now about that interface...