Neither carrier has launched it
just yet, but yes -- the RAZR 2 V9m has now officially found a home on both
Sprint and
Verizon, with both promising availability in the next few weeks. To split hairs, Sprint will be beating its sworn enemy by a few days, launching its variant on August 22, while Verizon's just promising "September" at this point. Unless AT&T manages to
pull a rabbit out of its hat, it looks like the two will be the first in the US to launch what Motorola hopes will be the centerpiece of a turnaround for its flagging handset business. Thanks to EV-DO, attractive styling (yes, we realize we'll be
really tired of it in a couple years, but it's still hot for now), and a gargantuan external display with touch controls, the phone is being positioned on the higher end of both carriers' dumbphone offerings -- and the price reflects it. Look for it for $300 with a $50 rebate on Verizon, $250 on Sprint, both on a two-year agreement.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Update: Looks like AT&T didn't want to get left out of this little party after all! The carrier joins Sprint and Verizon in announcing its version of the RAZR 2 today, the HSDPA-powered V9. Look for it in "early September" for $300 on contract. Check the release
here.
Read - Sprint press release
Read - Verizon press release
posted Aug 10th 2007 3:45PM
Sweet. I'm a sprint fan and will be getting one of these! It has most of the features my current phone doesn't and since I don't need a smarty-pants phone, this is for me. Huzzah!
I picked up an orange enV today. I have no interest in the RAZR V9m at all. At least it looks like we'll finally be getting a Moto phone with the refreshed Verizon themes. Hopefully they won't be laggy as hell like the themes on the rest of Moto's Verizon phones are (RAZR, KRZR, SLVR). That's why I had to go LG, the menus are optimized for them so there's no lag at all.
I hope the Sprint one also has the metal radiused finish on the front. But its too expensive for a dumbphone, for me anyway. I'd rather get an m610 or whatever Sprint-Sammy replaces it with.
here is a list of all the other leaked release dates for vzw....dont know why engadget hasnt posted this yet...
http://www.bsams.net/front-page/2007/8/6/verizon-phone-launch-roadmap-leaked.html
they have posted that
$300....after rebate for the Verizon Model. Ouch. I was expecting $200 for the RAZR2 and the RAZR MAXX to be discounted down to around $150. I'm curious how well this phone will sell.
1. Does not support any of Motorola Bluetooth headset and headphones that I own. Even my new Moto stereo headphones that came out before the RAZR 2 even came out, don't even work.
2. Daily White-Screen freeze errors.
3. Text input in third-party app's in annoying. the "1" key cycles though characters that you will never use just to get to a period aor @ sign. the "0" key is used to cycle though the rest and again goes though characters that you will rarely use just to get one you will use a lot.
4. The touch-screen is way too sensitive. If you don't have a key-lock set, you will find that the TV app will load in your pocket and turn to a channel. Or it will just load the app and waste the already pathetic battery life. Even if the key-lock is on, the vibrate feature will go off so many times that when you goto use the phone, you will end up having 1 bar, maybe 2.
5. Horrible battery life. Unlike the A900, Katana, and pretty much all other slim-phones, the RAZR 2 gets really hot when using it. Heat means wasted energy, thus making the battery life the worst I have ever seen. If you are using bluetooth, and/or the TV app, or in an area with a weak signal, battery life can be as low as 40 minutes.
6. The UI is SLOW! I mean as slow as slow can get. This comes to it's full power of annoyance when you end up loading an application that you didn't mean to, and closing it down takes 5 to 10 seconds to close down. This will happen a lot, because the buttons are so close together, that you will end up loading the music or TV app without even trying. Scrolling through you content is horrible. Images take what seems like months to switch to the next.
7. No real media player. You can not fast forward or rewind video clips. So those days of watching movies and shows on your phone are over. Unless you want to sit and watch it from the beginning.
8. You can not hear the volume when setting the level for the ringer, alarm, ect. This most basic of features shows how low Moto has come when making phones.
9. The lower set of speaks has a groove where overtime it will cut into your fingers when holding the phone to watch TV.
10. The inner display has the typical data and time features, but with the RAZR 2 you can not get rid of the date. So if you have a cool screen saver, you will see "00/00/000 Day" on the screen. So if you have a cool pic of a Cele you are into, their face will be blocked.
11. The web browser is HTML, but it renders the site into pages. So a normal sized site will be cut into many pages. Some sites are cut into 10+ pages. Unlike Opera mini which can render the entire page in one window. You will be scrolling page to page just to see the content you like.
12. Since the browser is HTML, WAP sites can't be loaded very well if at all. So if you want to download a Java app through a WAP site, you might not be able to at all.
13. Third party apps can easily cause the phone to lock-up. Basic app's that load on even the most simple phone will cause the phone to lock in a white screen and you will have to pull the battery to get out.
14. Alarm doesn't always go off. This has happen to me a lot.
15. When you use the speaker-phone or use the speakers with Telenav, the sound quality is horrible. On the other end my friends make me repeat what I am saying. The speaker-phone has been known in the past to be one of the best features found in Moto phones; this is not the case with the V9m.
16. Buttons on the side are tiny. With a plastic snap-on case they are very difficult to press.
17. The phone doesn't even have a headphone port. So you can not use it as a portable music player without playing the content through the speakers, or a Bluetooth headset, which most likely will not work.
18. You can not set images from your memory card to display as wallpaper.
19. Music playback is dependent on using Sprint's Music Player, which crashes a lot.
20. The Music Player no longer works, so I can't even use the phone as an MP3 player.