When physical keyboards became common in smartphones, most companies settled on slide-out designs. However, Motorola had a different idea. What if the keyboard faces outward? What if the phone was a square instead of a rectangle?
When a square was the new rectangle
In the early days of Android, people were still trying to figure out what a smartphone should look like. The humble rectangle was almost always the default shape, but companies were much more experimental back then. Motorola released Flipout in June 2010, and it was very different from the company's hugely successful DROID.
At the time, Motorola was a major player in the smartphone market. The aforementioned Motorola DROID was Android's first big hit, followed by the popular DROID 2 and DROID X. All of these phones were exclusive to Verizon and came with a stock version of Android. As for AT&T, the company hasn't had as much success.
Motorola's first Android device was the Cliq, created for AT&T in 2009. It was followed by the Backflip – a strange phone in itself – and the Flipout. These devices used special Motorola technology. Android skin called MOTOBLUR. It was heavily focused on social media channels and widgets. MOTOBLUR never had a large fan base and the company abandoned it shortly after the launch of Flipout.
What made this phone so strange?
The Flipout wasn't just small, it was a perfect square (2.64 x 2.64 inches). It also wasn't as thick as you'd expect from a 2010 phone. The Flipout was 0.67 inches thick, which is just 0.06 inches thicker than the Razr Ultra 2025 when closed. Motorola also offered the phone in several colors. However, it was built on one gimmick: a rotating screen that swiveled in the corner to reveal a five-row QWERTY keyboard underneath.
The physical design was the main attraction, but also the biggest curse. The idea was to give you the full Android experience in a pocket-sized device with a keyboard. However, what you're actually getting is a 2.8-inch screen with a measly 320×240 resolution. These days you can find a screen this size on the outside of a foldable clamshell, but this was only display for Flipout. It's not far from the smartwatch display.
What about that physical keyboard? As you can imagine, using it required some serious finger dexterity. Because the phone was square, the keyboard was similarly compressed. You had a full set of keys, but they were so small and stuck together that it wasn't particularly pleasant.
As mentioned, this was the MOTOBLUR era and that also played a part in the weirdness. The software aggressively tried to integrate all your social media channels—Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (that was a long time ago)—directly into widgets and address book entries. In theory it was cool. In reality, MOTOBLUR was a slow, data-heavy mess that bogged down the phone's already modest processor.
The Flipout ended up being an underpowered device that ran bloated software on a screen that couldn't support the resolution needed to have a good Android experience. Yes, and it never received updates after the original version of Android (2.1 Eclair).
What we learned from the rotary mechanism
Motorola Flipout was a brave attempt to go beyond the boxy design of the phone and give it a little personality and utility. Even in those early days, however, it reminded us that simply adding a physical feature like a QWERTY panel isn't enough unless the entire package—screen, software, and usability—is robust.
In today's sea of identical slabs of glass, sometimes there just aren't enough phones that try to be a little different. Today we have devices such as Moto Razr which approach the physical size of Flipout but offer far fewer compromises.
