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Motorola Reinvents the RAZR
zacharye writes with news that Motorola has reinvented their popular RAZR clam-shell phone as an Android smartphone. The new device is 4G LTE-capable and 7.1mm thick, and it contains "a 1.2GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor, a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video capture, an LED flash, an HDMI-out port, noise cancellation capabilities, 16GB of built-in storage and a 16GB microSD card pre-installed." iFixit did a teardown of the phone, finding that the construction necessary for such thinness will make repairs problematic.
How many people actually try to fix their own phones? Even on /. I have to imagine that the number is low.
Aren't they meant to be disposable? I thought you just threw them away when they became obsolete after six months.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I don't know whether to be impressed by their gall or appalled at their ignorance. More likely the latter; to the marketing types who come up with this kind of gimmick, anything that happened more than five minutes ago is one with Ninevah and Tyre.
(And yes, I know it was 11:00 in 1918. Somehow that makes this worse, not better.)
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Why would anyone want HDMI on their phones? Are the phones really powerful enough to output an HD signal to TVs that people would want to watch?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Seems a bit of an overstatement, how about slapped the Razr brand on a modern smartphone which isn't a clamshell.
I have an el-cheapo motorola flip phone w/ camera, and if I leave it powered on for an extended period of time, it locks up. It locks up in the most annoying fashion however. It appears to be working, the display is still lit, the screen goes on/off when you open/close it, but it doesnt receive messages or phone calls, and then when you finally look to see if you have messages, it locks up. Annoying as hell.
Sound quality is good when it works tho.
Anyone else have stability issues to report ? Any wonderful praises of no problems whatsoever ?
Seems to me that as the software gets more complex, the phone gets less reliable. (try hard to not accuse me of making a broad sweeping generalization)
... because since Google bought them I would hope that they will consider these 'halo' phones for Android. I'm not sure about the quality of this one as it's pretty soon after the purchase, but I'm hoping they pump up the quality.
That was probably a Sony device and actually supplemented the battery's power by consuming your life-force.
Nokia renames the Lumia as the 3310.
Windows 8 is released as Windows Me2
Firefox 9 is released as Firebird 1.0.
Now, there's nothing said about battery life when talking about phones. I've had a Motorola smartphone once, my laptop works longer on a charge.
In fairness, I've seen a lot of advertising for other companies recently using 11.11.11 as a key date; It's one of those those dates that's incredibly easy to remember, and that's what matters to marketing types. If you want to be mad at someone, it should be consumerist society.
For the most part, replacing glass, lcd panels or case parts isn't hard in most smart phones. There are many video walk-troughs on Youtube for almost any model. Parts are available on eBay and several web sites for nearly all smart phones and tablets.
I've fixed *many* broken smart phones for my wife, friends, and "the person at the office next door who heard I can do it."
If you have steady hands and can follow instructions, basic smart phone repair is pretty simple.
When iFixit says "might be hard to repair," they probably mean it.
I remember the original razrs- they were super slow. Slow with texting, slow with menus, slow with everything. Hopefully these new ones will not live up to that legacy.
Has the purchase even closed yet? From the press release:
The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2011 or early 2012.
It might be a little early for the Google purchase to have any impact on the phones. Hopefully someday, though.
Come on. Can't even one smartphone maker do a decent clamshell design? I've found the slide mechanism on slide-outs way too vulnerable to breakdowns, and the bar phones are even worse. When did the idea of a reliable case design that protects the important stuff go out of fashion?
On top of that, if you bought the phone yesterday, it was $111.11. Today? Its $300.
Well, you have to admit, 11.11.11 is a pretty awesome date. We won't see another like it in our lifetimes.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Why is it that most of the high-end smart phones come with these huge screens? For me the size of an Iphone is much better suited, and I might be willing to go a tad larger, but with the new Nexus at 4.6x", how am I supposed to put it anywhere?
12.12.12?
This probably would have been more informative yesterday when amazon was selling them for $111.11.
~Warning!~ The above is encrypted using rot676!
That's only 50% as good
11/11/1918 was Armistice Day, and it occurred at 11:00. "Eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" and all that. But I'm not sure why that makes this objectionable. It's celebrating the end of the war if it's celebrating anything, which--last I knew--was a good thing.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Well, it's kinda like it. Not quite as cool because 11.11.11 is all ones. I can't wait for 13.13.13.
In many countries Armistice Day is not a celebration of the end of the war but a sombre remembrance of the those who died fighting for their country,
I'm not excited about that one. Lousy Smarch weather.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Oh come on, let's be realistic here, the amount of lifeforce that Sony devices sucks is minimal. I use my PSP, three walkmen and a sony TV everyday just to keep my nails from growing.
You're blowing this way out of proportion.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I actually loved my RAZR - kept it as long as I had it. Never liked the ones from LG or Nokia. I'm glad that Mot is bringing it back, although I'm somewhat missing the flip phone aspect to it. I do hope it's capable of supporting the 64GB microSD card that was announced a while ago, and also, that it supports camera & video. Am glad they're making it 4G. So will this phone be Mot branded or Google?
My last RAZR lasted ~ 2 days w/o recharging. Since it was the first generation, the camera resolution was bad, and it had no microSD slots, but other than that, it was good.
Wondering this too. If I'm gonna spend this much, I want an Ice Cream Sandwich phone, not something made to run last year's software.
2012-12-12 is not binary-compliant.
That's a Motorolla Photon with a keyboard!
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Well, there's always 12.12.12 in about 13 months.
Remembrance(TM) of your departed loved ones, brought to you by Mc Donalds. Coca-Cola with the United Fruit, Inc. presents Peace(TM) and Happiness(TM). Have a nice(TM) day, in association with Nike.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Actually, since calendar dates are completely arbitrary, all we have to do to see another like it in our lifetimes is use a different calendar. Big deal.
Right, 'cuz we'll all be dead by 12.12.12
Yes, that's it exactly. Thank you.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Big fat hairy deal. Sorry, but other than the iconic Razr this phone looks pretty standard fare.
I actually like the original Razr. It was a super-flat fold phone with a sturdy metal body and a awesome keypad. And am quite sure it would still have a market if they'd continue to produce it. There are quite a few cellphone classics out there that probably would never die out and allways have customers. Motorolas Razr and the Siemens M35 being two of those.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Its not the same phone, just yet another android phone. Yet another marketing gimmick.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Speak for yourself, I plan to be alive on 12.12.12 :)
Well, you have to admit, 11.11.11 is a pretty awesome date. We won't see another like it in our lifetimes.
Too bad we didn't. It's actually 11-11-2011. We missed 11-11-11 by 2,000 years!
Looking at the teardown show us a ST Ericsson CPCAP 6556002, not a TI OMAP...
either is 2011-11-11
oddly enough, i've kept everything as long as i've had it. curious coincidence?
Not quite, he forgot the appropriate Hallmark(TM) card.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Are we all dying on December 11th, 2012?
12.12.12 isn't too far away
12/12/12?
=FAIL
I bought a droid X2 not too long ago and it's been a terrible experience. The phone is very sluggish despite having a dual core processor. Starting the camera takes so long that I often don't even try cause it's faster to ask my wife for her iphone and use it. It's also taken them a long time to push out Android updates and I have no idea if they'll ever push out ice cream sandwich for it. This last bit isn't motorola's fault, but the UI is terrible on android.
12.12.12
Oh, yeah, the world ends in 2012. My bad.
According to a hands-on review I read, running the new "RAZR" on an LTE network gives you about 2 and a half hours of battery life.
Enjoy.
I ultimately gave that RAZR away to my neice, who was in need of a phone.
Maybe not, but we get a shot at 12-12-12 next year ....
The only reason I have a current Motorola phone is because it's GSM 4-band (which one needs to use it in North America and the rest of the world), and because it has a clamshell design, which means the buttons don't get pressed by accident when it's in my pocket or a briefcase. Losing the latter, is crazy, as it was the only really good feature, and one which you can't get from otherwise decent phone manufacturers like Nokia. I won't buy a smartphone until they come out with one having a design which protects the display and the buttons when it's in my pocket along with keys, loose change, pocket knife, and whatever.
...the new RAZR is nothing like the V3[x]. I liked the V3. I still have two: the V3i and the V3r.
Now all I need is a firmware update so I can use a 3G SIM in them...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I submitted it a month ago:
http://slashdot.org/submission/1821524/razr-is-back-as-droid
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Do I need to carry a Torx driver and a Ginsu knife with me for when this phone freezes up and needs a battery pop to reset it?
The RAZR was a hot phone
Perhaps, but most Motorola phones suck little black toads. Unreliable, restrictive, and unimaginative are the three words which first come to mind. Not unimaginative in visual design — the RAZR was certainly groundbreaking that way — but in function. They may have a lot of patents, but as I have posted before, Google are on a hiding to nothing if they think they're going to benefit from them.
[...] the display on the DROID RAZR [...] still isn’t perfect
That's going to kill it: it's one of the first things people look at. If it looks grainy compared with other phones, it's a loser.
can’t even delete an icon off the home screen using one hand
If it's only usable by people with large hands, that's a bit restrictive. It also demonstrates that there was insufficient user testing done.
[...] the device instantly reacting to every touch event, swipe and drag
I find this hard to believe except on a brand new machine with no apps. All Android devices suffer from an exceptionally poor design philosophy, that what is going on under the hood is more important than the user's input. So once you have loaded up your apps and configured your connectivity (polling frequencies, downloads, etc), the responsivity of the interface takes a nosedive, with the system believing that its internal housekeeping must run at a higher priority than the interface. Wrong: a usable system (of any kind, not just smartphones) must absolutely respond instantaneously to user input before resuming whatever internal processes are active. No matter how fast the processor, if the OS is going to prioritise its background tasks higher than the interface, it's a loser. System designers don't understand this: they believe the user must always wait.
Is it a device worthy of being the new Motorola RAZR?
Possibly, but to me it looks like it was designed exclusively for the US, with its restrictive, antiquated cellphone companies, and its core of unfortunate and unenlightened users who have only just migrated off phones with pull-out aerials. In a country where vendors can get away with almost any old rubbish, including hopelessly outdated OS versions, ridiculous charging models (pay to receive, FFS?), and patchy coverage, it might just succeed.
It may be 7.1mm thin, but it is also 11.1mm thick. It depends on where you measure. And dimensions are usually given at the widest point - otherwise they are absolutely arbitrary.
So I would boycott it just for lying to the customer. And because I am perfectly happy with a budget android phone running CM7.1 (based on Android 2.3.7, not 2.3.5, ha!).
It's only 7.1 mm thin if you don't measure the thick part!
Bad title for this article. It should be "Motorola develops a thinner Android phone". The RAZR brand name is irrelevant today. I had a RAZR and it was nothing out of the ordinary. So I immediately thought: wow, Moty is throwing out a new budget phone, a rehack of a RAZR..
What I'm still not impressed with: this is still a tall/wide Android. Somebody needs to come out with a more compact one- that is also thin. That would impress me. Having a wide-tall bulky paddle-sized Android phone on my belt that gets caught on seatbelts is no longer 'cool'. It's dorky as shit, and so are all of the lame "ladies" pocket-book sized cases for these things.
Yes, we will. 12/12/12.
Except next year on Dec 12, 2012. (12.12.12). Then we will be done seeing these in out lifetimes. Unless Nano Tech allows us to live for centuries.
It makes you want to BGR a ROKR named RIZR with a SLVR RAZR. when hit him with a PEBL!
You might be a bit ANSI but ASCII and you shall receive!
is 12.12.12 within your lifetime?
What fucking morons marked this as insightful? First and foremost, Veterans Day is not Memorial Day. Secondly, I have never seen any one of those companies do anything to commercialize either Veterans Day or Memorial Day. That honor is usually taken by Japanese and European car companies.
This phone does not have a gyroscope!
All recent high end phones do have a gyro, which helps applications get better spatial coordinates.
I don't understand Motorola's decision on this one.
For me, that alone is a deal-breaker.
Why is this so objectionable? I don't get it.
Please kill yourself.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I hope it falls on a friday... Let me see if it will
Because once you put a protective case on it, it's the size of any regular-size smartphone.
You and your 20th century terminology!
12/12/12 12:12:12
I hope you last more than 1.2 year. ;)
It was in reply the question what's wrong with remembering this date by means of some company having similar date/time in their marketing.
The comment was meant as a general comment on commercial interests co-opting human culture/history in their marketing.
Through means of humor and being kind of dystopian or perhaps hyperbolic or something, I was trying to convey that I think such behavior is tacky. While all the above mentioned corporations probably are doing their best to co-opt some appreciated part of culture/history, I don't think any of them have been as blatant as claiming to sponsor/bring Peace.
The companies named were chosen for their status as big, well known brands that do a lot of marketing and that also have been known to engage in unethical practices here and there. Poster-boys for classic big bad corporations, so to speak. Should perhaps have thrown Shell in there too.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.