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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 t
by 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.