Last week, the podcast I was listening to on my Bluetooth headphones while walking around my neighborhood suddenly stopped playing. I took my smartphone, a Motorola Razr Ultra, out of my pocket to see what had happened. Both screens were dark, and the phone was unresponsive. Uh oh.
I followed the procedure to force restart the phone, and "Restarting..." appeared on the external screen. Although the internal screen remained dark, I assumed that once the phone completed its restart, all would be well.
No such luck.
The "Restarting..." message remained on the external screen indefinitely, despite multiple attempts to correct the situation. I ran out of things to try.
I began to think the phone's condition was terminal.
There were two immediate consequences to the Razr's apparent demise: I wouldn't be able to pay for the groceries I was on my way to buy (I seldom carry my wallet around the neighborhood, relying instead on Google Pay), and I wouldn't be able to take the elevator to my floor in my building (we have a fob system, but I don't carry a fob since I have an app on my phone that activates the system via NFC). Of course, the non-immediate consequences of a dead phone are so obvious and far-ranging as to be impractical and unnecessary to list here.
As those consequences dawned on me, I was struck with a thought. Although today's smartphones are quite reliable, their failure, although rare, can be disastrous, and recovery from it is an arduous hassle. Why do we place so much reliance on a single point of failure? Wouldn't it make sense to have a "hot spare" ready to step in immediately and seamlessly?
I decided to make that happen.
For the past four years, every time I've purchased a new phone, I've sold the one it replaced (through Jay Brokers, highly recommended). As a result, the newest phone I had on hand (besides the Razr) was my fondly remembered five-year-old Google Pixel 5. I revived it and began the painstaking process of setting it up for use. In the meantime, I further researched the issue with the Razr and continued to try various button combinations and durations.
Both things happened almost simultaneously: as I completed the Pixel 5’s setup, I was finally able to successfully force-restart the Razr (although all of the instructions I found for this involved pressing and holding the power button for 10-20 seconds, what finally worked was holding it in for just over two minutes!). In a matter of a couple of hours, I went from having no working smartphone at all to having two virtually interchangeable smartphones!
Most of the apps I use are simply frontends for cloud services, so once I had installed and updated all my apps on the Pixel 5, my data was up to date and available on both phones. Three cases, however, merit special mention:
My podcast app of choice, Pocket Casts, offers a sync feature that allows users to run the app on multiple phones while keeping all pertinent data updated in the cloud. This feature allows me to listen to a podcast on the Razr, pause it, grab the Pixel 5, and pick up exactly where I left off. All my subscriptions, queues, and other data are always up to date everywhere. This feature was pivotal in my quest for interchangeable smartphones.
For true interchangeability, I needed to make and receive calls, as well as send and receive texts, with both phones, using the same phone number. This would have been quite a challenge had it not been for Google Voice, which I've used since its inception (as GrandCentral) in 2005. All I had to do was purchase a relatively inexpensive pre-paid eSIM for the Pixel 5, and have Google Voice route calls placed to my Google Voice number to this new number (as well as to the Razr’s). Outgoing calls, as well as sending and receiving texts, would be handled by the Google Voice app on both phones.
The last item of note involved WhatsApp, my most frequently used messaging service. While WhatsApp doesn’t allow multiple independent installations with the same ID, there is an elegant workaround: WhatsApp’s fantastic "Linked Devices" feature, which allows you to use WhatsApp simultaneously on up to four devices (phones, tablets or desktops), with full functionality. Once I linked the Pixel 5 to the Razr’s WhatsApp account, my setup was complete.
I had two hot-swappable smartphones, which I could use interchangeably at any time.
A smartphone failure would no longer be a catastrophe. It would be a non-event.
Epilogue
During the past week, I’ve learned two things:
Smartphones have obviously evolved significantly in the past five years, yet their basic functionality most certainly has not. My 2020-era Pixel 5 does everything my 2025-era Razr does, and with aplomb. There is no appreciable difference in performance. All of the hardware required for modern use (NFC, wireless charging, etc.) is present. There is literally nothing I can do with my Razr that I can’t do with my Pixel 5 (except fold it in half, that is). The camera specs are far superior on the Razr, of course, but the Pixel 5’s camera is more than good enough. I can use a five-year-old smartphone today with no appreciable downside. I was astonished by this. Many of us buy a new phone every year, but few of us really need to.
I’ve rekindled my love affair with the Pixel 5. It feels glorious in hand, hitting the sweet spot with its relatively small size (6-inch screen), feather-light weight (151g), and the comfortable feel of the textured plastic coating on its case. The Pixel 5 is comfortable on the inside as well, since Google’s implementation of Android on its Pixel phones is far more polished and thoughtfully considered than any other, and going back and forth between the Pixel 5 and the Razr drives that point home. The Razr is a fun and innovative smartphone, and I enjoy using it. However, the Pixel 5 is quite possibly my favorite smartphone ever, and I’m treasuring the additional time I get to spend with it, perhaps in the waning days of its viability.
I now have hot-swappable smartphones, and I’ve rediscovered the joys of the Google Pixel 5.
My Razr’s inexplicable malfunction last week turned out to be quite a seminal moment.
