Motorola RAZR (pronounced /ˈreɪzər/ "razor") is a series of clamshell mobile camera phones by Motorola. They were first developed in July 2003 and introduced in the fourth quarter of 2004. with sales starting the following year.
Because of its striking appearance and thin profile, it was initially marketed as an exclusive fashion phone, but within a year its price was lowered and it was wildly successful selling over 50 million units by July 2006, making it the most popular clamshell phone. Over the RAZR's four-year run, Motorola sold more than 110 million units, boosting its position to second place in the handheld market behind Nokia. PC World put the RAZR at #12 in The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years .
The RAZR series was marketed until July 2007, when the succeeding Motorola RAZR 2 series was released. Marketed as a more sleek and more stable design of the RAZR, the RAZR 2 included more features, improved telephone audio quality, and a touch sensitive external screen. The new models were the V8, the V9, and the V9m. However, Motorola relied too long upon the RAZR and its derivatives, being slow to develop new products in the growing market for feature-rich touchscreen and 3G phones, so the RAZR's appeal declined while offerings from rivals such as the LG Chocolate and iPhone captured consumer attention, and Motorola eventually dropped behind Samsung and LG in market share for mobile phones. Motorola's strategy of grabbing market share by selling tens of millions of RAZRs led to them slashing prices, cutting into margins which resulted in heavy losses in the cellular division.
GSM 2G models
V3
The team behind the RAZR V3 phone put together a number of design choices that set the device apart from the competition. The phone had the thinnest profile at the time on a clamshell set, sports an electroluminescent keypad made out of a single metal wafer and uses an industry standard mini USB port for data, battery charger and headphones, all in an aluminum body with an external glass screen. The original GPRS phone has been discontinued in several U.S. carriers, but was, at one time, carried by AT&T (formerly Cingular), who now sell refurbished models to postpaid customers as well as new models as GoPhones, Cincinnati Bell, T-Mobile, Unicel, Suncom Wireless and Centennial Wireless in the USA, Rogers Wireless and Fido in Canada, Telcel in Mexico, Optus and Telstra in Australia, Vodafone in New Zealand and Australia, Brasil Telecom GSM, Claro, Airtel, BPLmobile & Hutch in India Oi and TIM in Brazil and by many companies in other countries.
Complaints were made about dust accumulating between the V3's plastic screen and LCD glass, possibly through an external side button. Access to the dust requires peeling off the plastic cover, usually followed by a replacement cover.
Matte 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 was available in the USA from AT&T, Suncom Wireless and Cellular One from Dobson Cellular Systems, Canada only from Fido Solutions or Rogers Wireless and in many other countries from Movistar and Claro (Telcel).
The black V3 is widely available in the European Union and is the standard version of the phone in Brazil.
Hot Pink versions
The first pink version was released in October 2005, and as of June 2006, is available in the USA from T-Mobile (as RAZR V3 Magenta, after the T-Mobile—and its parent, Deutsche Telekom's—corporate color, but called RAZR V3 Pink in other countries, including other T-Mobile networks), Verizon and Cingular Wireless and Suncom Wireless (each in a different shade, currently exclusive to the US). It is available in Canada from Bell, Rogers Wireless and Telus, and in the United Kingdom from T-Mobile and the Carphone Warehouse. $25 of sales from the Rogers pink V3 go to Rethink Breast Cancer. It is also available in all Movistar-serviced countries and Claro (Telcel).
Miami Ink Collection
As of 30 October 2006 through T-Mobile in the United States, Motorola offered a version with laser-etched tattoo-inspired designs created by Ami James of the TLC reality television show, Miami Ink. The phones are aesthetically different however they are standard V3r's, but commonly referred to as V3i's because of the inked tattoo on the phone.
V3i
The successor to the RAZR is the RAZR V3i. It addresses some of the faults of the original RAZR V3 including a better (1.23 megapixel) camera with 8x digital zoom, an improved external and internal display also support for microSD cards of up to one GB. V3i is functionally very close to Motorola V635 model. The V3i comes in two versions: one with iTunes and one with Motorola's Digital Audio Player (DAP). The iTunes version of the phone has a 50 or 100 song limit restriction ("cap") depending on where the phone model was made. The Motorola DAP does not suffer from this cap; however, it takes considerably longer time to load and uses the V3's battery at a much faster rate than iTunes does. The phone's looks have also been subtly changed. It was announced on 8 December 2005 that Motorola had teamed up with Dolce & Gabbana to produce a Special Edition Gold RAZR V3t. Only 1,000 of these have been made and sold for a premium price.
On 1 June 2006, Motorola and Dolce & Gabbana once again released their limited edition gold phone. This model includes a D&G cell phone holder, a signature leather pouch, Bluetooth headphone, and FM earphones. It is available from all major Motorola retailers and select D&G boutiques.
The V3i is available in the following colors:
- Silver Quartz (main color)
- Gunmetal Grey
- Gold Plate (special edition DG version only, see above)
- Dark Blue
- Maroon
- Violet
- Orchid
- Black for (PRODUCT) RED (special edition to tie in with the (PRODUCT) RED initiative)
- Platinum
- Red
- Chrome Green
- Chrome Purple
- Celery (some companies call it Lime Green instead)
The Motorola RAZR V3i was released to most worldwide markets in the Q4 of 2005–2006. In the U.S. the phone was released through Cingular Wireless on 6 September 2006, with a new activation price of $299, but is available with AT&T Wireless as well as Suncom Wireless.
V3r/V3t
The V3r and V3t are models sold by T-Mobile, AT&T (formerly Cingular), and Canadian cellular services such as Rogers Wireless. These models are virtually identical to the V3 and V3i, except they use Motorola's Digital Audio Player instead of iTunes for music playback. T-Mobile's V3r offers a Voice Notes feature which permits forwarding your audio recordings to voicemail as the only storage method. However, a publicly available seem edit permits users to enable the hidden Voice Records feature. Voice Records allows you to save voice recordings locally to phone memory. Currently, Voice Records is limited to less than two minutes of audio recording and stores the resulting records as .avr format files on the a partition within phone memory. In contrast, currently available seem edits can expand the maximum size of video recordings.
T-Mobile V3t phone memory is 10.0MB total, including all system files. This space is divided unevenly into a and c partitions. Memory on partition a is larger than 2MB and contains system files, including some of the branding images for the phone carrier. Partition a also contains the avr structure for the hidden Voice Records feature. Partition c is larger than 5.5MB and stores user data, including images, sounds, videos, text notes, calendar entries, phone book entries, Java applets and web cache. V3r and V3t phones sold by T-Mobile come equipped with Java-based software that supports T-Mobile's "MyFaves" rate plan. Publicly available third party tools can remove this Java software and other system or locked files to free memory for other uses.
Canada's Rogers Wireless also carries them for a reduced price compared to the original Razrs.
V3im
The V3im is the iTunes version of the RAZR V3i available in the UK market with a 100 song cap.
MS500
Another version of this phone was released in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) on 1 June 2005. This version has the similar physical appearance as the original V3 but instead of GSM, it is a CDMA phone for SK Telecom. It is the first CDMA version of the RAZR without the expandable memory, Bluetooth and SIM card, since Motorola Korea's system was able to produce its own model before worldwide GSM format release. It has a 1.3 megapixel camera, video recording, 80MB of internal memory and a variety of UI features, such as mobile blog, Yoga graphic book, Diet diary and lottery number generator for Wellness theme. It also comes in colors other than those mentioned above. Black, pink, and lime models are seen around Korea. In 8 February 2006 Motorola Korea released its own slide-phone model for the RAZR named Z model name MS600. Unlike most other versions, the MS500 version is packaged with a charging dock and has three metal terminals on the back side immediately under the battery cover.
Also, as the add-on to the MS600,
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