It's got RAZR2-like music controls, mini USB headphones (no 3.5mm jack), and the same round PEBL design. PhoneScoop is guessing that the "9" in U9 will mean this is going to have 3G, like other 9-series phones from Motorola, but it's still unconfirmed. [Phonescoop]

then they should heed these words from industrial designer and sci-fi gadget imagineer Branko Lukic, from his upcoming book nonobject:

Each natural "product" is a unique specimen; nothing else compares to one, after another, after another. Imagine if the manufacture of consumer electronics afforded such diversity! Imagine if consumers had the pick of an endless array of devices, each one its own distinct shape, size and color while keeping the internal components the same... The state of things now: sameness sits on assembly lines; sameness lives on shelves; sameness is in hands of consumers. Need it be this way - where color is the only distinguishing feature? Why not tackle design in more interesting ways? Rather than considering a product as one of many, diversify the multiple existing molds and consider product a little more freely. Need each be a clone of the other? Why not envision production methodology anew, as a result of more organic processes? Just imagine: a near future where we still make a single product in large volumes, but we do so more randomly, intuitively, eclectically. This way, with advanced manufacturing techniques, consumers are offered more choice within a single product category.

nonobject Design Fiction No 3: Pebble [Book Preview]

From the slide, it looks like the RAZR PDA is going to be a bit thicker than a regular RAZR, which also makes sense. There's another interesting slide of a "Glowing PEBL", which is a mass-market version of the original PEBL, but isn't quite as round or as pebble-y. – Jason Chen

Gallery [Gadgetim via Crunchgear]

For this week's column, I'm gonna ask y'all to jump in my Frink-worthy time machine and journey back to a bygone era: the halcyon days of late 2004. Ah, what a glorious time it was to be alive—the winds of change were blowing through the Ukraine, Ken Jennings' reign of terror on Jeopardy! came to an end, and Ireland had yet to fully adopt the metric system. But above all, the Motorola Razr V3 went on sale, for the whopping sum of $500 (after rebate!). Beyond my cheapo means, no doubt, but at least it was a Great Leap Forward for handset technology, right?

So how did the $500 Razr, the must-have for slinky models and the fat cats who love them just two years back, become today's $29.99 Razr, the default phone for pretty much everyone? Or, more succinctly, how did the Razr get so low-end, so fast? Though the economies of scale and the high-end trend toward data phones played their roles, I'd argue that the Razr was always the proverbial perfumed pig. And therein lies an important—nay, life-or-death—lesson on what really separates the pricey from the cheap. PLUS: A shameful admission about goofing on the Shuffle.

First off, perhaps some of y'all with short memories don't recall the Razr's initial incarnation as a luxury good. But indeed it was so—the slim handset was pitched as the mobilecomm equivalent of an iced-out watch, sure to spark envy among your less with-it pals. The Razr was also supposed to pull Motorola out of its sales doldrums, by helping it recapture the innovative rep it earned with the StarTAC phone way back in 1996. The company poured a lot of money into a clever promotional strategy, getting it into the hands of famous designers, celebrities, and their collagen-loving ilk. Tough to fathom, but folks actually debated over whether to plump for a Treo 650 or the Razr V3—even if they knew the former's obvious data advantages, the Razr's thinness still wowed 'em. And, hey, the prices really weren't all that different in those early days.

So what happened? Less than two years later, the wireless carriers are practically giving away Razrs—Verizon gave me one for $29 when I reupped my contract, and I just saw an ad pitching $49 Razrs for new customers. Okay, I know what a lot of you are saying—those phones are subsidized by the contracts. But that's a straight-up apples-to-apples comparison with the initial Razrs, which required two-year activation with Cingular. And, hey, let's look at the prepaid Razrs out there—this unlocked Razr is $159, and that includes the Mobile Phone Tools software (which Verizon wants me to fork over $39 for—right). Pop in $50 prepaid SIM card, and you're good to talk for a long, long time without getting hooked into an onerous contract.

The bottom line is, those folks who a) paid $500 for their early Razr and b) are still hooked into a Cingular contract as a result have gotta feel ripped off. The question is, was there any early hint that the Razr would become a low-end staple in less than two years? Or was everyone just so bewitched by the handset's unprecedented slimness that they didn't bother to step back and say, Hey, I'm paying a Treo-like price for a phone that lacks a QWERTY keyboard, a video camera (on the initial V3 model), or even a headphone jack—what gives?

An even more intriguing question is whether Motorola foresaw the incredibly rapid low-ending of the Razr back in 2004. Having fallen to number three in the handsets market at that time, they obviously needed a hit, and a high-margin hit at that. The Razr certainly did the trick, and you might argue that Motorola was able to bring the price down quickly as a result—y'know, that old chestnut about the more you manufacture, the cheaper the product gets. But let's face it, Motorola is run by some sharp cookies, and they knew that the initial premium they were charging was ridiculous even by the tech industry's oft-ridiculous standards. The company's Razr PR campaign succeeded where the Moto Pebl's failed—to be blunt, it managed to position the Razr as a phone that would help get you laid. (The Moto Pebl campaign aimed for this in a much more subtle way, but ended up coming off as the phone that will turn you androgynous.)

So for future reference, how can cheap bastards like myself know when a supposed "luxury" gadget is actually a low-ender in disguise, and I need only wait 20 to 22 months for it to tumble into my price range? Here's a few tip-offs, inspired by my experience with the Razr's descent:

Style Over Substance Gadgets hawked on their design superiority don't age well, especially in a fast-paced market like handsets. No matter how sleek the Razr was, it shoulda been obvious that it couldn't hang with pure data phones over the long-run.

Inattention to Details The thing that's always bugged me about the Razr is the lousy user interface—little things like the organization of menus (regardless of carrier), or the fact they make it so hard to switch Bluetooth on and off. A product that hasn't been thought through all the way? Definitely headed for the low-end bin once the hype's worn off.

Material Science Funny how folks always seem to forget that a gadget's only as good as the materials with which its built. I'm hardly the only person to discover that the Razr's plastic exterior doesn't stand up to much of a pounding, and that the "nickel-plated copper alloy" keys have issues. Let's just say I don't plan on taking a Razr with me into the Indo-Burmese wilderness (where I'm heading next month).

Other thoughts on harbingers of a high-end gadget's low-end fate? Leave 'em in comments, or drop me a line. Remember: You've got the power inside you right now. Eternal happiness is just a dollar away.

APOLOGIES TO THE SHUFFLE: A very Apple-savvy reader wrote in last week to point out that I was mistaken about the fate of the 512 MB iPod Shuffle. I wrote that Apple not only ceased making the small-sized Shuffle a while back, but that they'd stopped supporting it. Turns out that the 512er died this year, but Apple does still support it with firmware upgrades et. al. Our tipster also pointed out that, should your Shuffle break (like mine), you can probably just take it to an Apple store and they'll swap you a new one—hey, it's the lowest-end iPod they offer, so why not?

Apologies to Steve Jobs and his hard-working minions for the error. My only excuse is that I've gotten way too many spams offering 512 MB Shuffles if I complete an online survey. I've wished death upon these spammers many a time, and the neural wires must've somehow gotten crossed so that I wished death upon the baby Shuffle, too. Or something like that.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

Read more Low End Theory

We wish we were famous enough for people to make limited editions of stuff with our name on it. The limited edition Jason Chen Four-Port USB Hub/Toothbrush sounds pretty good. – Jason Chen

PEBL Gallery [Mobile Burn]

Here's hoping to future, celebrity-branded gadgets, like the Tom Cruise insane-o-meter and the Kate Moss bathroom scale. – Nicholas Deleon

Contest Page [Motorola via SlashGear]

This is the point where we usually make jokes about how Catherine Zeta Jones likes stones, or how 2 PEBLs are enough for most people but the Germans really gotta have four, but we're tired.

Available now for $99 with 2 year activation.

Press Release [T-Mobile]

Four new colors have been announced for the Motorola PEBL: pink, green, orange and blue. If you'll remember, they've got pink versions of both the RAZR and SLVR out as well—please raise your hands if you ever thought way back in the StarTac era that Motorola would be releasing one pink phone, let alone three.

"We've gone from pink to whoa - leveraging our leadership in color and design to make the PEBL expressive and refreshing. This is a product you choose because you want it, not because you need it. says Jim Wicks, Motorola VP and Director of Consumer Experience Design. Hilarious considering that if all you really want a pink phone, there are two more stylish ones from the same maker alone. And cute as the PEBL is, we have no love for VGA cameraphones in 2006.

Four new colours in the PEBL palette [Gadget Candy]
Motorola PEBL V6 [Gizmodo]

This year, the highlight of the swag bags is the "Gunmetal" Motorola PEBL that we mentioned last month. The tech items make up the cheaper pieces of the swag bag including are a $600 expresso maker and a $550 VTech broadband phone system.

What's in this year's Oscar goodie bag? [Chicago Sun-Times]

Fiery Red PEBL for Valentines

Product Page

Ok. This is our first video review and I'm working out the bugs in the shooting. However, here you go: the PEBL in all her stoney glory.

The Moto PEBL

The Pitch A serene-yet-serious man bearing a vague resemblance to a Siamese Dream-era James Iha holds a black PEBL in his outstretched hand. How he manages to look so calm is beyond me; if I were standing on a glacier clad in nothing but a fringed blanket, I'd be freezing my babymakers off. The copy in the upper left-hand corner, meanwhile, compares the PEBL to a "natural clam."

Rip-Off Of Many a high-end vodka ad extolling the virtues of pure Scandinavian (or Polish, or Russian) water. I'm also reminded of the Sandman graphic novel Season of Mists, in which several ancient gods gather to quibble over the key to Hell. Our PEBL loving friend here totally looks like he belongs in that plotline, perhaps as Loki's Gal Friday.

The Spin Motorola's trying to parlay the Razr's success into an unassailable brand image. Like Apple in the realm of MP3s, the company wants to be known as the go-to vendor for well-designed handsets—not in terms of features, but rather looks and usability. And a big part of that branding strategy is to take the Absolut approach to advertising: create images that wouldn't look out of place in a museum, rather than spec-ed out product shots that only geeks could love. The goal with the PEBL is to capture those same consumers who purchased the iPod Nano because, darnit, it just looks so friggin' amazing—never mind that you've already got a 40-gig iPod and a Mini on the desk already.

Counterspin Geeks like us know that the PEBL was delayed a full quarter due to problems with the hinges—prototypes were popping open unexpectedly, and often crashing to the floor as a result. Not that the ad doesn't illustrate how the handset's opening mechanism operates—for that, you have to visit hellomoto.com and check out the 360-degree tour. To be honest, I'm still not 100 percent sure how the PEBL's able to respond to slight hand twitches. But, hey, look! A quasi-androgynous model in a fringed blanket! And he's in, um Greenland? I'm sold.

Takeaway You have to give Motorola credit for reinventing its brand over the past few years; tough to believe that the same company that used to specialize in clunky radios has now surpassed Nokia et. al. as the king of cool handsets. Granted, there's not a lot of info in the ad, and your mileage may vary if you don't click with the strange dude palming the PEBL. But the ad sticks in the mind just enough that you want to learn more, and it deserves props for the fashion-mag photography.

Hype-O-Meter 8.5 (out of 10); if you vibed to the whole, Euro-style "Hello, Moto!" campaign, this is right up your alley. Also if you're an over-26 Smashing Pumpkins fan.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Hype Sheet column appears every other Wednesday on Gizmodo.

Read more Hype Sheet

This leak, which comes via the israeli site Gadgetim, also includes a tantalizing pic of a Razr PDA. The odd part is that the phone does not look any different in size or style — so how exactly will they fit PDA functionality in there? I have no clue. But I bet it glows.

Motorola s Mass-Market Glowing PEBL and RAZR PDA??? [motoRAZR]

Motorola PEBL review and Product Alert Signup [CNET]

Motorola U6 PEBL [PCMag]

Sign Up for Motorola PEBL Availability Alert [CNET]

A Motorola spokesperson explained that the chipset Motorola choose for their top of the line models does not have a stable EDGE implementation, and does not meet Motorola's quality standards. It is too late for Motorola to swap out chips, so the company has been forced to disable EDGE on the new phones despite their high end placement in their lineup.

EDGE Disappears From High End Motorolas [PhoneScoop]

Phonemag: T-Mobile to Release the Motorola PEBL Q4? [Phonemag]