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Motorola Reinvents the RAZR

Posted by Soulskill on from the remember-when-clamshells-were-hip dept.

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.

24 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. One simple question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How many people actually try to fix their own phones? Even on /. I have to imagine that the number is low.

    1. Re:One simple question... by Calos · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I know a few people who have done LCD/glass swaps, that's really the biggest thing you can easily do. And it certainly beats buying a new phone...

      --
      I vote based on politicians' actions, unless contrary to my preconceptions. Often wrong, never uncertain. #iamthe99%
    2. Re:One simple question... by PPH · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Like putting in a new battery?

      Call me when they make it as simple as it is with my old school RAZR.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    3. Re:One simple question... by realityimpaired · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'd be more worried about heat generation than how to actually repair the thing. Sounds like it's very densely packed electronics, coupled with one of the fastest processors ever put into a phone. Even if the thing is 99% idle 99% of the time, that still runs the risk of the thing overheating at some point in its usable life.

    4. Re:One simple question... by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's not as thin as the summary (or article) would imply - there is a big-ass bulge at the top of the device that apparently holds the speakers and camera. I don't know how they get away with selling as 7.1mm thick. They also made the unit wider than other phones with the same size screen, presumably because they needed the space. I haven't used one, but unless you have large hands, one-handed operation is supposedly difficult because of the width.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    5. Re:One simple question... by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think the Samsung Galaxy phones are about as simple.

    6. Re:One simple question... by daw1234 · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's what she said....

  2. Repair a smartphone?? by John+Hasler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Repair a smartphone?? by camperdave · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm still using a 10+ year old Handspring Visor. Unfortunately, it's literally falling apart, and I'll need to find a new PDA. Some of these smartphones look interesting. The various stores around here want to sell me a cell package first, and from there I get to choose a phone, rather than letting me choose a phone, then choosing a cell package. Is that normal? It seems backwards to me.

      --
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    2. Re:Repair a smartphone?? by Anonymus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The RAZR was not even remotely a smart phone. In fact, if anything is deserving of the term dumb phone, it does. The original Razr was essentially one of the lowest quality cell phones you can imagine, with out-of-date technology and terrible software design, combined with a gargantuan marketing blitz (take a look at some movies and television shows, and even celebrity news articles, for the two years following its release).

      I actually owned one because, if nothing else, it was the nicest looking phone for the price. Using it was painful, though.

  3. Reinvented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seems a bit of an overstatement, how about slapped the Razr brand on a modern smartphone which isn't a clamshell.

  4. Re:HDMI? by LilWolf · · Score: 3, Informative

    Simply put, yes.

    My HTC Desire Z plays the 720p videos it records beautifully on a big TV. No reason why similar things can't be achieved with 1080p.

  5. Re:HDMI? by john.r.strohm · · Score: 4, Informative

    With "a 1.2GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video capture, 16GB of built-in storage and a 16GB microSD card pre-installed", off the top of my head I'd say "Dern tootin' it is powerful enough!"

    It hasn't been that many years since that would have been a supercomputer filling a large room, doing really nice ray-traced imagery. It is a fairly respectable desktop machine even today, except for the small disk drive. (And multi-gigabyte disk drives haven't been around THAT long.)

    A cluster of those puppies, with a big disk server attached, would probably be really nice for doing, uhhh, "stellar lifecycle modeling" on the cheap.

  6. Re:HDMI? by Nyall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes they are powerful enough.
    Second, some people want to use their tv as a slide show projector.
    Third, its an extra feature for those people out there who shop based on feature lists.
    Fourth it creates a need for people to buy a mini HDMI to full size converter. Even if its just to experiment with and never use again.

    --
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
  7. Is it too much to ask... by Millennium · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Is it too much to ask... by mustPushCart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When apple stopped doing it.

    2. Re:Is it too much to ask... by J.+T.+MacLeod · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Today's giant scree designs make clamshell a bit difficult. You could have the hinge on the other side, but that makes vertical operation awkward. You could keep the traditional clamshell orientation, but then it becomes a very long, weird device... unless you make the screen smaller, which just isn't what makes a desirable smartphone for the vast majority of people.

      They do make cases for people such as yourself, though: http://www.oriongadgets.com/Apple-iPhone-3GS-Leather-Flip-Type-Case-Crocodile-Pattern-Red-pid-5305.html

    3. Re:Is it too much to ask... by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's not fair. When RIM put out the Pearl Flip, that's when everyone realized it wasn't cool anymore.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    4. Re:Is it too much to ask... by Kaetemi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This.
      http://thecoolgadgets.com/fujitsu-dual-screen-mobile-phone-shown-at-ceatec-2010/
      I want.

      --
      Kaetemi
  8. Re:HDMI? by friedman101 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them

  9. Re:HDMI? by sdguero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't think you can really compare a 4th gen TI OMAP processoer with a built in GPU and ARM instruction set to an Intel PIII with MMX/SSE instruction sets.

    However, if we look at raw flops... The TI in a RAZR is capable of 4.8Gflops, a little less than 1/2 a P4 at 3.0Ghz and around 4x that of a 1Ghz PIII (don't have exact numbers on me, but the PIII was first processor to break 1Gflop barrier). And if you consider power requirements, heat signature, and cost per unit, the disparity is far greater. Back ins 2000, 1Gflop cost about $1000 in computing hardware. As we approach the year 2012, 1Gflop cost is nearing $1 of hardware (and huge savings in power usage). That is pretty amazing to me.

    So yeah. Comparing a TI OMAP processor to a PII is retarded. Good thing it was only an anonymous coward...

  10. Re:Went on sale Nov. 11th at 11:11? Really? by migla · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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  11. Re:HDMI? by g00ey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > It is a fairly respectable desktop machine even today

    I hope you do realize that you cannot compare it to a desktop computer just by looking at the specs. A desktop computer with the same performance as this phone would be pretty awful.

    As for the hard drives, the first multi-gigabyte hard drives came somewhere before the mid nineties but it took a few years before they reached the consumer market. I bought my first multi-gig hard drive 1997 and that particular model had been around for at least a year when I bought it. It wasn't cheap but it was fully existent.

  12. Re:HDMI? by gbjbaanb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And to follow that post ... ARM announces its next-gen GPU, the snappily named Mali-T658.

    The is the followup to the GPU that's used in the Galaxy S2, and is up to 10x the performance. The old chip supported 2 cores, this one supports 4, each core being twice the perf of the previous model, and as usual, can turn cores on or off depending on the power requirements.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15668347

    The firm claims the new technology will offer battery-powered mobile handsets roughly the same graphics performance as Sony's Playstation 3 console,

    but the bit I liked best: "At the moment many of the speech recognition applications that are out there are solely relying on the CPU," said Mr Davies. "Very few are taking advantage of the acceleration of the GPU - and that's clearly an area of growth for us."