Motorola unveils four beautiful phones for 2009

Motorola... weren't you supposed to be gone by now? Apparently not if your line-up of handsets for next year is anything to go by.

Anyone that was wondering how the design team that produced the RAZR could spend so long not making something as stylish will now find out what they've been up to, and Nokia and the like should be worried.

The most obvious contender for design of the year is FLASH, which you could say takes its cues from a certain fruity handset. But still, we love the semi-flush buttons and sleek form... and there's more!

Getting a RUSH

The RUSH 2 is a bit more like standard Moto fare, with the large and rounded colourful buttons, with a full sliding QWERTY, so we imagine this one might be a little bit chunkier.

The CALGARY (at this point we're starting to hope that these are codenames) is a sharp-angled business handset, with a flush QWERTY keyboard that looks like something straight from Tron, so we assume that this will sit a little nicer in the pocket, although it might be a bit tricky to type on.

Finally, the INFERNO (they can keep that name) is a flip phone with, what appears to be, a transparent cover to a touchscreen... surely that's more of a protective shield rather than any kind of use other than making the phone a bit longer?

Anyway, these are just some leaked shots that made their way onto the Boy Genius Reports, so we don't have any info on release dates or price... but given Motorola was expected to cut back and scrap a number of upcoming phones, perhaps it's going to be a bit braver than we all thought.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.