Motorola’s official announcement of the Motorola QA4 Evoke touchscreen slider may not have generated the hype (positive, or negative) that Motorola was hoping for, but there’s more to the Evoke than meets the eye. The Motorola QA4 Evoke may just represent the shift in design philosophy that Motorola needs to make a comeback. And make no mistake, Motorola needs a comeback.
The Motorola QA4 Evoke sports some fairly decent features. It’s no smartphone, but with its iPhone-like widgets, a touchscreen display and full-HTML browser, the Evoke is certainly a refreshing change of direction from Motorola’s handset designers. It’s obvious that Motorola’s Evoke takes many a design cue from Apple’s iPhone, and that all-too-familiar widget-based homescreen certainly evokes images of the iPhone OS. But, that may be a good thing for Motorola.
For too long Motorola has been struggling to design their own brand of trend-setting handsets. It may be that the success of the RAZR all those years ago has been something of a mental-block for Motorola’s designers – they just can’t seem to think outside the RAZR-box. But, the unveiling of the Evoke could be signalling a change in Motorola’s design perspective. Motorola seems to be embracing industry trends, the Evoke seems to be an attempt to key-in on what makes handsets like the Apple iPhone and Samsung Omnia so popular. It’s likely to be a slow process, but the Evoke gives us hope that Motorola can turn things around. In the best-case scenario, we may soon see the end of RAZR-like angles and less-than-cutting-edge technology coming out of Motorola’s R&D labs towards the end of the year.
The Evoke is far from the power-packed, sleekly designed smartphone that we’d all love to see come from Motorola. But, it’s a damn good first step!