Filed under: Cellphones

Sprint still hasn’t quite learned the fine art of not getting shown up by CDMA rival Verizon for prompt releases of the hottest phones, partially on account of Verizon’s tendency to lock up lucrative exclusivity agreements that last anywhere from a few months to life of the model (as is the case with the CDMA Chocolate). Fortunately, as foretold by our friends at Phone Scoop, Sprint’s K1m comes relatively hot on the heels of Verizon’s. Thanks to a different UI and color scheme, the Sprint variant barely resembles its stablemates and it’ll be interesting to see whether customers ultimately do a better job warming up to it. The Sprint K1m can belong to anyone willing to part with $200 and sign on the dotted line — or, as Sprint likes to say, $399.99 minus $200 in “instant savings.”

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones

We can almost hear the voices of skeptical readers whispering in unison, “fanboy Photoshop,” and we’d normally have half a mind to agree. After all, the bizarre gray exterior (just a reflection, perhaps?) seems incongruent with the rest of the phone, the contents of the external display are obviously faked, and the coloration of the Verizon logo doesn’t make a lot of sense — not to mention that the concept of a CDMA-based MOTORAZR MAXX is a bit… shall we say, new to us. Alas, it turns out the picture’s authenticity is rock solid (not to say it’s not a Photoshop job, but if it is, it’s an official one) seeing how we just downloaded it off Motorola’s official site for press multimedia. We know nothing about it besides what we’re seeing here, but truth be told, the picture alone is a lot to process: Verizon gets a strangely colored variant of a high-end RAZR we didn’t even know existed. It looks like a 2-megapixel cam is in the cards, and if the specs mirror its GSM cousin, we can expect a QVGA display, microSD expansion, and 50 odd megabytes of internal storage — not a bad piece to slot in right above the K1m, if we do say so ourselves. As soon as we catch wind of availability (or catch wind that Motorola is playing an extraordinarily unsportsmanlike practical joke on us), we’ll pass on the good word.

[Thanks, Pioneer]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: Cellphones

We figure peeps who’ve placed their orders through Verizon’s site for Motorola’s new gotta-have-it clamshell need a little reading material to pass the time while they wait for the good folks in the shipping industry to make their phones materialize — so without further ado, we present PC Magazine’s take on the Motorola K1m MOTOKRZR (pictured right). While the K1m is undoubtedly a fabulous-looking flip, PC Mag seems to share the same brooding, mildly pessimistic view we do: it’s essentially a V3m in a narrower, shinier package. On the plus side, the new dimensions apparently make the phone both easier and more comfortable to hold against the ear, battery life is top-notch with just over five hours of tested talk time, and the microSD slot means many owners will be able to carry over their investments in memory expansion from prior phones. Sadly, signal strength doesn’t quite match that of its older sibling, and the UI is typical Verizon fare — no Flash here, a la the VX8500 Chocolate — though it does share the Chocolate’s tricky-to-use touch sensitive controls. In the end, it seems the K1m ends up setting the standard once again for mobile industrial design, while simultaneously managing to fall further behind in the spec sheet race.

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Sprint-Nextel, Verizon Wireless, EV-DO, CDMA

Alright, Sprint users: who's pumped to land a SLVR of your own? Show of hands, please. How about you Verizon folks? The handful of you with your arms raised high right now, bursting at the seams with anticipation for Moto's rumored CDMA port of the L7, don't have much longer to wait. Buried in with the goodness that Motorola dropped on us Monday was the official news that the L7c is indeed a real device -- though beyond the fact that it rocks EV-DO, we aren't given much to go by. Exact dates, carriers, thickness -- you know, the important details -- all remain mysteries, though Sprint and/or Verizon will clearly be getting the device, and some duration of exclusivity seems to be a logical assumption. The SLVR's GSM variants haven't managed to rock many boats, but decently-equipped candybars are a slightly rarer breed on US CDMA networks, so we can imagine some level of excitement here. Motorola Q-style pandemonium, probably not, but excitement nonetheless.

[Via Mobile Guerilla]

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Verizon Wireless, CDMA

Somebody out there really loves us. An anonymous tipster just sent in a handful of pics of Motorola's impending followup to the RAZR -- formerly dubbed the Canary, and now known by the nearly-unpronounceable series of letters KRZR -- running on Verizon's CDMA network. Nothing here that we haven't seen before, but if you wanted a sneak preview of what this phone will look like in your hand as you watch all that wonderful V Cast swag, now you have a pretty good idea. Click on for a few more shots of the handset that Moto is hoping another 50 million people will decide they just gotta have...

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Verizon Wireless, Windows Mobile, EV-DO, Studies, CDMA, Misc

iSuppli's back doing what they do best -- ripping apart your favorite piece of hardware, adding up the component costs, and letting you know how much you're getting taken when you whip out the plastic. Today's victim is Motorola's text-tastic Q, and though the margins are pretty slim, it looks like Moto and Verizon are in the black on every unit they push. All told, iSupply totals the cost of the Q's guts to be $150; tack on another $8 for manufacturing and you're looking at $158 out the door. The most expensive component, not surprisingly, is the device's 320 x 240 display at $25, with memory and the XScale rounding out the top three. If you've invested in one of these bad boys lately you know that Verizon's charging $199 on a two-year contract, meaning that in the worst case, the two companies are splitting $41 -- and if you opt for a one-year at $349, well, they're just rolling in fat city.

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola

It’s hard for any phone to out-do the legendary StarTac, but Motorola’s posterchild — you know which one we’re talking about — has officially sold 50 million units. Since the Hong Kong debut way back in 2004, the RAZR has dominated the mobile scene, and with a figure like that, you have to give props to the ingenious engineering, er, marketing team behind it. The handset really hasn’t changed much over the years, and its lamentable success is due in large part to buyers’ infatuation with colors; the ability jump-start sales by varying the paint job gave Motorola a bonafide cash cow, enabling everyone and their mother (literally) to jump on the ultimate mobile bandwagon. And with the possibility of more colors on the horizon, the question beckons: when will the madness end? While the 50 million unit milestone is commendable, we’re not shy about spending our time looking towards the future.

[Via Mobiledia]

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Filed under: Software, Motorola

If you’re anxiously awaiting Motorola’s upcoming lineup, get ready for a little more Yahoo than you may have expected. The two have announced a love-fest that will ultimately result in Yahoo’s “Go” bundle of garden-variety tools and apps being “prominently featured” on some of Moto’s handsets starting in the first half of ‘07. You might recall Go making a cameo on Cingular’s Nokia 6682; from the press release, we’ve no reason to expect anything wildly different when it shows up on the Capris of the world. As long as we don’t find a dedicated “Y!” button etched into the keypad of our RAZR K1, we dig.

[Via Phone Scoop]

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Cingular, GSM, GPRS, EDGE

If you’ve had any lingering questions about Motorola’s RAZR successor, the KRZR — aka Canary, aka RAZR 2 — you might shuffle on over to the FCC’s site and have a look-see. All the good stuff on the GSM variant has gone live, with unfettered access to external and internal pics plus a draft user’s manual. The KRZR does get honest-to-goodness EDGE which’ll be a fun experience for original V3 owners making the switch — but as Pete pointed out, it’s basically a glossy, slimmed down RAZR, so don’t expect any juicy specs buried in the documents. If by chance you still find yourself mesmerized by all that blue, glossy goodness, look for the KRZR at your friendly local Cingular outlet come this fall.

[Thanks, Handset Freak]

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Filed under: Motorola, Misc

In what might be called a Destination Q with less Q and more David Beckham, Motorola has cut the ribbon on its first "Global Flagship Store" in downtown Shanghai this week. On second thought, it appears any comparison to Destination Q would be doing the new joint a disservice -- the first of four planned for mainland China, Moto's Shanghai outpost offers laser etching, custom phone tattoos, and onsite factory techs for when your MING starts misbehavin'. The store's design is being called "modular," offering the opportunity for smaller stores and kiosks worldwide based on the same concept. Hey guys, we'd be happy to offer you a mulligan on Destination Q if you want to take that flagship of yours and bring the battle with Nokia (fo' reals this time) to your hometown.

[Via Mobiledia]

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Others, Panasonic, NEC, Sharp, NTT DoCoMo, UMTS

NTT DoCoMo – in an apparent bid to not just out-do, but humiliate the rest of the world’s carriers – has dropped yet another six 3G flips on its home crowd.  The new handsets are part of NTT’s “7 Series” of fashion-oriented phones, and include entries from Mitsubishi, Panasonic, NEC, Motorola, and Sharp. Moto has actually contributed two models here, one in the V3x vein and the other apparently a let’s-see-how-long-we-can-milk-this port of the original V3. All six of the phones support the typical i-mode goodness, FOMA, video calling, and an array of functions that sound like science fiction to the non-Japanese among us.

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Filed under: Handsets, Peripherals

While mobile companies are doing their best to make cellphones as sleek and futuristic as possible, retro junkies keep taking them apart and turning them into ironic, yet functional, pieces of art like these. The first mod, from Grooveking.com, makes an old Motorolla DynaTAC 8000X or “Zack Morris phone” into a Bluetooth headset, that’ll get 8-times the juice of a normal battery. The second project, from DIYHappy.com, takes an old NES controller (which has already gotten the Bluetooth treatment in the past) and fills it with the guts of a Nokia 3200 - yes, the American Idol phone. You need a little technical know-how to make these for yourself, but after you get the hang of it, all of your gadgets might end up crammed into NES controllers. Sadly, the Nokia 3200 doesn’t have Bluetooth so you won’t be able to use these two devices together, but we look forward to the future when our Xbox 360 controllers and Treos are turned into seemlessly-integrated retro kitsch.

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For those Q fans in the audience, we've got some good news (especially if you haven't made the jump yet because that $200 price point is still a little high, or because you just can't bear the thought of switching to Verizon). Apparently Ron Garriques, Moto's Executive Vice President, Mobile Devices Business, told Bear Sterns that the Q's sales performance can be compared to the steep, successful initial launch of the RAZR, and that they not only hope to drop the price to $50 after carrier subsidy by the end of 2006, but they'll be launching a UMTS version when Verizon's exclusivity contract on the device ends (as we've been expecting). Yeah, that'd be the same UMTS version that it was supposed to be around from the get go. Still, we're assuming that exclusivity will last a good half year (quite literally a gadget lifetime to wait for us), after which time the UMTS Q will head to some mysterious, unknown network. Guess Ron wasn't too firm a believer in Moto's supposedly newly adopted announce-when-you-ship methodology, eh?

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Cingular, Verizon Wireless, Windows Mobile, GSM, EV-DO, UMTS, CDMA

For those Q fans in the audience, we've got some good news (especially if you haven't made the jump yet because that $200 price point is still a little high, or because you just can't bear the thought of switching to Verizon). Apparently Ron Garriques, Moto's Executive Vice President, Mobile Devices Business, told Bear Sterns that the Q's sales performance can be compared to the steep, successful initial launch of the RAZR, and that they not only hope to drop the price to $50 after carrier subsidy by the end of 2006, but they'll be launching a UMTS version when Verizon's exclusivity contract on the device ends (as we've been expecting). Yeah, that'd be the same UMTS version that it was supposed to be around from the get go. Still, we're assuming that exclusivity will last a good half year (quite literally a gadget lifetime to wait for us), after which time the UMTS Q will head to some mysterious, unknown network. Guess Ron wasn't too firm a believer in Moto's supposedly newly adopted announce-when-you-ship methodology, eh?

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Filed under: Handsets, Multimedia, Motorola, Verizon Wireless, EV-DO, CDMA

This release may not have us salivating uncontrollably like the Q did, but for what it’s worth, the V3m is a marginal upgrade to the outgoing V3c it replaces, giving you a MicroSD slot to rock the new inbuilt music player — and not much else. Step right up, folks; the V3m is available now for $149.99 with contract — but as we’ve learned, availability and price could vary nonsensically in your area.

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Filed under: Cellphones

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola