High-tech toy-makers do not always follow a smooth path to product evolution, and occasionally end up producing a new model every couple of months. New tech is actually quick to develop; good design, however, takes a lot longer, so putting good tech in a nice box is a challenge.
That happened a few years ago with personal digital assistants; it's happening again now with the descendants of the PDAs, and their new paramours, cellphones.
The marriage of the cellphone, PDA and data transfer (as in e-mail) results in the so-called third-generation (3G) telephone, or smartphone in the industrial vernacular, and it's largely been a good conjugal arrangement, if not always a beautiful one. Only recently have handset makers started paying attention to design. And design is important — having a 3G handset is cool, but having a beautifully designed one is even cooler.
To my mind, the turnaround point for cellphone design was the release in late 2004 of Motorola's RAZR, an ultra-thin, sleek affair made from "airplane-grade" aluminum and polished nickel steel. It looks really sleek on the boardroom table, a vaguely menacing but glamorous device in keeping with the thinness that executives value so highly. Motorola then followed with a number of variations, including a hot-pink version (presumably for the Mary Kay Cosmetics market), and a matte-black version (presumably for the Darth Vader market).
The trick of the RAZR's success was that people who owned them tended to walk around with them in their hands, as a kind of fashion accessory. The next 3G handset maker would have to create something with a similarly attention-grabbing design. Call it clutchable cool.
Enter Research in Motion, whose BlackBerry had always been a kind of clunky utilitarian affair but was embraced by the corporate market because of its ease of use and its excellent push e-mail features. RIM, however, did not yet have a consumer-craze product. So the company dipped its big toe into the waters of high design and released the Pearl in time for this Christmas season.
Like the RAZR, the thinnest of its kind, the Pearl is the tiniest of its kind. Aside from being so small, it comes uncomfortably close to being the RAZR's country-bumpkin cousin, with its black candy-bar design, previously called the slab or brick. But it has one stroke of brilliance: the glowing off-white trackball in the middle of the smartphone, the size, shape and colour of a pearl, from which it derives its name.
Like the RAZR, the Pearl's combination of small size and the precious stone in the centre make it fabulous, designed to project cutting-edge hip. And it looks wonderful carried around as clutchable jewelry.
Although both phones are appealing and would look good on any boardroom table, they are both aimed at much different markets.
Motorola, prior to the RAZR, was designing a nondescript kind of all-purpose cellphone and was slipping in both the consumer and corporate markets. RIM, however, was conquering the corporate market with a cellphone that appealed to executives with a no-nonsense view of themselves.
The sleek RAZR, despite its candy-floss siblings, is still largely a masculine phone, to be wielded by flinty-eyed executives hoping to look unafraid to make life-and-death decisions. Its name implies beard-shaving, its shiny body suggests swords and daggers, and its flip-phone form recalls early Star Trek communicators.
RIM's Pearl, however, is moving in the opposite direction: to the consumer market. It is small and cute enough to appeal to women, yet its black body with understated, grey chrome trimmings will also make them look all business when they use it. It is at once a chocolate bar and an understated fashion accessory — the perfect piece of clutchable jewelry for women who want to look authoritative and feminine at the same time.
