
Motorola Razr V3 Cellphone: The trend-setter that shouldn't have existed - rustcharm
http://www.massmadesoul.com/features/razr
======
userbinator
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...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Mini-Phone-
AEKU-C6-Color-Screen-M5-Cell-pone-Ultra-Thin-PK-AIEK-C6-AIEK/32689057760.html)

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)

~~~
begriffs
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
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

~~~
stirlo
So an iPhone SE? Or an Apple Watch with Cellular?

There’s an impossible trade off between being “small” as in credit card sized
and having a usable browser.

~~~
avcdsuia
Anyone here uses Apple Watches as new gen pagers? Do you get a whole day LTE
standby time with some useless stuff disabled?

~~~
1123581321
My Series 4 just barely lasts all day with some activity (music, workout) and
the phone at home all day (forcing use of the LTE when not at work or home.)
Functionally, I would describe it as a pager, feature phone and iPod on the
wrist.

~~~
avcdsuia
An iPod, a phone, an Internet communicator. Are you getting it? These are not
three separate devices. Apple reinvented the original iPhone :)

Thanks for your comment, now I am considering to get one.

~~~
1123581321
Haha, yes! The Watch does feel like the early iPhone years. If you can take
advantage of Apple’s return policy, I recommend trying one for a few days.

------
usrusr
"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)

~~~
ctdonath
Don't forget the monumental flop of the Microsoft Kin. $500,000,000 on
development, only 500 sold.

~~~
giobox
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.

~~~
ctdonath
Finally had a chance to look up Siemens Xelibri.

Oh my.

When your phone reminds one of contraceptive packaging, you're doing it wrong.

------
znpy
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
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).

------
hit8run
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

------
swimfar
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.

~~~
Xunxi
Nokia has revamped its classic phones
[https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/classic-
phones](https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/classic-phones)

~~~
borellini
They are not the same. Even though Nokia is infamous for not being able to
produce a solid smartphone platform that would actually attract app
developers, their feature phones (and Sony Ericsson's, too) were always known
for having more finished, polished and faster UX when compared to competition
like Siemens and Motorola.

The Nokia-branded feature phones produced during Microsoft's ownership and
ones produced currently by HMD Global are based on somewhat horrible generic
Chinese feature phone platforms and lack the finish and localisation. HMD
likes to call one of them Series 30+. Nokia's Series 30 is easy to use and
reliable feature phone platform, Series 30+ is not.

~~~
r3bl
Reviving the old 3310 got Nokia back into every store in Europe. It really
doesn't matter whether those phones are any good or not, because they're not a
priority, they're just a gimmick.

They're just a gimmick that's a complete win from a marketing side though. I
know Nokia, I've seen their new feature phones everywhere, I've found out that
they have sturdy, decent smartphones now (like the 7 plus) running Android
One, and I've made three purchases from them this year.

------
rb808
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?

~~~
eli
Dumb phone or smart phone? CAT makes some rugged android phones.

~~~
Something1234
I love the concept of the cat phones. There's some real cool hardware in them
like an infrared camera.

------
ksec
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.

~~~
megablast
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.

~~~
matwood
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
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.

~~~
matwood
The only reason I said flagships is that it took awhile for the cameras (both
still and video) to really replicate what could be had as a stand alone.

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

------
smsm42
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
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
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).

------
cuboidGoat
> _“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."_

------
TheAceOfHearts
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.

------
needle0
"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)

~~~
ascorbic
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.

~~~
toothbrush
I 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.

------
beerlord
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.

------
_hyn3
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.

~~~
imglorp
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
> 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
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.

~~~
PascLeRasc
It's cheaper than $150: [https://swappa.com/buy/apple-iphone-
se](https://swappa.com/buy/apple-iphone-se)

------
NeedMoreTea
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
Didn't the V9 run P2K/Triplets, while the V8 ran Linux?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
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.

------
haddr
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

------
2calazm
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.

------
computator
> 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
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.

------
SomeHacker44
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.

------
yardie
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.

------
fierarul
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
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
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
I’m sure you can, I could never figure out how on the device I had

------
jokermatt999
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.

~~~
dingaling
Could you buy a cheap PAYG SIM and MMS the photos to another phone?

------
mcculley
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.

------
quickthrower2
This phone got me off Nokia. Great little phone. Hello Moto! Then the iPhone
3Gs came along and the rest is history

------
stuaxo
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.

------
shaded-enmity
Don't forget the precursors to RAZR :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC)

------
yitchelle
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.

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

------
whitepoplar
Bring it back!

------
mamurphy
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
I'm confused, you do realise these phones had a built-in contacts storage,
right?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
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
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
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
I think all Androids let you do that, but iPhones don't.

