Motorola cell phones get slimmer

Global cell phone giant Motorola Inc. yesterday upped the ante in the battle to produce small phones, unveiling what will be the slimmest handset on the Korean market. Named simply the “Z,” the new phone is 14.8 millimeters thick, or 0.1 millimeters slimmer than the recent hit handset from LG Electronics Inc., dubbed the “Chocolate phone.” In a press conference yesterday, Choi Yoon-ho, head of the consumer experience design team at Motorola, said the new phone is the latest in a series of folder and bar type slim phones that were released under the names RAZR and SLVR last year. He said “Z” was chosen because it is the last letter of the alphabet. The slim slide handset is equipped with a 2.2-inch liquid crystal display, a 1.3 mega-pixel camera, an MP3 player and an English dictionary. The phone goes on sale this month, and will cost around 500,000 won ($514). The handset is to be launched in Korea first, before going on sale in Asia and then worldwide. According to Gill Hyun-chang, president of Motorola Korea, the Motorola design center in Seoul was in charge of the entire development process for the phone. Of seven design centers across the globe, the one in Seoul is second only to the company’s center in Chicago, the United States, in terms of both size and importance. by Seo Ji-eun