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"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? S
by 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 agoThe 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 agoI'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 ago8210 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.
- toothbrush 8y agoI owned 2 of those and still miss them. I tried buying one off eBay a while ago (wow, that's about 7 years ago now) but the battery just didn't last and very soon the screen got dead pixel lines and the antenna malfunctioned - I suspect maybe some components had been replaced with knock-offs or something, it was very un-Nokialike.