The All American fascination with Motorola's RAZR
For quite some time, I have been kicking the lowly Motorola RAZR handset (and all it’s variations). I thought I should be clear.
I don’t HATE the RAZR per se. And while, yes, you are right to fret about bringing out your RAZR in front of me should we meet, I want to be clear that I most certainly admire Motorola’s performance, particular here in America, where almost every second person I see is carrying some kind of RAZR.
The device itself is ancient, the operating system decrepit, the capabilities highly limited to calling people, texting and making it really difficult to do anything else. Mobile developer for a RAZR? Stop reading now. You should be busy trying to figure out how to make your applications look half way decent.
There’s a girl here in Starbucks annoying the hell out of me my talking really loudly and breathlessly.
NO WAYYYYY
NO.
NO?
SERIOUS? NO … ***WAYYYYY***
:: giggle ::
AND HE SAID WaaaaaaaaaaTTTTTT?
NO. NOOOO WAYYY! OHMIGOSH OHMIGOSH!
Geez. Please lady. Save me. You can see a bit of her in the corner of that picture I snapped courtesy of my Apple Air iSight.
She is, I suspect, an All American Girl. She gives off an air of confidence and relaxed non-empathy. A bit George Bushish. If she had any empathy whatsoever she wouldn’t have unilaterally made the world hate her.
Anyway. My issue with her is that she’s speaking away on a RAZR. It’s been held tightly to her giggling head for the past 10 minutes. Not even my noise-cancelling sennheisers can keep her out of my ears. That and the screaming baby next to me aren’t helping my work, although, at least the baby isn’t using a RAZR.
It is at times like these during my mobile observations that I have to sit down, relax and admit publicly that Motorola really did get it right. I often kick them for their complete lack of innovation (the recent lot don’t look that bad) but they most certainly got the concept right with the RAZR.
Which is why so many people are carrying them. They are brilliant handsets. Brilliant. Ultra slim, reasonably good battery (let’s face it, all they’re doing is transmitting audio and the odd text message, there ain’t no GPS in this baby). Obviously the RAZRs are now entirely cheap — so when you’re considering your mobile contract, there’s a strong incentive to opt for, or renew your contract with a Motorola RAZR of some flavour. Entirely annoying for me — I want to see market innovation — but when the best possible choice these consumers are making is for the RAZR, what the hell happened to the marketplace?
It’s going to take years for this to filter out of the American market. Back in the UK and Europe we got over the ‘my god, it’s so SLIM!” thing a while ago. If you want slim, you can have it in many different shades — there are even some brilliant N-Series slim Nokias. But these Nokias actually *do* more than just call, or text.
So whilst I am getting reaaaally annoyed at the All American sat opposite me screaming and giggling away, polluting the whole coffee shop with her ‘like, yeah, like, ohmigosh’ audio, I thought it was time I accepted the RAZR for what it is.
Good job.
It’s now time for me to turn my Seenheiser up to 11.
