Motorola RIZR Z8

Status: 🟡 Partially damaged 🟤 Sticky housing

I remember really wanting a Symbian smartphone but not wanting to “betray” the Motorola brand. I was thrilled when Moto finally made another return to the Symbian consortium—brief, but quite remarkable. I also remember that this phone was one of the reasons I got banned from several mobile stores because I kept pestering them to let me try it out.

The Motorola RIZR Z8 was unique in many ways. First, the UIQ platform—previously used mostly by Sony Ericsson smartphones—was adapted here for a regular non-touchscreen device. It was like a hybrid of Windows Mobile and Android turned into something similar to Series 60. I thought it was a worthy competitor and a great addition to the mobile ecosystem.

The phone also stood out for its “banana” sliding mechanism. This form factor was called an “anatomical slider” or “kick-slider” at the time. It was highly unusual, visually striking, and incredibly satisfying to use. The lime-green accents and green backlight added to its uniqueness—Sony Ericsson had done something similar, but they leaned more into orange tones.

The RIZR Z8 even made it into the Guinness World Records: it was used to make a call and send a text message from the summit of Mount Everest.

Unfortunately, it was also Motorola’s most unreliable smartphone. I got an unused unit, yet it already had two major issues: the display connector was acting up, causing screen glitches, and the soft-touch coating had degraded into a sticky mess.

Marketing campaigns hyped the phone as a “multimedia monster”, with a heavy focus on its ability to play 30FPS video—and… not much else. It lacked WiFi, had a mediocre 2MP camera without autofocus, and didn’t even have a standard headphone jack.

But hey, it came with a memory card preloaded with *The Bourne Identity*. Peak mid-2000s swag.