No need to defog your spectacles, what you just read there in the headline is the truth. Astoundingly enough, Motorola's nearly archaic (in cellphone years, anyway) RAZR V3 is
still the top-selling handset in the United States. Of course, it helps that it's highly subsidized on practically every carrier from coast to coast, but we're still a little stunned that it's selling this well nearly 2.5 years after Moto
moved its 50 millionth unit. The rest of the top five isn't nearly as shocking, with Apple's iPhone snagging the silver, RIM's BlackBerry Curve grabbing the bronze, LG's Chocolate at number four and the BlackBerry Pearl at five. With the original RAZR still selling so well, one would think Motorola could just tweak it slightly and issue a
second iteration for even more windfall profits. Er,
wait.
posted Oct 8th 2008 9:07PM
why am i not surprised.
probably the same reason im not surprised...
even if it is a mediocre phone, its shiny. the unwashed masses enjoy shine.
@Patrick: Hmm, that kind of says something about the iPhone...
"the unwashed masses enjoy shine"
What they enjoy even more is free. The RAZR, crappy as it is, is still the best of the free-with-new-contract phones.
lol these fone sell like hotcakes for the following reasons ...
1. very very cheap (price)
2. very very very very cheap (quality)
3. UNLOCKABLE
with that said.. many people break there fones .. cant seem to buy a nice new shiny one ... alternative.. RAZR T_T
lol i use to have one sadly T_T that bitch still laggs like a mother -______-"
Not surprised either, but just very curious why that's only happening in America?
I thought the Razr was a true piece of shit with its UI, but I do like its form so it'd be alot better if it only had 4 icons on the screen - Call/Contact, Text, time/alarm, calendar - thats all the Razr need, not even setting or wallpaper, and get rid of that stupid camera.
I thought it was just because they break every time you get a new one. Then you go get a new one.
GOTO 1
oh gawd. this phone is horrible in every way imaginable. except for it's shine.
... and the most lowest radiation level!
nikster, I got my blackberry pearl for free, but the razr is probably the most sturdy free phone though
You got the BB pearl for free? In this case, I wish to retract my comment.
Well, there is such a thing as prepaid, when you can get these crap Moto RAZR phones to teenie boppers for $69 with airtime included, you will sell volume...
Hopefully these young adults will wise up and choose Apple iPhone after being horribly scarred by Motorola's dated UI...
Considering that these "Young Adults" barely have enough money to pay for student loans / college I think it's wise of them to use a $0 "disposable" phone than $200 piece of luxury...
Worst comment for today.
My AT&T prepaid was only $20 for a Nokia 6102i. And it is a great phone. It is a phone! Thats it! it sends and receives calls! All I ever want or need in a phone is the ability to make calls.
Oh and $25 every three months for a few minutes is perfect for how much I talk.
I agree with Thi mam and Indian tech. To put it in simple words: iEye is an idiot.
I had a RAZR, thus, I got a new phone. I threw my RAZR against the wall and the screen came off. The bottom half still works and it can receive calls, I just can't hear people (not that important, right?). Good luck throwing your iPhone against a wall and seeing if that thing lives.
I hope iEye would shut up forever.
Or maybe donate it to someone who could obviously put it to better use. Besides, everyone knows that real men soak their old phones with gasoline and hit them with a road flare.
iDiot. What happened to the polar opposite iEye?
Most of my friends have pretty nice phones for teenie boppers ex. blackjack2, envy2, q9, p990i (sorry for the double post, I only read the bottom part of his comment.)
@ Seth
I have, and it works fine.
That's sorta surprising, but understandable to.
If only it had a better GUI
Kinda weird three of those phones I have owned before (my first phone was a razr then a pearl but now I use an iPhone) all in all great phones except the razr. That was a fragile useless piece of shit!
Wow, RAZR, BB Pearl, iPhone. You can tell a lot someone by their choice in phones.
Can you tell who I am? I had a Samsung A680, a Samsung M520 and now I have an LG Voyager.
:O
"That was a fragile useless piece of shit!"
Really, fragile? I know the RAZR wasn't the sturdiest piece of Moto kit, but that thing was tough as anything. It would certainly last longer than your iPhone. Moto products are damn near bulletproof, particularly their iDen (nextel) products. What made yours so fragile, anyway?
I've had my razr for at least a year and a half now... It hasn't broken once. It's time to update though, I just don't know what to buy next... there are way too many good choices.
My Razr V3i has been like a tank! I couldn't begin to count how many times I've dropped it on hard concrete, and it's still going strong. Fragile my butt!
Me too, it's mostly metal and feels very sturdy compared to most phones. The form factor is great, very this, still stylish, just very out of date technically.
Its prolly cuz its free and is on every single carrier/service
eh, it's a decent phone for people who arent really power users or care too much about being "hip"... my mom and my uncle both have them and love them, but they use their cellphones maybe twice a day and never send text messages, so take that as you will.
too bad they've never improved the hinge design... :(
Proud owner of a RAZR V3xx.
Still, no matter how much I praise this phone, the battery life still sucks.
Yah, all 3G phones have crappy battery life though.
I have a V3xx too, and i agree - it's stellar.. especially with Opera Mini. The built in browser isn't great.
@Asten:
Oh, I know about the horrid power consumption of 3G chipsets. It's a minor setback for me, though.
And yes, the built-in browser is ass and fail. Opera Mini FTW.
Not a surprise at all.
Marketing campaign = Hot chick, short black dress, flipping and spinning in the most sexually charged fight ever.
I still watch that commercial...
that's actually the RAZR2 ad. but that girl is still hot.
just like that short-haired girl in that black outfit in the first RAZR ad.
I like it very much!
Horny bastards...
Is that a bad thing? I guess so on a gadget blog, where the most action some people will have is with their hand. :(
umm well it is kinda obvious that the razr is still the highest selling phone in the US because ~95% of all tweens have their first cell phone be a razr because they are cheep and easily replaceable if broken in the washing machine.
The only reason it still "sells" is because it's practically given away now. The margin of profit is near nil. That's why the big M had such financial issues. Their philosophy was, "if we make a tweaked version of an existing phone, then people will think it is innovation". The only problem, other companies (RIM, Apple, HTC, etc.) innovated for realz and punted Moto's product line. The only way Moto can sell the RAZR2 at original RAZR quantities is to sell them at original RAZR prices. Since they can't justify that, the original RAZR will always outsell any XYZR Moto pushes out the doors.
Sometimes a phone just needs to be a phone.
Well said.
I had a ver 1 razr and it was a hot mess. I hear that subsequent versions corrected a lot of the issues. The one thing I did always like about it is that when opened it is easy to hold and when it wasn't dropping calls or cutting in and out I could hear very well. A few people in my family have them and they seem to have much better luck than I did. It's a nice form factor. It' fits in almost any pocket very well and it looks good.
A caterpillar just need to be a caterpillar. But then, it becomes... (suspense) a butterfly!
Hate these phones, my last one broke down so badly I had to macguyver up a popsicle-stick splint to the back of it just to keep it from snapping in half, not to mention the loss of the middle button and the cracked top screen. Not to mention the crappy UI has the performance of an asthmatic cross country runner.
I love stories..
You mean like Days of Our Lives or All My Children stories?
yeah..they are close to free, or free with most providers.
they really don't hold up too well, only phone worse is probably the motorolla W490, that thing is AWFUL.
The gui is horrible but the phone is cheap , women like it, (and mostly all i see that use it)
Never had any issues with mine
mine was bullet proof for 2 years, took all kinds of drops etc until the camera decided to stop working randomly. every time i launched the camera, it restarted the whole damn phone. too bad moto can't make lightning strike twice in the same place...all their phones since then have sucked major cack.
Who told you that anyone was having any issues with the phone. Everyone's just saying that it's shining piece of crap. As soon as you flip it open, you feel like closing the lid again. The UI is horrible and useless. But yeah, pressing that green circle button does call your friends.
God, it seems like just the other day when I bought the RAZR within days of release for some insane price, like $600 with contract and for months and months would have people stop me in out and about in bars and restaurants and ask me if it was the RAZR and if they could see it.
Use this phone for 5 minutes and you'll see that its UI was obviously developed by monkeys with kuru.
Can't understand why anyone would actually buy one, let alone make it a top-seller.
BTW, the RAZRs are practically indestructible, a friend of mine dropped his RAZR of my 10th story balcony and after it was retrieved by the staff the next morning and the battery put back in it, it still worked perfectly, albeit with a cracked outer screen. He used it for months until he bought a new phone.
The GUI problems can be somewhat bettered by custom firmwares. Most Motorola phones are easily moddable, which is why I like Motorola phones.
My mum has just replaced hers with a Samsung G600. She had it for 2.5 years. Personally I'm about to buy an iphone 3g unless i buy pay as you go from o2.
Not posted from an iphone but from my laptop in bed, naked at 3 O'Clock in the morning.
This me signing off.
Good night.
Goodnight ceiling cat.
so what's your point badger? The pearl is a fantastically durable phone that is great for testing and at a good deal (free with a new contract with tmobile) and the iPhone is simply stunning. It is the best OS I had ever used and that is coming from a die hard palm fan.
The razr was a gift from my parents and came with a new contract so I had no choice
Cel phones in america are just sad. When the hottest cel phone is 4
years old and still costs $120. In Japan, you watch a 4 year old TV
series and they still have phones 8 years ahead of ours. WTF.
$120?? Japan has cell phone 8 years ahead of us?? Unless your comments were sarcastic, please refrain from posting on similar stories.
That makes sense since it's on almost every carrier all around the world including the very affordable ones.
@Ignatius
A Korean?
Happy owner of a RAZR here. It was free after rebate, and... it's a cell phone.
http://www.modmymoto.com
to rogue genius-
im not sure, but my sister's razr broke after only a few months. Everybody who i know who has a razr and every tmobile rep i have ever talked to has had the same experience though. It is possible that you have a different more durable model, as moto made like 10 different variations of the razr.
The v3 is not that bad of a phone. It servers a purpose, and it does
that well... Everything else... meh...
No surprised! My V3 has been dropped countless of time, still working fine!
I remember when the RAZR was like the super hot ish that everyone wanted. And it was like 500 bucks when it came out and people were all "OH SNAPZ HOW DOES MOTO MAKE DAT SO THIN DAYUM" and of course ATT paid to have it exclusive first, freaking madness
Wow! cool.
This is just depressing......
idk what all this talk boutt iPhone being fragile. I mean if ur going to pay $400 or $200 for a phone then I'd hope you'd be careful with it. The razer was my 2nd phone . And I'm now a happy 1 year owner of an original 8gb 1g iPhone. If dropped it on the beach, on the concrete. It hasn't done a think excpt scratch the paint off the back one of the Best investment of my life. Try being safer.
Peace and love
Jerry lee
Looks like you typed that on your iPhone.
I don't understand the complaints about the RAZR's UI. It's the same as every other Motorola phone I've used, and easier than most phones.
Is it a Verizon thing? If so, blame VZW, not the RAZR.
I still think it looks cool and it still does the job.
People like classic cars -- old Corvettes, Mustangs, Muscle cars.
Yeah they're "out of date," but good design is good design.
This phone is brilliant in design and great quality.
It's basic, simple to use and reliable.
I own a RZR V3 as my back-up phone and an HTC Diamond as my 3G-everyday phone.
The RZR is by far superior to the Diamond when it comes to reliability.
Not being a WinMo smartphone is a plus.
I've had mine for 2.5 years, still my favorite all-time mobile phone. It does what I need it to, it's tiny, it's clamshell. It's survived god knows how many tumbles on concrete thanks to it's aluminium casing, and it's outlasted 3 (count them, THREE) versions of a co-worker's samsung which keeps dying.
OK, so the UI isn't Apple standard. The camera is crappy. But it's thin, light and durable. Only recently has it started having screen issues, and to be honest, I'd happily replace it with exactly the same model, brand new.
What do you need from your phone, but that it can make calls and be unobtrusively tiny?
same form factor, maybe a little bit wider. But when you open it up, you get 2 touch screens. Bam new moto razr.
hell ive still got a verizon razr and i love it, the menu lag isnt that bad as long you keep under 100 text messages stored on it.
its a great phone, when i drive i used to put it on my sun visor and it literally has flown out my open window while driving over 10 times and landed on the street, pop the battery back in and bam its good to go! (i dont keep it on my visor anymore lol)
i still use it every day for turn by turn gps for my delivery job
the v3 or v3xx or v8 or v9 is obviously not made for the gentle readers of engadget -- heck, moto phones in general aren't made for engadget readers. we all know the folks at this site have exquisite tastes only satisfied by the iphone 3g. voice calls are so yesterday.
We have several V3xx's and love 'em. They use standard USB cables and are good at being just a phone. They are durable enough and get the job done. Sometimes one just needs a phone, not anything fancy. For that task, the RAZR seems to fit the bill well and I do not look forward to the day when we can't get them anymore.