Motorola RIZR Z3

Status: 🟢 Fully functional 🟤 Sticky housing

Motorola was a pioneer when it came to phone designs—flip phones, candy bars, swivels—but oddly enough, they had never ventured into the slider market, which was already dominated by brands like Siemens and Samsung. The first slider, Siemens SL10, had come and gone, and by the mid-2000s, Samsung had a firm grip on that niche. So when Motorola finally dropped the RIZR Z3 in 2006, it was a bit of a late entry into a market that had already moved on.

The RIZR Z3 wasn’t a bad phone, but it was behind the times in terms of hardware. By 2006, the market was filled with devices that offered better specs, and the RIZR’s standout feature, a 2-megapixel camera, wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. For me, the Z3 didn’t hold any advantage over the ROKR E1 that I was already using. The Z3 lacked a dedicated headphone port, which meant I had to hunt down a clunky adapter if I wanted to listen to music. In 2006, finding a good adapter was no small task—it felt like searching for a needle in a haystack.

The whole concept behind the RIZR Z3 seemed to be taking the hugely successful RAZR V3 and just turning it into a slider. But by the time the Z3 hit the market, that design language was already old news. The sleekness of the RAZR was groundbreaking when it came out, but simply slapping a slider mechanism onto it didn’t really freshen things up. The market was shifting towards more innovative and functional smartphones, so the Z3 felt more like a rehash than a revolution.

Still, I’ve got to give the RIZR Z3 some credit. Despite its flaws, the phone had a certain charm. The smooth sliding action, the familiar Motorola build quality, and the solid feel in your hand gave it a sense of reliability. Sure, it wasn’t as practical or powerful as other phones at the time, but it had that quirky, slightly underdog vibe that made it appealing in its own way.