Motorola Razr
The Motorola RAZR V3 ("RAZR" pronounced "razor"), at 13.9-mm thick, is an unusually thin clamshell camera phone, released in November 2004.
The phone's thinness is its most distinctive feature, but not its only one. Its anodized aluminium design is another, as is the flat keypad, made with a nickel-plated copper-alloy with numbers and symbols chemically etched into an electro-luminescent strip. Its internal antenna is located at the base of the phone, beneath the microphone, which is intended to give the phone a more balanced feel when in use.
By July 2005 Motorola reported to analysts that the RAZR V3 was the most popular clamshell in Europe. There have been some complaints about lack of support for storage expansion and the phone's small amount of memory.
The phone is carried by Cingular and T-Mobile in the USA and by many companies in other countries. Motorola will also release a CDMA version of the RAZR in the fall of 2005, called the RAZR V3c. Upgrades to the GSM version include a 1.3 megapixel camera, 15-second video capture, more memory, and EVDO support.
Motorola has also announced the Motorola V1150, which was renamed as the RAZR V3x, a phone with two cameras and support for TransFlash. The phone is not the successor; Motorola has confirmed [1] that "RAZR V3x" is simply a new name for the existing V1150 and the phone will not be released in the US. Photos have also surfaced online of an unannounced "RAZR 2," with iTunes music software and several other new features. This was later confirmed as the Motorola RAZR V3i, the successor of the v3.
In Addition to the CDMA RAZR, a pink GSM RAZR will be released for T-Mobile USA in December, and an ice blue GSM RAZR will be released in January of 2006.
Technical specifications
The quadband GSM phone sports two color displays, a VGA camera, long-range Bluetooth, MPEG4 video clip playback and recording ( with firmware upgrade ), and Java 2 with 3D graphics. It also has a 22 kHz speaker for playing MP3 ringtones.
- Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
- Connectivity: Mini-USB, Bluetooth 1.1 (Class 1)
- Dimensions: 13.9 × 53 × 98mm (closed)
- Mass: 95 g
- Internal display resolution: 176 × 220 (57mm diag.)
- External display resolution: 96 × 80 (27mm diag.)
- Operating system: Custom Motorola with J2ME
- User accessible memory: 5.5MB (10.5MB with some features removed)
- Chipset: i250S1
Black version
A black version was produced for distribution in the 77th Academy Awards gift bags, and was released in early May 2005. As of September 2005, the black version is available in the USA only from Cingular. The black version is widely available on eBay in the United States. Before the black version was available through Cingular an active grey market existed, with European Black RAZR phones being sold in the US. Both the black and pink models are available from Rogers Wireless in Canada.
CDMA version
On December 7, 2005, a CDMA version of the RAZR, known as the RAZR V3c, will become available to Verizon Wireless users. This phone will share similar features to the GSM RAZR, despite online rumors that Verizon would lock most of the Bluetooth functions on the CDMA edition. ALLTEL Wireless released their own CDMA RAZR on November 21, 2005. The CDMA RAZR is all digital with EVDO, for extremly high speed data transfers. The Verizon Wireless version will support Verizon's VCAST service, which uses EVDO. VCAST lets users watch video content on their cell phones.