The Moto Razr ruled pockets in the pre-smartphone era

[beschizza]

Originally published at: The Moto Razr ruled pockets in the pre-smartphone era - Boing Boing

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[gracchus]

It was a solid phone, but the main appeal was that it made you feel like you were using a communicator from Star Trek.

[Grey_Devil]

The LG NV3 was my jam, probably my fave of the older type of cellphones

[Scientist]

The razr worked well. It fit easily in my pocket and folding put the buttons on the inside to prevent butt-dialing.

[adamrice]

From the article:

manufacturers all adopt the same universally popular features like biometric scanners and wireless charging

Think how science-fictional this phrase would have sounded when the RAZR was new.

Before the RAZR, Moto had the MicroTAC, circa 1992, which seemed impossibly small for the time. The first time I saw one, it was a real object of fascination. The RAZR was part of that lineage.

[johnson]

I recall going into my local Radio Shack with one of those (not the blinged out one). The RAZR was maybe a month old at that time. I forget what I was looking for but the guy behind the counter saw my phone and said “You’ll have a hard time getting a new battery for that thing!”

He gestured behind the counter where they had a large stock batteries for all sorts of other cell phones. Just no RAZR batteries. I guess he was trying to get me to buy a different phone? I just smiled at him, took my purchase and left.

A few months later I went back for something else. I looked behind the counter and they had Motorola RAZRs for sale AND… a wide variety of batteries for them.

edit to add: I did not have a RAZR, I had a StarTac. I am so old.

[Penforhire]

I remember it being nicely solid, not as flexy or plasticy (that’s a word, right?) as the flip-style StarTac I had before mine. It had some peak style, for sure.

[politeruin]

@beschizza

The Razr, then, becomes an avatar of technological hiraeth or saudade, directed at a time and place one grew into but whose time was passing.

Nice!

It ultimately didn’t matter that Motorola’s software was actually ass, known for being laggy and infuriating to navigate, or that many of the original Razr’s features — such as its lackluster 0.3-megapixel camera — lagged behind what other phones on the market could offer. It looked, and felt, incredibly premium.

Yeah, behind the fancy metal finish it was a piece of shit and i hated the keypad.

[Kilkrazy]

Clamshell phones were very popular in Japan around that time.

[hastur]

My phone company gave me one as a bonus for renewing. Frankly a bit of a lemon compared to the phone I had before (Nokia) and after (HTC).

[tcg550]

I went from an under seat mounted phone to a bag phone to the original StarTAC with the slim battery and extra large battery.

I was always on the cutting edge. Where’s the pager museum?

[MrShiv]

I lost my Razr in a pond.

[evadrepus]

I loved my RAZR and only reluctantly gave it up to join the smartphone world (Samsung S3, iirc).

I travelled around the world with it and it worked in every country I went to. My wife washed and dried it twice, turned right on. Ran over it once when I left it on top of my car. Got a small ding. It was my personal version of the Nokia 3310.

[Kevin_Bingham]

Fun form factor, but I found the software to be buggy. Was still a good for phone calls and texting, as long as you didn’t stray beyond that.