Ah, the flip-phone champion. But whatever happened to the Razr V1 and V2?
No idea. Perhaps they lurk to this day in a dusty, long-abandoned Motorola lab, waiting to take off a future archaeologist’s fingers. Or maybe they were just the ones that didn’t make it – including a reported super-skinny prototype that had the benefit of being as thin as four credit cards… and the snag of conking out after 20 minutes. But the V3 lasted for hours – especially if you spent ages gushing over the lovely design before you got around to actually using it.
Well, it was – if you’ll pardon the pun – flippin’ gorgeous. Everyone wanted one.
We won’t pardon the pun. But yes, the Razr was the epitome of cool and captured the imagination with its skinny aluminium frame. Although it started off as a high-end phone with a price to match, it later became affordable, and Motorola shifted 130 million of the things. Not bad for a phone that, in all honesty, didn’t have standout tech, and even offered a slight chance of zapping the user if the electroluminescent keypad’s insulation failed. And even if it didn’t, the Razr would buzz when the keypad backlight was on.
We used to call such things ‘character’. So why aren’t we all using Razrs today?
Mostly because fashion is fickle. The Razr wasn’t the first of its kind – it just had the most style. But Motorola got stuck, iterating around the same thing. So when the iPhone rocked up, the Razr looked like a relic. No one screaming “Try folding your iPhone in half and see how well it fares!” changed any minds, and really it was all downhill from there. Still, the name and concept live on in suitably skinny, fashion-conscious folding Android phones. And their batteries last a lot longer than 20 minutes.