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Motorola's Legendary RAZR Flip Phone Is Making a Comeback (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the flip-phones-are-back dept.

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.

5 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Might make a splash with those who've had enough. by jddj · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm tired of being distracted every minute of the day, and tracked endlessly by everyone.

    I'd think about one. And take the battery out when I don't want to be tracked at all.

  2. Re: Might make a splash with those who've had enou by sims+2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have a samsung convoy 3 and an ipad 2. I need my phone to work as a phone more than anything else.

    Verizon is planning on retiring their 2g and 3g networks in 2020-2021 yet its 2016 now and afaik they do not have a single dumb cellphone that works on their 4G network.

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  3. I'd rather see ... by LuxuryYacht · · Score: 3, Interesting

    a slider phone with:

    Touchscreen, bigger than the n900
    Full QWERTY
    Unlocked bootloader
    u-boot
    Large removable battery
    With all the usual sensors and IO
    As open a firmware stack as possible for the RF.
    FPGA for encryption/decryption

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  4. Re:I'll give you a use case by Etcetera · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Strictly speaking, simply running Android doesn't mean it *has* to be the smartphone we all know and hate.

    Japan, for various reasons, caught on relatively late to the smartphone craze and has had a number of flip style phones that you'd swear are BREW, and look pretty close to the late-model LG feature phones (Voyager, etc) circa 2010, but actually use an Android OS -- simply without all the Google stuff actively on top of it.

    One example: http://www.kyoex.com/sharp-504sh-aquos-keitai-android-5-1-flip-phone-unlocked/

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  5. Re:Old people by hey! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, yes, because battery life trumps everything for us.

    What I'd really like is a flip phone with a replaceable battery that can also serve as a mobile access point.

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