One more RAZR-beating post before the weekend: Engadget Mobile has pictures of what’s rumored to be the RAZR 2, or “Canary”. It’s still thin, looks a bit narrower, has a glossy finish, and a giant bulbous bottom. Yay.
The best bit, though: they say “it uses the same software build as the RAZR V3x” — so more of that lovely Moto UI you’ve come to know and love. What else can you expect from Moto’s “flagship” handset when it hits the market late this year or early next? Groundbreaking features like Bluetooth and maybe a 2-megapixel camera (both of which are already in the V3x). Oh Motorola, what will you do next?
[tags]mobile, motorola, razr[/tags]
I got a Moto V300 in November 2003. Until a couple weeks ago, my main axe was a V635. In that time, the following innovations made their way into the system:
* Slightly more colors on the screen
* Slightly higher resolution
* Color outside screen (actually I could have done without this)
* EDGE (of marginal utility with WAP)
* Bluetooth (actually available at the time on the V600)
Um…I think that’s about it. And that’s over the course of two years.
Moto actually hasn’t fixed two problems since the T720 days: the combined phone/SIM address book, and the side-button-bleeps that make it almost impossible to keep a phone in your pocket without changing the ring settings.
You could knock Nokia for a similar lack of innovation, except that Series 40 was engineered not to suck. The main things for which I fault Nokia are their proeposterously slow uptake of Bluetooth and the failure to get above 128×128 on a display for far too long.
Moto seems determined to ride the RAZR horse until it breaks a leg, but I don’t know if that gimmick has more than a year left in it - and by that point, they’ll be behind Nokia *and* SE on features and interface.
I think they’re already well behind Nokia and SE in both respects. The thing is, in many regards, the RAZR is Motorola’s high-end consumer phone when it’s features don’t even match up to mid-range efforts from the other companies.