Flip · 2004
The Clamshell
Thin enough to feel like the future, and the snap shut was the best way to end a phone call ever invented. Everyone wanted one, and everyone wanted the silver one.
Looks like
Modelled on these phones. Not affiliated with their makers.
We're building this one next. The Brick is ready to try today.
In real life
The real phones that inspired The Clamshell. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited under each one.
Motorola RAZR V3Photo: Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0 Motorola RAZR V3Photo: Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0 Motorola RAZR V3Photo: rfdigitalwpg, CC BY 2.0 Motorola RAZR V3Photo: Beamish4, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Specs
- Year
- 2004
- Form factor
- Flip
- Screen
- Colour, inside and out
- Input
- Flat metal keypad
- Battery
- A few days
A short history
In the early 2000s most phones were getting smaller, but they were still chunky plastic things. Then, in 2004, Motorola showed the RAZR V3, and suddenly a phone was something you could wear like a watch or a nice pair of shoes.
The RAZR was a flip phone, but a very thin one, made with an aluminium body instead of plastic. Open it and you found a flat metal keypad, etched into a single sheet and lit up in blue from behind. Close it and a small screen on the front showed the time and who was calling.
What it was like
The best part was the snap. You ended a call by folding the phone shut with one hand, and it closed with a sharp click that felt far more final than pressing a red button. People flipped it open and shut just for something to do.
It started as an expensive, fashionable phone, and then it went everywhere. Silver came first, then black, and in 2005 a bright pink version that became just as famous. The RAZR line went on to sell more than 130 million phones.
Why people still remember it
The RAZR was one of the first phones people bought for how it looked, not just what it did. It made thin the thing every phone maker chased for years afterwards.
The Clamshell is our take on that phone, and it’s coming soon. In the meantime, try The Brick.