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'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.
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
My mom wants a cell phone that has decent battery life, makes and receives phone calls, is thin and nothing else. She loved her old Razr. Take a guess what she'll want when she sees this?
My Palm Pre was perfect, but I cannot buy a decent phone like it any more.
Why do manufacturers refuse to make capable "small" ( i.e. non-phablet, 4" or smaller screen ) phones ?
The Sony Z3 Compact is almost the only player in this area, I do not understand why.
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, although they may move more slowly than they once did.
There are some people who prefer to use a phone just for talking (and, strange though it may seem, listening). Sure, they skew older, but you're kind of dumb to overlook the segment completely.
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.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
My old black Razr V3 still works fine but the main reason I don't use it anymore is the crappy, weird headset connection. Give me a new model with a 3.5mm headset jack, sell it to me unbranded & unlocked & I'll take it.
I still use my original RAZR flip phone. So original in fact that it was pre-GPS chip (and yes, they do exist). It amuses me when I pull it out and use it and other people see it. And then I point out al the advantages:
1. Its smaller and lighter than smart phones
2. I don't have to charge it every day
3. I can (and do) drop it onto hard surfaces with the only worry being trying to find where the #@$%# battery cover bounced off to
And sure I could have a computer in my pocket, by why do I need one when I have 5 computers in arms reach and sit in front of one most of the working day? I also have a dedicated GPS in my car.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
I have a laptop, a camera, and a GPS, all of which are better stat wise than any smart phone. When I leave the house you can get a hold of me still, but I'm not distracted by my addiction to trolling Facebook political pages. Having the internet at every waking moment is often more of an inconvenience than it's worth, and if I REALLY have to look something up it can usually wait until I get home. The only thing I don't like about it is that everyone just assumes I'm poor, but with a hipster marketing campaign like this I can keep my flipphone and not be a social outcast, I call that a big win for Motorola, it's a smart move.
I wouldn't be disappointed yet. Considering Lenovo has produced nothing but a teaser I would have to say [citation needed] before declaring this to be a flip android smartphone.
New part of the hipster uniform --
Muslim-style beard
Thick, black glasses
Flip Phone
You forgot:
skinny jeans (black, of course)
plaid shirt (the kind your grandad owned)
vinyl LP (carried ostentatiously under the arm)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
One big advantage of a flip-phone is built-in screen protection for when you have it in your pocket with other objects potentially.
I never used a flip-phone back in the day, because the audio quality was lower than candy bar handsets (because of the thinner speaker diaphragms needed to fit the thin earpiece area) and lower battery life (because the body didn't have to fold in half, a candy-bar could have a much longer battery cell on the back).
I'm with you. Still use my V750 that has MIL SPEC dust proofing. Charge it approx once a week unless I use it a fair amount. Have a protective case with a clip and drops are almost a non issue. I will be sad when I have to replace this. Hopefully the phone manufacturers AND carriers wise up that there are those of us out there who use their phones as a phone, strange as that may sound, and don't need a battery and data sucking appliance.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Someone just needs to make a $25 gutless version of this that connects via bluetooth to the iPhone in the hipsters' pocket.
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.
It works for Agent Gibbs just fine.
Open RF Stack ! = Changes to the conditions to which the device was approved.
Open means that you can see the source.
Changes means modifying the binary installed in the device after approval.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
What's important to me is that the hardware is small enough to not be distracting in a pocket, and that it's not vulnerable to the dings and dust of outdoor work. Hence I use a $12 flip phone. It has decent battery life and does the job, and if it does get busted it's cheap to replace.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?