Motorola engineers seek thinness for iconic phones

Gary Weiss of Buffalo Grove and his team of engineers at the old Motorola Inc. in Libertyville changed the wireless world in 2003 by developing the world's first ultrathin mobile phone, the Razr.

Now, about 8 years later, they took their search for thinness to the smartphone, the Droid Razr, the first ultrathin Android.

“You need to throw away everything that you know and get rid of what you've been doing for the last two or three years,” said Weiss, Motorola Mobility's corporate vice president of product development. “You need to start with a clean slate in order to create something new.”

While Motorola Inc. itself has become thinner by splitting into two separate companies, the new Motorola Mobility introduced the new Droid Razr last week and once again opens doors to innovation in the wireless world.

And it all started in 2003 with perhaps three engineers sitting around in Libertyville, looking for ways to make a mobile phone more “pocketable.” That meant redesigning the components inside and offering consumers a new look, said Weiss, a 24-year Motorola veteran.

Mobile phones in 2003 were about 22 millimeters to 25 millimeters, or about 1 inch thick. The engineers had to throw out their current way of doing things in order to start again, Weiss said.

The small group developed the concept of the original Razr phone at 13.9 millimeters wide, the sleekest and thinnest clamshell styled phone that changed the way consumers viewed the device. Once Weiss and his colleagues sold the idea to Motorola executives back in 2003, their small team grew larger with members from manufacturing, hardware, software, marketing and other areas of the company. Together, they packaged the original Razr, not with plastic like other phones, but in aluminum and magnesium housing. It made it stronger, and led other companies to copy the idea.

Weiss knew they had something special when they went to a trade show in Germany and unveiled the first Razr.

“We went behind closed doors to show it to some operators there,” Weiss recalled. “And you can just see by the looks on their faces. They were in awe. Their eyes lit up. They communicated in such a way that they never saw anything like it before. That's what made all of our work worth it.”

Weiss knew then they developed an iconic phone.

Suddenly, a mobile phone was sexy to own. And sales soared, making Motorola once again a major player in the industry.

They felt the same way again as they saw smartphones take off in recent years. Again, that idea came from Weiss and his team to create the thinnest smartphone.

“I said, hey, there's something we could do here,” Weiss recalled. “I gave them the instructions to do a smartphone that's thinner than any others on the market today.”

But it was more difficult this time. Smartphones have several more functions, features and components inside, compared to the more simpler wireless phones 8 years ago. They literally had to remove, layer by layer, what they felt were unnecessary internal parts. Then they had to start over by redesigning the interior of the device, Weiss said.

“That's when the innovation came in,” Weiss said. “We had to develop a new structure to give it strength to the phone and a stainless steel core. We designed it in a different way than we ever did.”

They also added a longer-life battery, stronger glass, and more distinct displays and color.

This could lead to a new portfolio of thinner smartphones, Weiss said.

“We set a new bar for the industry,” Weiss said.

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