Slashdot Mirror
Motorola's Legendary RAZR Flip Phone Is Making a Comeback (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Engadget article: The year was 2004, and Motorola had just announced what was then an insanely thin flip phone, the RAZR V3. It was -- and still is -- a head-turner, and eventually over 130 million units were sold in total. Such were the glorious days of Motorola. Twelve years later, the now Lenovo-owned brand appears to be prepping a relaunch of this legendary model, according to its teaser video of a nostalgic walkthrough at a high school.The teaser is available on YouTube. Nice of Motorola to try doing something different from most of its rivals. However, a flip phone -- with a tiny display and those buttons (assumption) -- may not have much of practical case in 2016.
I just switched back to using an old Nokia dumb phone, I have an ipad mini with 4g when I want data on the go. It's kind of a nice combo really
>"There was a time when several generations of people lived with phones that had no screens at all. In fact, some of those people still walk among us,"
You must be REALLY young. Just without screens??
There are quite a few people walking around (and just fine too) who for many years had NO CELL PHONES AT ALL not just as children, but as adults. Yep. I had even graduated college before having one of those new-fangled, talk-only, screenless, pocket cell-phones.
Imagine a world where you really could be untrackable and unreachable. Where you had no constant beeping or messages. Where there were no distractions while you were thinking or reading or lounging. Where you could eat dinner out without annoying phones ringing and text tones, and people taking photos of you without your permission. Where you could have a conversation, in person, with someone... without being rudely interrupted several times yourself or by them looking at a stupid device. Where you could drive a car and reasonably expect that other drivers were paying attention to only the road. It existed.
In some ways it was bad. In others, it was quite good.
Having an open RF stack is illegal for a licensed transmitter. The FCC does not allow any changes at all to the conditions to which the device was approved. Small changes can be made via a class 2 permissive change, but allowing you, the user access to change the RF properties is very illegal.
And with good reason too. You would be surprised to know how much damage to a network just one fucked up phone can cause.