Motorola RAZR V3x

Discontinued
15th July 2005

If you are a regular reader of Mobile Gazette then you have seen this phone before. The Motorola RAZR V3x appears to be nothing more than a renamed Motorola V1150 with a silver case instead of a black one.

If you're not familiar with the V1150/RAZR V3x, this is a 3G handset very much in the style of the original RAZR but much, much bigger. Originally announced in March 2005, this anticipated release date of late 2005 still means that this handset is some way off.

Motorola are being very vague about the specifications of the RAZR V3x, but they confirm that it has a 2.0 megapixel camera, 3G, video calling, multimedia streaming, microSD/Transflash memory (expandable to 512Mb), Bluetooth, 3D graphics acceleration, WAP browser, MP3 and video playback and voice recognition.

We believe that the main display is a 240x320 pixel unit in 252,000 colours and that the RAZR V3x weighs a little under 130 grams or so. There's most likely an email client and the other usual stuff too.

So, the Motorola RAZR V3x looks pretty good on paper, but the anticipated launch date of Q4 2005 means that it's going to hit the market a full year after the Sharp 902 which has similar features (but is a fair bit bigger) by which time the technical specifications will look pretty unimpressive.

OK - the RAZR V3x is a good looking phone, but so far the only pictures we have a pretty poor quality computer mockups. As with many other "announced" phones from Motorola, there appear to be no real models, prototypes or engineering samples in circulation as far as we can tell. We must say that the black handset looks better, and we guess that Motorola will release a black version of the RAZR V3x as they did with the RAZR.

Getting products to market is not the only problem that Motorola have - there are clearly enormous problems in marketing too. With this handset, the most obvious issue is the stupid name - "Motorola RAZR V3x", which makes it sound like a slight tweak to the "Motorola RAZR V3". Although it has a similar look and form factor, the V3x is a much heavier and more bulky handset (we understand that it is about 20mm thick compared to 13mm for the RAZR). The RAZR V3 is something of a design icon, but the RAZR V3x is just a pastiche and cannot be considered to be a replacement.

We've seen this muddle with names before - the SLVRlite and SLVRcam even manage to confuse Motorola. The old name (V1150) wasn't as "sexy" as the new one, but it was at least logical. Indeed, Motorola are taking what used to be a clearly defined range and are introducing a great deal of consumer confusion into the market.

And another thing.. the RAZR V3x seems to have the etched metal keypad that the RAZR V3 did. In our opinion, this is a pretty nasty keypad and it only makes sense if the handset is very thin. The RAZR V3x is actually quite bulky, so perhaps they could have designed something a little easier to use?

So.. if you don't mind a LONG wait for this handset, and don't mind that the specification is only pretty average for a late 2005 3G handset, and you are prepared to put up with the keypad then the RAZR V3x does look like a pretty stylish device.

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