12 ms·

Motorola Razr V3 Cellphone: The trend-setter that shouldn't have existed

211 points by rustcharm 8y ago

_hyn3 8y ago
Do any of these old phones still work on modern mobile networks (even just GSM or CDMA)? The Samsung sph-i500 was another great small phone running PalmOS that came out soon after, with a similar form factor to the Razr.
- Aloha 8y ago
  For now, yes
- imglorp 8y ago
  Closer to the Razr (no palmos) was the Samsung A900. Just a dumb flip phone, but very solid and tiny. I miss small phones. I really don't want a 6" megolith to haul around.
  - steelframe 8y ago
    > I miss small phones. Not quite "tiny," but pretty small regardless, the Xperia Compact line of phones is still a thing. You should check it out. A new Z5C can be had for about 150 USD, or 500 USD for an XZ2C if you can live with 5 inches. Sadly, it's not clear whether Sony will be releasing an XZ3C, so we may be coming to the end of what is arguably the only serious high-end compact smartphone out there.
    - robin_reala 8y ago
      iPhone SE is still supported by Apple and smaller still, and the Performance on iOS 12 is respectable. Probably not as cheap as $150 but it can’t be far off.
      - dirkgently 8y ago
        But it's iOS. Ewwww
      - PascLeRasc 8y ago
        It's cheaper than $150: https://swappa.com/buy/apple-iphone-se https://swappa.com/buy/apple-iphone-se
    - imglorp 8y ago
      Thank you, it does look good.
- userbinator 8y ago
  Baseline GSM hasn't really changed over the years. These phones will still be able to make and receive calls.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    The GSM carriers in the US have both turned off thier 2G networks.
    - zokula 8y ago
      AT&T has but T-Mobile still has 2g GSM service.
- jjav 8y ago
  The razr still works fine (on tmobile). I still use mine, purchased in 2005, no issues. Battery life isn't great and it's hard to find a replacement battery that works, but it still gets me through the day. I wouldn't necessarily mind upgrading, but the razor is less than 4"x2" and there is nothing else like it available. I have no interest in a larger bulkier phone.
mamurphy 8y ago
I had miss this phone, but I realize that I wouldn't want it today. One of the big reasons is I don't memorize phone numbers anymore - as cool as the RAZR was, I don't have need for a flip phone of any kind. The numbers I dial are typically entered in once and then dialed from my phone book.
- Retr0spectrum 8y ago
  I'm confused, you do realise these phones had a built-in contacts storage, right?
  - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
    Yeah, the Razr was my first phone...but it was super convenient to just use the number pad to dial. I had contacts programmed in for just about all the people I called, but between favorites and dialing I didn't use them all that often.
    - skellera 8y ago
      I miss phones that let you dial the letters of the contact name to pull up that contact. Example I always thought was funny was Mom is 666. But with that, it was faster to dial a contact name like that than their number.
      - zyberzero 8y ago
        My phone still let me do that, plain vanilla Samsung S8. I'd be surprised if that didn't work in the most phones on the market today.
        umollis 8y ago
        I think all Androids let you do that, but iPhones don't.
      - dirkgently 8y ago
whitepoplar 8y ago
Bring it back!
userbinator 8y ago
In 2003, a 14mm-thick phone cost $500. In 2018, a 5mm-thick phone costs <$15. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Mini-Phone-AEKU-C6-Color-Screen-M5-Cell-pone-Ultra-Thin-PK-AIEK-C6-AIEK/32689057760.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Mini-Phone-AEKU-C6-Color... The level of integration has increased immensely, there's not much inside one of these phones: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107
- branchless 8y ago
  That's a great phone for a kid. I'm looking at phones today after cracking my screen. I have a Blu Advance and I think I'll just get another. Cannot believe the prices people are paying for a phone that they just use for browsing. I'm stunned.
- begriffs 8y ago
  I had a variation of that mini phone you linked to (the internals get repackaged by various manufacturers). Mine was exactly the height and width of a credit card, and not very thick. It was lovely in my pocket, so unobtrusive. Everyone thought it was a calculator. :) Had to give it up after a while because the battery was really bad. One serious call and it was toast, and the battery got worse with age. If they made a model with a swappable battery it would be more tolerable because I could take some spares with me.
  - eitland 8y ago
    Saw something that probably was an iPod the other day. For a few seconds I thought it was a new iPhone (can't remember seeing an iPod in years). I want a phone in that size: - Small. - With touchscreen, - With a browser - With downloadable or even uploadable apps (basic ones like maps and messaging clients would be enough, don't need games or 3d, just don't want to rely on my operator or the manufacturer to create a new firmware before I can swap my messaging client.) - A quick camera that is good enough for everyday pictures: whiteboards, messaging. - Ideally somewhat water resitant
    - 8y ago
quickthrower2 8y ago
This phone got me off Nokia. Great little phone. Hello Moto! Then the iPhone 3Gs came along and the rest is history
swimfar 8y ago
I just bought one a few months ago when my 13 year old Nokia died. I actually dislike the phone quite a bit and prefer my old Nokia. I have to charge the Razr about every other day, even if I haven't used it for calls. It takes too many button presses to do anything. It isn't very responsive (it takes about 4 seconds for each text deletion). If I receive a missed call or text the phone will vibrate every 5 minutes until I open the phone. This is really annoying in the middle of the night, and when I'm talking to someone at work and my phone won't stop making noise. It supports SMS and MMS, but doesn't actually do well with group texts. Sometimes I can open them, sometimes I can then see what the person sent, and other times the message won't open at all. Also, maybe I'm just dumb, but I can't figure out how to add apostrophes to text messages, which bothers me (especially because I talk to a lot of non-native speakers and I don't want to reinforce poor grammar). Maybe different providers had better interfaces that solve some of these problems, though. The only things I appreciate about the phone are that it has a USB port for charging instead of a barrel plug, and it can store more messages.
- usaphp 8y ago
  Did you lose a bet or something? I can understand carrying a dumb phone that you like, but using a dumb phone that you absolutely hate? With so many options available...
  - swimfar 8y ago
    Obviously I didn't know about about all this before I bought the phone. On paper it seemed like it would be a nice upgrade. I don't send 100's of texts, so I haven't been bothered to look for a different one.
- eli 8y ago
  I think you can get an apostrophe if you put it in symbols mode first by mashing the # a few times
- 50 8y ago
  What Nokia phone? I've been looking to get a Nokia 105 (2017) unlocked with the possibility of using it with Google's Project Fi (T-Mobile) but can't seem to find them anywhere - the only seller of them on Amazon in the US isn't reliable.
TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
I had one as a kid but I disliked it. The battery life was terrible and it constantly crashed, as I recall. I remember hacking around with this phone and trying to get apps on it. I think you could run jars on it, but it was a hassle to load them. And I think there weren't actually many apps available either.
computator 8y ago
> The precision of the build quality, and the use of real metal throughout, are on par with products today. I had a RAZR early on, and I would agree that the build quality was excellent. I bought several more to give to family members in the 2010-2011 time frame -- bought both online and in phone stores -- and found that the build quality had deteriorated badly (though they were much cheaper than the original RAZR). Back covers wouldn't snap shut as securely, edges didn't meet precisely, had to recharge much more frequently, buttons didn't click as smoothly, and some parts felt like painted plastic rather than metal. To this day I don't know if I received counterfeits or if Motorola regressed enormously in build quality to make them less expensive.
- gketuma 8y ago
  I bought mine from the Verizon store and I swear they sold me a Chinese version. The build quality was the worse. All the keys fell off eventually and the metal color paint peeled off as well. I promised myself never to buy anything Motorola after that.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
I always preferred the follow up, the Razr 2 V9. Came a year or less before the iPhone I think. Ran some version of Linux, with lots more storage and SD slot, and if I can remember much slicker menus than the v3. There was some way of getting shell access too. Finally enough storage to use for music sometimes, and an effective touch interface to the music player when closed on the mini screen. Trouble is it had no 3.5 jack and a terrible usb headphone dongle, designed to break every three uses, and catch on something every 5 minutes, making it useless as music player. What a waste. Build quality that means my very heavily used 12 year old phone still looks and feels new except for losing the little plastic charge port cover. Can't get batteries reliably now though so it's not even an emergency backup for much longer.
- bri3d 8y ago
  Didn't the V9 run P2K/Triplets, while the V8 ran Linux?
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    You may be right, and I may be mixing up between the two. They looked identical aside from software menus. I know I had one and the wife the other thanks to being on different networks.
- ollie87 8y ago
  Funnily enough I had an older sibling to this line of "nearly" smartphones, the RIZR Z8 which came out a year before the RAZR V9. It was Symbian powered, had an ARM CPU and a PowerVR GPU - that's a common pairing now but back then was still fairly rare. Thing it has in common with the RAZR V9 was the lack of headphone jack, but it did come with a pair of stereo bluetooth headphones. Again, Motorola were way ahead of their time in a lot of ways. I really loved that phone, I grabbed it when my Nokia N81 died (that was a piece of crap like all the Nokia Symbian phones). Had a great battery life and awesome call quality. It was the last phone I had before the first iPhone launched. I seem to remember the advertisement for it had a link to the Jason Bourne films.
justtopost 8y ago
Ehh, I remember these braking constantly compared to the vastly superior nokia/candybar form factor. Still decent and quite popular at the time.
znpy 8y ago
I remember those times and that phone. Indeed that was an awesome piece of design and as a mobile phone (as in "tool for making phone calls on the go") it checked all the boxes. The software side was quite limited though. Specifically, at the time I was diving into J2ME development (THAT was strangely pleasant to look backwards -- a pain to make it work, but such great satisfaction to overcome all those limitations) and the number of JSR it's JVM (or better, KVM) implemented was pretty low. For this reason, I decided to buy the awesome Nokia N73 (Express Music edition).
- dukoid 8y ago
  I had to make our software work on it, that was certainly not a fun experience... IIRC, the main issue with the Razr was memory though. JSR support often didn't mean much anyway, as many features were optional (probably intended for lack of hardware support, but phone vendors would abuse this to provide a minimal "let's just get that checkbox marked" API).
beerlord 8y ago
Those were heady days for phone manufacturers, and telecommunications in general. Motorola was flush with cash. Nowadays, product management in the phone industry is comparatively dull. Its just about predicting how many iPhones you will sell, begging Apple to allocate as many launch devices to you as possible, and then figuring out which ZTE or Huawei Android device you will sell for $99 on your subsidised prepaid range.
fierarul 8y ago
I think this flip phone would still sell today if they would make it. I was in a retro mood recently and actually looked at a flip phone to buy and the cheapest I could find in my country was about the same price as a low-cost Android. So, no buy. The guys selling under the Nokia brand are also rejuvenating old products but they are going too far: I don't want a Nokia with a color screen, better graphics and an app store for games. I would want precisely a black and white (or e-ink!) display, no external apps whatsoever and no game included by default. There should be no reason to fiddle with a retro phone.
- sampl 8y ago
  I used an old-style phone a few years back. Some things I had forgotten about: - syncing contacts to the phone is near impossible - typing on t9 is slowwwww - setting up MMS etc is a PITA - no apps even for things like driving directions, simple web searches, voice recordings, Spotify
  - phakding 8y ago
    Can you not copy contacts to Sim and then copy to the new phone? I remember doing that with multiple dummy phones before I bought my first smart phone.
    - sampl 8y ago
      I’m sure you can, I could never figure out how on the device I had
- bsder 8y ago
  I would prefer an old school "candybar" phone with a modern interface with the front being a touchscreen. Basically, an Apple watch in a slightly larger form factor that is an actual phone.
- sien 8y ago
  Where I am in Australia these things sell: https://www.binglee.com.au/tech/phones/3g-feature-phones/konka-u3-feature-3g-mobile-phone https://www.binglee.com.au/tech/phones/3g-feature-phones/kon... I bought one for my mum. It's not bad. When I bought it was one of the last ones and the guy in the store said they sell out regularly. It's popular with older folks. So flip phones do sell in 2018.
arthurfm 8y ago
My first mobile phone was a Motorola V50 flip phone [1] which cost £500 in 2000. Despite being released four years before the RAZR V3 [2] it was both smaller and lighter (although slightly thicker). I reckon it would still look cool today if they upgraded the screen. I can't remember why, but I didn't bother buying any RAZRs and my next phone purchase was a Sony Ericsson K800 [3] in 2006. [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_v50-223.php https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_v50-223.php (83 grams, 83 x 44 mm) [2] https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_razr_v3-853.php https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_razr_v3-853.php (95 grams, 98 x 53 mm) [3] https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_k800-1485.php https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_k800-1485.php (115 grams, 105 x 47 mm)
- agumonkey 8y ago
  Twice a year I look up on auctions if there's one cheap.. I still miss that tiny phone (my first too)
needle0 8y ago
"The RAZR was the first phone to recognize that cellphones [...] were on the tipping point to becoming fashion accessories" Was RAZR really released in 2003? Searches seem to bring up varying dates, mostly mentioning mid to late 2004. In Japan, there was the AU Design Project, a carrier-led project established in 2002 which created concept mockups and eventually actual products with a focus on industrial design and fashionability. Their first model, Infobar, was released in Oct 2004; depending on when RAZR was really released it brings the "first" mention above into question. The project released many other products over the years, such as the Marc Newson-designed Talby or even the polka dotted Yayoi Kusama art edition, but Infobar in particular went on to release several iterations, even continuing into the smartphone era. Too bad none of them ever got visibility outside of Japan due to this being a project led by a domestic carrier with no intentions of letting the manufacturers release the same designs outside of them. https://time-space.kddi.com/adp15th/#product https://time-space.kddi.com/adp15th/#product
- vatueil 8y ago
  The posted article is probably incorrect to say the Motorola Razr was "introduced" July 2003. Either the author confused the phone's release date with when development work started: https://web.archive.org/web/20050412050444/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7432916/page/2/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050412050444/http://www.msnbc.... Or it's a typo and they meant July 2004. The Motorola Razr was unveiled by Motorola CEO Edward Zander on 2004-07-26, the night before this Forbes article was published: https://web.archive.org/web/20040812193840/https://www.forbes.com/2004/07/27/cz_ec_0727mot.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040812193840/https://www.forbe...
- ascorbic 8y ago
  I'd say the Nokia 8210 from 1999 is a better contender. Very design-focussed, launched at Paris Fashion Week. Has to be among the smallest candybar phones made too. A much better phone than the RAZR.
  - bnastic 8y ago
    8210 was incredibly popular, and desireable at the same time, although it was release quite a few years ahead of Motorola. I’d buy one now if I could find a NOS somewhere.
yardie 8y ago
I had this phone and the name was fitting. Face stubble would get caught between the laser cut metal keypad. And you could feel the little hairs being yanked out.
hit8run 8y ago
Had the first RAZER back in the days. I loved how it felt. The metal case, the colorful screen, it even had a small screen outside showing the amount of missed calls/messages/connection. This was really one of the best phones I ever had. Fun-Fact: I had this phone for quite a few months and then it started to appear more often in German television (back in the day there was no Netflix so you had to wait for tv series to get translated and were always one season at least behind). Suddenly many friends were buying it too :D
smsm42 8y ago
Great phone, loved using it until the benefits of the smartphone became too great to ignore. If I ever decided to give up on smartphones and move to a dumbphone (which isn't that far-fetched - I can use tablet for the most "smart" parts anyway) I'd probably get something like a Razr again. I love the tactical feedback of a flip-phone - you know how to answer a call and how to end it, and it has a physical feel to it that I still miss in smartphones.
- tigershark 8y ago
  Actually the “close the phone to close the call” is the most dangerous feature in history... It didn’t actually close the call in the worst possible moments.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    Well, if there was a malfunction, that could happen - but so it can happen with current phones (I regularly get calls where people think they hang up but the call continues).
2calazm 8y ago
I was working in the telecom industry back then, and had to test phones' OTA compatibility with some enterprise software. I had to deal with Motorola's awful software for years, and as a result RAZR evokes something different for me than the hardware. The flip side of the RAZR's skunkwork origin was the not-skunkwork-part. That is, being part of Motorola, which meant: (1) relying on Motorola firmware that was slow, ugly, and an UX joke, even by those years' standards, and (2) as soon as they found out those things would sell, the started milking it endlessly, with only minimal updates. The "it's a slim phone!" gimick got old fast. As a matter of fact, Motorola would not produce anything headline-worthy until the Droid. That's quite a long time.
jokermatt999 8y ago
Does anyone here have any experience in getting photos off of old RAZRs? I have a similar phone that (I believe) uses the same firmware. It looks like the software to do so (Motorola Media Link?) was offline, or at least I couldn't locate it anywhere. I've got some photos of an old friend who passed away on there, but no way to get them off.
- pronoiac 8y ago
  See Motorola Phone Tools, and note the different OS support on Windows. https://motorola-global-en-aus.custhelp.com/app/answers/prod_detail/a_id/86934/p/154,153 https://motorola-global-en-aus.custhelp.com/app/answers/prod...
- dingaling 8y ago
  Could you buy a cheap PAYG SIM and MMS the photos to another phone?
- antif 8y ago
  I had a similar situation recently with the mini USB port broken for anything but charging. I recall trying bluetooth and running into trouble, but then succeeding using a data-only SIM card (T-Mobile) and emailing the photos.
shaded-enmity 8y ago
Don't forget the precursors to RAZR :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC
haddr 8y ago
I owned one too. Great phone when it comes to design and feel. The outside screen was great! Downsides: - very bad dictionary, writing amaras horrible (comparing to Nokia for example) - software was also a bit clunky - I tried to write some app for it but hit the wall of not having some expensive license
ksec 8y ago
In 2003, industry best selling and flagship Razr cost $500 In 2018, Apple's flagship iPhone cost ( starts ) $999. I still don't know what to make of those "numbers". A lot fo jobs outside of Tech Sector had lower salary now in real terms than in 2003, and housing price are many times of those in 2003.
- mattbessey 8y ago
  I punched those numbers into the bank of England's inflation calculator and half that difference can be explained by inflation alone https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in...
- megablast 8y ago
  Ok, but the new iPhone has a huge screen, great browser, email, 64gb ram, > a million apps, 40x the radio bands, 30x the resolution, 3x the battery, 100x the speed, video, and more.
  - joering2 8y ago
    but basic version of XS does not even have 1080p :(
  - matwood 8y ago
    Not only that, but it has replaced other devices. The modern flagship cell phone is a great value when you realized it replaces the digital P&S camera, the video recorder, the music player, and for some uses the computer.
    - Zak 8y ago
      Some more (sometimes incompletely): GPS devices, scanners, portable video players, E-readers, paper books, magazines, and newspapers, credit cards, voice recorders, business cards, portable video game systems. Of course, a brand new flagship isn't necessary to perform all these functions. The 2016 model Sony I bought used for $200 in 2017 is capable of doing all these things. It even has removable storage, a headphone jack, and a dedicated camera button (all lacking on most flagships). Flagships are luxury items or fashion accessories, and they're still a good value relative to other luxury items.
usrusr 8y ago
"The RAZR was the first phone to recognize that cellphones [...] were on the tipping point to becoming fashion accessories" Meanwhile, Siemens bet (and lost) a whole sub-brand of absurd design experiments on the idea of phones becoming fashion accessories. Xelibri had all the boldness and cluelessness of a teenager getting killed climbing up a power line pole to impress the girls. Xelibri were truly "phones that should not have existed", a monument to organizational bad judgement. (The 5 and 7 models were kind of cool though, but those were absolute outliers in the lineup)
- sorokod 8y ago
  Oh look who has got a Xelibri https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=39LvqbPPpys# https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=39LvqbPPpys# Edit: I was sure that it is sasha baron kohen in the video. It isn't him apparently but the video is still great.
- ctdonath 8y ago
  Don't forget the monumental flop of the Microsoft Kin. $500,000,000 on development, only 500 sold.
  - buckminster 8y ago
    So you could get a million dollars worth of phone for a few hundred. Bargain!
  - giobox 8y ago
    A little unfair to compare the Kin as failure purely on fashion accessory grounds? The device had some seriously ahead of its time cloud features, a few of which would still be interesting even today. Arguably its closest spiritual sibling was the Danger line of phones (Microsoft acquired Danger and had them work on the Kin) and those sold respectably. I think there are many complex factors in the Kin’s failure (not the least of which was that Microsoft themselves weren’t really 100% behind the platform), but I personally wouldn’t put fashion near the top of the list. The kin hardware was serviceable at the time, but certainly wasn’t nearly as compromised by fashion concerns as some of the ridiculous Siemens Xelibri models were. The Xelibri 6 is frankly hilarious, and almost in a league of its own for bad fashion phone design.
rb808 8y ago
As an aside & question - I hate this slim, light goal. What I want is a thick phone with a battery that can stand heavy use for at least 24 hours (preferably changeable), and doesn't really need a case. To me it doesn't make sense to see this obsession with tiny phones that most people put cases on. To be fair, the Razr 3 had good battery life and couldn't have a case, but in this world: Anyone have suggestions?
- fredley 8y ago
  There are plenty of battery cases for most mainstream phones that allow you to build a device such as this.
- eli 8y ago
  Dumb phone or smart phone? CAT makes some rugged android phones.
  - Something1234 8y ago
    I love the concept of the cat phones. There's some real cool hardware in them like an infrared camera.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Most recent phones dont have replaceable batteries unfortunately. Still, some options to consider: - AGM X2 - Doogee S60 - Zebra TC75x have large battery capacity.
- kijin 8y ago
  I agree with you wrt the battery, but I would prefer to put an aftermarket case on a more fragile phone than to buy a rugged phone that supposedly doesn't need a case. Both are going to be badly scratched up if dropped on or dragged across a rough surface. A cheap aftermarket case, though, is much easier to replace than the backside of a phone. In other words, a replaceable case has many of the same benefits as a replaceable battery.
- cesarb 8y ago
  An interesting option is the Moto Z line with one of its external power pack accessories (in particular the Moto Z Play, which of the Moto Z line is the heaviest and the one with the biggest internal battery). The internal battery is not changeable, but the external power pack feels a lot like a changeable battery. (Disclaimer: I have one, as do several of my friends and coworkers.)
yitchelle 8y ago
I owned one of these when it came out. It felt solid but my biggest fear is the connection between lid and the base becoming flaky and breaks. Luckily it never happened.
stuaxo 8y ago
As a mobile dev at the time, I wish motorola had faster CPUS (or it may have just their JVM lacking a JIT). Either way, Sony and Nokia had decent speed, but motorola was like molasses, which is a shame as they weren't too bad to dev for.
cuboidGoat 8y ago
>“The scale of the hit of RAZR is hard to comprehend. Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse ordered a quarter of a million in pink. We thought he was mad, this was a third of the global projected sales. He wanted this crazy volume of the “boys” phone to sell to girls in the UK. We gave him exclusivity on the pink colour. When he sold 3 million we bought the non-UK rights back.” Reading this makes me wince at the monoculture. I can imagine the meetings; "You mean women are a major part of the mobile phone market? And they spend money on high quality design? And some men like pink too? Oh, and you are saying some women don't? Here, let me write this down, this stuff is out there."
SomeHacker44 8y ago
I had a series if RAZRs before Palm based phones were a thing. I did enjoy them greatly and carried them on a belt holster that was more convenient in my mind than the pocket that now houses my modern phone. Despite the article’s claim of how revolutionary this phone was, it always felt like an evolution of the Motorola StarTAC to me. I purchased the first one of these, it must have been 1997-1998, and I recall paying $1,200. It had literally unlimited battery life because it had two separate batteries, one on each half of the clamshell, and you could hot swap them while on a call. Various sizes were available. They could be charged faster than they ran out and I carried a spare or few with me. Granted it had just a (I do not recall now) one or two line dot matrix display and a limited feature set (there was messaging but I do think it predated SMS). But to me that StarTAC was the innovative phone and not this RAZR. I love how dynamic and interesting the cell phone hardware industry used to be. Now every phone announcement usually elicits boredom from me. Of course, the same could be said of computer hardware in the 80s and 90s, and CPU architectures, etc. The world has seemed to converge on one or at most a few designs of most things hardware and real innovation seems to come at a much slower pace.
mcculley 8y ago
I am amused that they considered the PEBL “for girls”. I had a PEBL as the last flip phone I used before switching to a BlackBerry. I appreciated that I could flip it open and start dialing or texting with one hand (it was almost as satisfying as an automatic knife in its mechanics). The PEBL fit better in a jeans pocket than the RAZR did for me.

211 points by rustcharm 8y ago

Do any of these old phones still work on modern mobile networks (even just GSM or CDMA)? The Samsung sph-i500 was another great small phone running PalmOS that came out soon after, with a similar form factor to the Razr.

Aloha 8y ago
For now, yes
imglorp 8y ago
Closer to the Razr (no palmos) was the Samsung A900. Just a dumb flip phone, but very solid and tiny. I miss small phones. I really don't want a 6" megolith to haul around.
- steelframe 8y ago
  > I miss small phones. Not quite "tiny," but pretty small regardless, the Xperia Compact line of phones is still a thing. You should check it out. A new Z5C can be had for about 150 USD, or 500 USD for an XZ2C if you can live with 5 inches. Sadly, it's not clear whether Sony will be releasing an XZ3C, so we may be coming to the end of what is arguably the only serious high-end compact smartphone out there.
  - robin_reala 8y ago
    iPhone SE is still supported by Apple and smaller still, and the Performance on iOS 12 is respectable. Probably not as cheap as $150 but it can’t be far off.
    - dirkgently 8y ago
      But it's iOS. Ewwww
    - PascLeRasc 8y ago
      It's cheaper than $150: https://swappa.com/buy/apple-iphone-se https://swappa.com/buy/apple-iphone-se
  - imglorp 8y ago
    Thank you, it does look good.
userbinator 8y ago
Baseline GSM hasn't really changed over the years. These phones will still be able to make and receive calls.
- scarface74 8y ago
  The GSM carriers in the US have both turned off thier 2G networks.
  - zokula 8y ago
    AT&T has but T-Mobile still has 2g GSM service.
jjav 8y ago
The razr still works fine (on tmobile). I still use mine, purchased in 2005, no issues. Battery life isn't great and it's hard to find a replacement battery that works, but it still gets me through the day. I wouldn't necessarily mind upgrading, but the razor is less than 4"x2" and there is nothing else like it available. I have no interest in a larger bulkier phone.

mamurphy 8y ago

I had miss this phone, but I realize that I wouldn't want it today. One of the big reasons is I don't memorize phone numbers anymore - as cool as the RAZR was, I don't have need for a flip phone of any kind. The numbers I dial are typically entered in once and then dialed from my phone book.

Retr0spectrum 8y ago
I'm confused, you do realise these phones had a built-in contacts storage, right?
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  Yeah, the Razr was my first phone...but it was super convenient to just use the number pad to dial. I had contacts programmed in for just about all the people I called, but between favorites and dialing I didn't use them all that often.
  - skellera 8y ago
    I miss phones that let you dial the letters of the contact name to pull up that contact. Example I always thought was funny was Mom is 666. But with that, it was faster to dial a contact name like that than their number.
    - zyberzero 8y ago
      My phone still let me do that, plain vanilla Samsung S8. I'd be surprised if that didn't work in the most phones on the market today.
      - umollis 8y ago
        I think all Androids let you do that, but iPhones don't.
    - dirkgently 8y ago

whitepoplar 8y ago

Bring it back!

userbinator 8y ago

In 2003, a 14mm-thick phone cost $500. In 2018, a 5mm-thick phone costs <$15. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Mini-Phone-AEKU-C6-Color-Screen-M5-Cell-pone-Ultra-Thin-PK-AIEK-C6-AIEK/32689057760.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Mini-Phone-AEKU-C6-Color... The level of integration has increased immensely, there's not much inside one of these phones: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107

branchless 8y ago
That's a great phone for a kid. I'm looking at phones today after cracking my screen. I have a Blu Advance and I think I'll just get another. Cannot believe the prices people are paying for a phone that they just use for browsing. I'm stunned.
begriffs 8y ago
I had a variation of that mini phone you linked to (the internals get repackaged by various manufacturers). Mine was exactly the height and width of a credit card, and not very thick. It was lovely in my pocket, so unobtrusive. Everyone thought it was a calculator. :) Had to give it up after a while because the battery was really bad. One serious call and it was toast, and the battery got worse with age. If they made a model with a swappable battery it would be more tolerable because I could take some spares with me.
- eitland 8y ago
  Saw something that probably was an iPod the other day. For a few seconds I thought it was a new iPhone (can't remember seeing an iPod in years). I want a phone in that size: - Small. - With touchscreen, - With a browser - With downloadable or even uploadable apps (basic ones like maps and messaging clients would be enough, don't need games or 3d, just don't want to rely on my operator or the manufacturer to create a new firmware before I can swap my messaging client.) - A quick camera that is good enough for everyday pictures: whiteboards, messaging. - Ideally somewhat water resitant
  - 8y ago

quickthrower2 8y ago

This phone got me off Nokia. Great little phone. Hello Moto! Then the iPhone 3Gs came along and the rest is history

swimfar 8y ago

I just bought one a few months ago when my 13 year old Nokia died. I actually dislike the phone quite a bit and prefer my old Nokia. I have to charge the Razr about every other day, even if I haven't used it for calls. It takes too many button presses to do anything. It isn't very responsive (it takes about 4 seconds for each text deletion). If I receive a missed call or text the phone will vibrate every 5 minutes until I open the phone. This is really annoying in the middle of the night, and when I'm talking to someone at work and my phone won't stop making noise. It supports SMS and MMS, but doesn't actually do well with group texts. Sometimes I can open them, sometimes I can then see what the person sent, and other times the message won't open at all. Also, maybe I'm just dumb, but I can't figure out how to add apostrophes to text messages, which bothers me (especially because I talk to a lot of non-native speakers and I don't want to reinforce poor grammar). Maybe different providers had better interfaces that solve some of these problems, though. The only things I appreciate about the phone are that it has a USB port for charging instead of a barrel plug, and it can store more messages.

usaphp 8y ago
Did you lose a bet or something? I can understand carrying a dumb phone that you like, but using a dumb phone that you absolutely hate? With so many options available...
- swimfar 8y ago
  Obviously I didn't know about about all this before I bought the phone. On paper it seemed like it would be a nice upgrade. I don't send 100's of texts, so I haven't been bothered to look for a different one.
eli 8y ago
I think you can get an apostrophe if you put it in symbols mode first by mashing the # a few times
50 8y ago
What Nokia phone? I've been looking to get a Nokia 105 (2017) unlocked with the possibility of using it with Google's Project Fi (T-Mobile) but can't seem to find them anywhere - the only seller of them on Amazon in the US isn't reliable.

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago

I had one as a kid but I disliked it. The battery life was terrible and it constantly crashed, as I recall. I remember hacking around with this phone and trying to get apps on it. I think you could run jars on it, but it was a hassle to load them. And I think there weren't actually many apps available either.

computator 8y ago

> The precision of the build quality, and the use of real metal throughout, are on par with products today. I had a RAZR early on, and I would agree that the build quality was excellent. I bought several more to give to family members in the 2010-2011 time frame -- bought both online and in phone stores -- and found that the build quality had deteriorated badly (though they were much cheaper than the original RAZR). Back covers wouldn't snap shut as securely, edges didn't meet precisely, had to recharge much more frequently, buttons didn't click as smoothly, and some parts felt like painted plastic rather than metal. To this day I don't know if I received counterfeits or if Motorola regressed enormously in build quality to make them less expensive.

gketuma 8y ago
I bought mine from the Verizon store and I swear they sold me a Chinese version. The build quality was the worse. All the keys fell off eventually and the metal color paint peeled off as well. I promised myself never to buy anything Motorola after that.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

I always preferred the follow up, the Razr 2 V9. Came a year or less before the iPhone I think. Ran some version of Linux, with lots more storage and SD slot, and if I can remember much slicker menus than the v3. There was some way of getting shell access too. Finally enough storage to use for music sometimes, and an effective touch interface to the music player when closed on the mini screen. Trouble is it had no 3.5 jack and a terrible usb headphone dongle, designed to break every three uses, and catch on something every 5 minutes, making it useless as music player. What a waste. Build quality that means my very heavily used 12 year old phone still looks and feels new except for losing the little plastic charge port cover. Can't get batteries reliably now though so it's not even an emergency backup for much longer.

bri3d 8y ago
Didn't the V9 run P2K/Triplets, while the V8 ran Linux?
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  You may be right, and I may be mixing up between the two. They looked identical aside from software menus. I know I had one and the wife the other thanks to being on different networks.
ollie87 8y ago
Funnily enough I had an older sibling to this line of "nearly" smartphones, the RIZR Z8 which came out a year before the RAZR V9. It was Symbian powered, had an ARM CPU and a PowerVR GPU - that's a common pairing now but back then was still fairly rare. Thing it has in common with the RAZR V9 was the lack of headphone jack, but it did come with a pair of stereo bluetooth headphones. Again, Motorola were way ahead of their time in a lot of ways. I really loved that phone, I grabbed it when my Nokia N81 died (that was a piece of crap like all the Nokia Symbian phones). Had a great battery life and awesome call quality. It was the last phone I had before the first iPhone launched. I seem to remember the advertisement for it had a link to the Jason Bourne films.

justtopost 8y ago

Ehh, I remember these braking constantly compared to the vastly superior nokia/candybar form factor. Still decent and quite popular at the time.

znpy 8y ago

I remember those times and that phone. Indeed that was an awesome piece of design and as a mobile phone (as in "tool for making phone calls on the go") it checked all the boxes. The software side was quite limited though. Specifically, at the time I was diving into J2ME development (THAT was strangely pleasant to look backwards -- a pain to make it work, but such great satisfaction to overcome all those limitations) and the number of JSR it's JVM (or better, KVM) implemented was pretty low. For this reason, I decided to buy the awesome Nokia N73 (Express Music edition).

dukoid 8y ago
I had to make our software work on it, that was certainly not a fun experience... IIRC, the main issue with the Razr was memory though. JSR support often didn't mean much anyway, as many features were optional (probably intended for lack of hardware support, but phone vendors would abuse this to provide a minimal "let's just get that checkbox marked" API).

beerlord 8y ago

Those were heady days for phone manufacturers, and telecommunications in general. Motorola was flush with cash. Nowadays, product management in the phone industry is comparatively dull. Its just about predicting how many iPhones you will sell, begging Apple to allocate as many launch devices to you as possible, and then figuring out which ZTE or Huawei Android device you will sell for $99 on your subsidised prepaid range.

fierarul 8y ago

I think this flip phone would still sell today if they would make it. I was in a retro mood recently and actually looked at a flip phone to buy and the cheapest I could find in my country was about the same price as a low-cost Android. So, no buy. The guys selling under the Nokia brand are also rejuvenating old products but they are going too far: I don't want a Nokia with a color screen, better graphics and an app store for games. I would want precisely a black and white (or e-ink!) display, no external apps whatsoever and no game included by default. There should be no reason to fiddle with a retro phone.

sampl 8y ago
I used an old-style phone a few years back. Some things I had forgotten about: - syncing contacts to the phone is near impossible - typing on t9 is slowwwww - setting up MMS etc is a PITA - no apps even for things like driving directions, simple web searches, voice recordings, Spotify
- phakding 8y ago
  Can you not copy contacts to Sim and then copy to the new phone? I remember doing that with multiple dummy phones before I bought my first smart phone.
  - sampl 8y ago
    I’m sure you can, I could never figure out how on the device I had
bsder 8y ago
I would prefer an old school "candybar" phone with a modern interface with the front being a touchscreen. Basically, an Apple watch in a slightly larger form factor that is an actual phone.
sien 8y ago
Where I am in Australia these things sell: https://www.binglee.com.au/tech/phones/3g-feature-phones/konka-u3-feature-3g-mobile-phone https://www.binglee.com.au/tech/phones/3g-feature-phones/kon... I bought one for my mum. It's not bad. When I bought it was one of the last ones and the guy in the store said they sell out regularly. It's popular with older folks. So flip phones do sell in 2018.

arthurfm 8y ago

My first mobile phone was a Motorola V50 flip phone [1] which cost £500 in 2000. Despite being released four years before the RAZR V3 [2] it was both smaller and lighter (although slightly thicker). I reckon it would still look cool today if they upgraded the screen. I can't remember why, but I didn't bother buying any RAZRs and my next phone purchase was a Sony Ericsson K800 [3] in 2006. [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_v50-223.php https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_v50-223.php (83 grams, 83 x 44 mm) [2] https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_razr_v3-853.php https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_razr_v3-853.php (95 grams, 98 x 53 mm) [3] https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_k800-1485.php https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_k800-1485.php (115 grams, 105 x 47 mm)

agumonkey 8y ago
Twice a year I look up on auctions if there's one cheap.. I still miss that tiny phone (my first too)

needle0 8y ago

"The RAZR was the first phone to recognize that cellphones [...] were on the tipping point to becoming fashion accessories" Was RAZR really released in 2003? Searches seem to bring up varying dates, mostly mentioning mid to late 2004. In Japan, there was the AU Design Project, a carrier-led project established in 2002 which created concept mockups and eventually actual products with a focus on industrial design and fashionability. Their first model, Infobar, was released in Oct 2004; depending on when RAZR was really released it brings the "first" mention above into question. The project released many other products over the years, such as the Marc Newson-designed Talby or even the polka dotted Yayoi Kusama art edition, but Infobar in particular went on to release several iterations, even continuing into the smartphone era. Too bad none of them ever got visibility outside of Japan due to this being a project led by a domestic carrier with no intentions of letting the manufacturers release the same designs outside of them. https://time-space.kddi.com/adp15th/#product https://time-space.kddi.com/adp15th/#product

vatueil 8y ago
The posted article is probably incorrect to say the Motorola Razr was "introduced" July 2003. Either the author confused the phone's release date with when development work started: https://web.archive.org/web/20050412050444/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7432916/page/2/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050412050444/http://www.msnbc.... Or it's a typo and they meant July 2004. The Motorola Razr was unveiled by Motorola CEO Edward Zander on 2004-07-26, the night before this Forbes article was published: https://web.archive.org/web/20040812193840/https://www.forbes.com/2004/07/27/cz_ec_0727mot.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040812193840/https://www.forbe...
ascorbic 8y ago
I'd say the Nokia 8210 from 1999 is a better contender. Very design-focussed, launched at Paris Fashion Week. Has to be among the smallest candybar phones made too. A much better phone than the RAZR.
- bnastic 8y ago
  8210 was incredibly popular, and desireable at the same time, although it was release quite a few years ahead of Motorola. I’d buy one now if I could find a NOS somewhere.

yardie 8y ago

I had this phone and the name was fitting. Face stubble would get caught between the laser cut metal keypad. And you could feel the little hairs being yanked out.

hit8run 8y ago

Had the first RAZER back in the days. I loved how it felt. The metal case, the colorful screen, it even had a small screen outside showing the amount of missed calls/messages/connection. This was really one of the best phones I ever had. Fun-Fact: I had this phone for quite a few months and then it started to appear more often in German television (back in the day there was no Netflix so you had to wait for tv series to get translated and were always one season at least behind). Suddenly many friends were buying it too :D

smsm42 8y ago

Great phone, loved using it until the benefits of the smartphone became too great to ignore. If I ever decided to give up on smartphones and move to a dumbphone (which isn't that far-fetched - I can use tablet for the most "smart" parts anyway) I'd probably get something like a Razr again. I love the tactical feedback of a flip-phone - you know how to answer a call and how to end it, and it has a physical feel to it that I still miss in smartphones.

tigershark 8y ago
Actually the “close the phone to close the call” is the most dangerous feature in history... It didn’t actually close the call in the worst possible moments.
- smsm42 8y ago
  Well, if there was a malfunction, that could happen - but so it can happen with current phones (I regularly get calls where people think they hang up but the call continues).

2calazm 8y ago

I was working in the telecom industry back then, and had to test phones' OTA compatibility with some enterprise software. I had to deal with Motorola's awful software for years, and as a result RAZR evokes something different for me than the hardware. The flip side of the RAZR's skunkwork origin was the not-skunkwork-part. That is, being part of Motorola, which meant: (1) relying on Motorola firmware that was slow, ugly, and an UX joke, even by those years' standards, and (2) as soon as they found out those things would sell, the started milking it endlessly, with only minimal updates. The "it's a slim phone!" gimick got old fast. As a matter of fact, Motorola would not produce anything headline-worthy until the Droid. That's quite a long time.

jokermatt999 8y ago

Does anyone here have any experience in getting photos off of old RAZRs? I have a similar phone that (I believe) uses the same firmware. It looks like the software to do so (Motorola Media Link?) was offline, or at least I couldn't locate it anywhere. I've got some photos of an old friend who passed away on there, but no way to get them off.

pronoiac 8y ago
See Motorola Phone Tools, and note the different OS support on Windows. https://motorola-global-en-aus.custhelp.com/app/answers/prod_detail/a_id/86934/p/154,153 https://motorola-global-en-aus.custhelp.com/app/answers/prod...
dingaling 8y ago
Could you buy a cheap PAYG SIM and MMS the photos to another phone?
antif 8y ago
I had a similar situation recently with the mini USB port broken for anything but charging. I recall trying bluetooth and running into trouble, but then succeeding using a data-only SIM card (T-Mobile) and emailing the photos.

shaded-enmity 8y ago

Don't forget the precursors to RAZR :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC

haddr 8y ago

I owned one too. Great phone when it comes to design and feel. The outside screen was great! Downsides: - very bad dictionary, writing amaras horrible (comparing to Nokia for example) - software was also a bit clunky - I tried to write some app for it but hit the wall of not having some expensive license

ksec 8y ago

In 2003, industry best selling and flagship Razr cost $500 In 2018, Apple's flagship iPhone cost ( starts ) $999. I still don't know what to make of those "numbers". A lot fo jobs outside of Tech Sector had lower salary now in real terms than in 2003, and housing price are many times of those in 2003.

mattbessey 8y ago
I punched those numbers into the bank of England's inflation calculator and half that difference can be explained by inflation alone https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in...
megablast 8y ago
Ok, but the new iPhone has a huge screen, great browser, email, 64gb ram, > a million apps, 40x the radio bands, 30x the resolution, 3x the battery, 100x the speed, video, and more.
- joering2 8y ago
  but basic version of XS does not even have 1080p :(
- matwood 8y ago
  Not only that, but it has replaced other devices. The modern flagship cell phone is a great value when you realized it replaces the digital P&S camera, the video recorder, the music player, and for some uses the computer.
  - Zak 8y ago
    Some more (sometimes incompletely): GPS devices, scanners, portable video players, E-readers, paper books, magazines, and newspapers, credit cards, voice recorders, business cards, portable video game systems. Of course, a brand new flagship isn't necessary to perform all these functions. The 2016 model Sony I bought used for $200 in 2017 is capable of doing all these things. It even has removable storage, a headphone jack, and a dedicated camera button (all lacking on most flagships). Flagships are luxury items or fashion accessories, and they're still a good value relative to other luxury items.

usrusr 8y ago

"The RAZR was the first phone to recognize that cellphones [...] were on the tipping point to becoming fashion accessories" Meanwhile, Siemens bet (and lost) a whole sub-brand of absurd design experiments on the idea of phones becoming fashion accessories. Xelibri had all the boldness and cluelessness of a teenager getting killed climbing up a power line pole to impress the girls. Xelibri were truly "phones that should not have existed", a monument to organizational bad judgement. (The 5 and 7 models were kind of cool though, but those were absolute outliers in the lineup)

sorokod 8y ago
Oh look who has got a Xelibri https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=39LvqbPPpys# https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=39LvqbPPpys# Edit: I was sure that it is sasha baron kohen in the video. It isn't him apparently but the video is still great.
ctdonath 8y ago
Don't forget the monumental flop of the Microsoft Kin. $500,000,000 on development, only 500 sold.
- buckminster 8y ago
  So you could get a million dollars worth of phone for a few hundred. Bargain!
- giobox 8y ago
  A little unfair to compare the Kin as failure purely on fashion accessory grounds? The device had some seriously ahead of its time cloud features, a few of which would still be interesting even today. Arguably its closest spiritual sibling was the Danger line of phones (Microsoft acquired Danger and had them work on the Kin) and those sold respectably. I think there are many complex factors in the Kin’s failure (not the least of which was that Microsoft themselves weren’t really 100% behind the platform), but I personally wouldn’t put fashion near the top of the list. The kin hardware was serviceable at the time, but certainly wasn’t nearly as compromised by fashion concerns as some of the ridiculous Siemens Xelibri models were. The Xelibri 6 is frankly hilarious, and almost in a league of its own for bad fashion phone design.

rb808 8y ago

As an aside & question - I hate this slim, light goal. What I want is a thick phone with a battery that can stand heavy use for at least 24 hours (preferably changeable), and doesn't really need a case. To me it doesn't make sense to see this obsession with tiny phones that most people put cases on. To be fair, the Razr 3 had good battery life and couldn't have a case, but in this world: Anyone have suggestions?

fredley 8y ago
There are plenty of battery cases for most mainstream phones that allow you to build a device such as this.
eli 8y ago
Dumb phone or smart phone? CAT makes some rugged android phones.
- Something1234 8y ago
  I love the concept of the cat phones. There's some real cool hardware in them like an infrared camera.
ekianjo 8y ago
Most recent phones dont have replaceable batteries unfortunately. Still, some options to consider: - AGM X2 - Doogee S60 - Zebra TC75x have large battery capacity.
kijin 8y ago
I agree with you wrt the battery, but I would prefer to put an aftermarket case on a more fragile phone than to buy a rugged phone that supposedly doesn't need a case. Both are going to be badly scratched up if dropped on or dragged across a rough surface. A cheap aftermarket case, though, is much easier to replace than the backside of a phone. In other words, a replaceable case has many of the same benefits as a replaceable battery.
cesarb 8y ago
An interesting option is the Moto Z line with one of its external power pack accessories (in particular the Moto Z Play, which of the Moto Z line is the heaviest and the one with the biggest internal battery). The internal battery is not changeable, but the external power pack feels a lot like a changeable battery. (Disclaimer: I have one, as do several of my friends and coworkers.)

yitchelle 8y ago

I owned one of these when it came out. It felt solid but my biggest fear is the connection between lid and the base becoming flaky and breaks. Luckily it never happened.

stuaxo 8y ago

As a mobile dev at the time, I wish motorola had faster CPUS (or it may have just their JVM lacking a JIT). Either way, Sony and Nokia had decent speed, but motorola was like molasses, which is a shame as they weren't too bad to dev for.

cuboidGoat 8y ago

>“The scale of the hit of RAZR is hard to comprehend. Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse ordered a quarter of a million in pink. We thought he was mad, this was a third of the global projected sales. He wanted this crazy volume of the “boys” phone to sell to girls in the UK. We gave him exclusivity on the pink colour. When he sold 3 million we bought the non-UK rights back.” Reading this makes me wince at the monoculture. I can imagine the meetings; "You mean women are a major part of the mobile phone market? And they spend money on high quality design? And some men like pink too? Oh, and you are saying some women don't? Here, let me write this down, this stuff is out there."

SomeHacker44 8y ago

I had a series if RAZRs before Palm based phones were a thing. I did enjoy them greatly and carried them on a belt holster that was more convenient in my mind than the pocket that now houses my modern phone. Despite the article’s claim of how revolutionary this phone was, it always felt like an evolution of the Motorola StarTAC to me. I purchased the first one of these, it must have been 1997-1998, and I recall paying $1,200. It had literally unlimited battery life because it had two separate batteries, one on each half of the clamshell, and you could hot swap them while on a call. Various sizes were available. They could be charged faster than they ran out and I carried a spare or few with me. Granted it had just a (I do not recall now) one or two line dot matrix display and a limited feature set (there was messaging but I do think it predated SMS). But to me that StarTAC was the innovative phone and not this RAZR. I love how dynamic and interesting the cell phone hardware industry used to be. Now every phone announcement usually elicits boredom from me. Of course, the same could be said of computer hardware in the 80s and 90s, and CPU architectures, etc. The world has seemed to converge on one or at most a few designs of most things hardware and real innovation seems to come at a much slower pace.

mcculley 8y ago

I am amused that they considered the PEBL “for girls”. I had a PEBL as the last flip phone I used before switching to a BlackBerry. I appreciated that I could flip it open and start dialing or texting with one hand (it was almost as satisfying as an automatic knife in its mechanics). The PEBL fit better in a jeans pocket than the RAZR did for me.