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.
Subscribe
to our newsletter for more news on
upcoming releases
|
Motorola
RAZR V3x Provisional Specifications
|
Available:
|
Q4
2005
|
Network:
|
UMTS
(3G) + GSM
|
Data:
|
UMTS
(3G) + GPRS
|
Screen:
|
240x320
pixels (estimated)
|
Camera:
|
2.0
megapixels
|
Size:
|
Medium-large
clamshell Size tba /
130 grams approx
|
Bluetooth:
|
Yes
|
Infra-red:
|
Not
specified
|
Polyphonic:
|
Yes
|
Java:
|
Yes
|
Battery
life:
|
Not
specified
|
|
|