The RAZR Reborn as a Smartphone
As far as dumbphones went, the Motorola RAZR was the ultimate device. Its industrial design was unprecedented: it had dual colour screens, a camera, bluetooth, and EDGE data for web browsing—all in an unbelievably thin package. It was so thin, in fact, that Moto had to design the keypad out of a single sheet of thin metal, instead of using normal buttons. I used my Gunmetal Grey V3i model for over 4 years—a long time in cellphone years—and I never grew tired of it. In fact, if smartphones never caught on, it would have remained a great phone even at the end.
The RAZR brand, to me, represents a phone whose industrial design, build quality, and features are so fantastic, the device will last you a long, long time. It’s for these reasons that I was apprehensive at the news of the revival of the RAZR brand. Verizon and Moto have announced the imminent unveiling of the Droid RAZR, and they’ve set up a teaser site with a countdown and video. The countdown points to a few hours before the Google-Samsung event.
Despite its secretive nature, someone has managed to grab an unpublished image off of the teaser site:
The teaser image looks nice, but in this brave new world of smartphones, specs are everything. I can only hope—for the sake of the RAZR name—that Verizon and Motorola thought out this phone through-and-through. We’ll find out within the next 24 hours.
On a related note, I’ve recently learned that the Google-Samsung event (scheduled for 10pm EDT) is being livecast on http://www.youtube.com/android; no need to read liveblogs (although I still will!). Samsung Canada has apparently told Canadian fans to pay attention to tomorrows news, as they’ll be bringing the “coolest Samsung phone” to Canada within weeks. Translation: Nexus Prime will be released in Canada at launch!