Motorola's fall from grace started when they couldn't come up with a serious successor to the megapopular original Razr, so it's kind of sad to see that right up until their Android renaissance—and maybe even through it—the Razr, now in version 3, is still a core part of their business. But there's a broader point here, about how people use their phones: there are still plenty of folks lingering in the dull, barely-connected land of the dumbphone, where LG appears to be King, but they're emigrating in droves, because they crave one thing: internet:

Smart, dumb, whatever: today, phones are for going online. Which, if you believe Nielson's scores, means phones—especially smartphone—are pretty much for Google. Now, get your pencils out, and let's draw a straight line between Google's dominance on the mobile web and the mysterious but very real Nexus One. Easy, wasn't it? [Nielson]

Obviously this slider, codenamed Niagra, is a pretty large departure from the Razr tradition—it's a slider, after all. But its lineage would appear to be undeniable, considering the distinctive keypad, thin profile and metallic finish. That said, all of the vowels in the name appear to be vital to pronunciation, so the bloodline can't be totally pure.

As for the Fairbanks and Harmony clamshell phones (below), there is little reason to believe that these are anything but a minor update to Moto's existing entry-level free-on-contract handsets. As with the smartphone leak, these renders came naked. In other words specs, prices and release dates are still a mystery, albeit one that will certainly be solved, unspectacularly, with some form of press release. [BGR via Slashphone]

“I stopped and I lifted up my sweatshirt and I took out the cell phone to check it to see if it was damaged and this bullet falls out,” Richard told the local CBS affiliate WWL. He said the shot—which was strong enough to tear a hole in his sweatshirt—felt like a punch to the chest.

Investigators said that the bullet could have come from as far away as a quarter of a mile, and that people shoot guns in that area all the time.

“We have no reason to believe that there was any type of criminal intent,” Sheriff Jack Strain told WWL. “That this truly was just an incident where someone discharged his weapon, whether it was target practicing or hunting." He did add though, "To have such an impact at such a vital location and to be saved by your cell phone, I'm sure has given [Richard] time for pause, and to be thankful.”

Well, Motorola, it seems this Thanksgiving at least one customer is going to thank you for saving its life—probably one more than Samsung, Nokia or even Apple can claim. [WWL-TV (check out the video) via AP, Thanks, David]

[I personally don't know anyone who bought a RAZR, but they are carried on every US carrier. Just goes to show how disconnected gadget heads are from the rest of the world in their tastes. —B.Lam]

The NPD Group: iPhone 3G Leads U.S. Consumer Mobile Phone Purchases in the Third Quarter of 2008

Overall consumer mobile phone purchases declined 15 percent year-over-year

PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 10, 2008 – According to The NPD Group, the leader in market research for the wireless industry, Apple’s iPhone 3G surpassed the Motorola RAZR as the leading handset purchased by adult consumers in the U.S. in the third quarter (Q3) of 2008. RAZR had been ranked by NPD as the top-selling consumer handset for the past 12 quarters.

Even with stronger consumer sales of iPhone, and the mobile phone market’s normal seasonal uplift after Q2, domestic handset purchases by adult consumers declined 15 percent year over year in Q3 to 32 million units. Consumer handset sales revenue fell 10 percent to $2.9 billion, even as the average selling price (ASP) rose 6 percent to $88.

Top-selling handsets and mobile phone brands

“The displacement of the RAZR by the iPhone 3G represents a watershed shift in handset design from fashion to fashionable functionality,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD. “Four of the five best-selling handsets in the third quarter were optimized for messaging and other advanced Internet features.”

The top handset models in rank order, based on unit sales in Q3, were as follows:

1.Apple iPhone 3G
2.Motorola RAZR V3 (all models)
3.RIM Blackberry Curve (all models)
4.LG Rumor
5.LG enV2

Popular features

When it comes to the specific features that motivated U.S. consumers to purchase their handsets, 43 percent of handset buyers cited the need for a camera and 36 percent noted the ability to send and receive text messages. Mobile phones with a QWERTY keyboard experienced the greatest year-over-year rise in sales; 30 percent of handsets were sold with this feature in Q3 2008, versus just 11 percent the year prior. Also this quarter 83 percent of phones purchased were Bluetooth enabled (versus 72 percent last year), and 68 percent of phones purchased in Q3 were music enabled (versus 49 percent last year).

“A growing data divide continues in cellular handsets,” Rubin said. “Those who see the value in wireless Internet access are justifying the investment, whereas voice-centric users have little incentive to upgrade, which is obviously detrimental to operators who seek to sell data plans and media-access services to their subscribers.”

Methodology: NPD compiles and analyzes mobile device sales data based on more than 150,000 completed online consumer research surveys each month. Surveys are based on a nationally balanced and demographically representative sample of U.S. adults. Results are projected to represent the entire population of U.S. consumers age 18 and older.

Insiders always start by attacking Motorola's corporate culture, formed decades ago when radio was the company's bread-and-butter. Motorola made its bones building end-to-end systems—not just hardware, but the infrastructure that supports it. That, in turn, has led to a culture in which engineers reign supreme, and are allowed to sneer at their more right-brain-inclined colleagues. Marketers? Designers who focus on usability as opposed to circuitry? At Motorola, they're peons.

"There's this amazing wealth of engineering talent, but there's no system for harnessing that talent for the good of the consumer," says one former Motorola executive. The men in the R&D labs are permitted to indulge their flights of fancy, many of which center on fine-tuning antennas to optimize reception. Meanwhile, no one pays much attention to more prosaic fundamentals such as reliable software.

Another Motorola departee told Gizmodo that the company group charged with consumer research has been marginalized by the engineers, who dismiss its concerns—and, to a large extent, its very existence—as inconsequential. "With the engineers," he said, "there's this attitude of, "I create—what do you do? You pick out colors?'"

The engineers could theoretically be kept in check by corporate managers, but few suits are bold enough to act. A Motorola insider noted that long-serving managers have "deity status" at the company—no matter how many of their products flop, they never suffer repercussions.

The RAZR, a design victory as much as an engineering one, only came about due to the gumption of chief marketing office Geoffrey Frost. Following the RAZR's overnight success, Moto commissioned an in-house team to research the company's next step. Countless hours were spent pulling together focus-group studies and carrier feedback, but it was all for naught—the research was simply ignored by Motorola's top brass. "They have this attitude of, 'Well, I've built phones for 20 years, I know what I'm doing," says a frustrated member of that team, who noted that once Frost died in 2005, there was no one left with the chops and political capital to route around Moto's stick-in-the-mud managers.

Motorola's managerial bumbling has resulted in severe cultural malaise—a condition made worse by the mobile unit's location in the deep Chicago suburbs, hardly a place awash in creative energy. (Few 22-year-old design wunderkinds are willing to forego the Bay Area in favor of Libertyville.)

Keep in mind, too, that Motorola was the birthplace of Six Sigma, a methodology meant to eliminate product defects. But Six Sigma was created in 1986, well before the era of ubiquitous cellphones; its focus is engineering, not end-user experience. The methodology is therefore unequipped to address many of the shortcomings that have irked so many customers.

Take, for example, the navigation joystick on the ill-fated first-gen ROKR. It looked cool and worked as intended, but not without minor headaches: The joystick was a hair too sensitive, making it too easy to scroll past your music selection. Or take the Q—relatively powerful, but why in heaven's name didn't it auto-capitalize address book names, or allow for copy-and-paste? Sure these may strike you as minor details, but minor details make the difference in a competitive handset market. And Motorola's aging quality-control program wasn't designed to catch such annoying foibles.

Six Sigma and its companion product-development methodology, dubbed "M-Gates," both stress caution in the name of quality. But when it comes to innovation, there's certainly such a thing as too much wariness. In planning its software path after the RAZR's smashing success, Motorola knew (to its credit) that its Synergy OS was antiquated. But instead of developing a worthy successor, the company decided to wait around for Windows Mobile, ostensibly because it was a sure thing. Big mistake, as we all now know. Motorola next turned to Linux, which has never lived up to expectations. That's left the company scrambling for replacements, a panic that has led to the striking of numerous deals with potential software partners—"throwing darts at a board," as one former Motorola employee put it. It's also meant that different generations of the same phone end up running completely different software—the RAZR2 3G, for example, runs on the old P2K OS, while the 2.5G variant uses Linux. Both are painfully slow.

Motorola can still find the way forward—this is, after all, a company that's long done wondrous things in the lab. Surely it can figure out how to make its software work more fluidly, or realize that consumers actually care about such "trifling" issues as external volume rockers and intuitive menus.

Ex-employees are nearly unanimous in stating that bringing on Sanjay Jha as co-CEO (and designated handset-division savior) is a reasonable gamble. It's been clear for months now that CEO Greg Brown is in way over his head. "He has no idea how to run a consumer electronics business," grumbles one critic, adding that Brown's previous job was at an enterprise software company. While Jha is well regarded for his operational prowess and sheer intelligence, it's worth noting that he's fresh off a 14-year run at Qualcomm. Did chipmaking really prepare Jha to address the needs of Joe Sixpack consumers?

Our contacts contend that Jha's rescue plan needs to focus on two important areas—one technical, the other cultural. First, the company needs to streamline its wireless development, so that phone models are designed in conjunction with one another—thereby ending the lunacy of different generations featuring different (and inadequate) software. Second, there needs to be a reconciliation between the engineering heroes and the consumer research folks, who are currently out in the wilderness.

That can happen if Motorola opens its eyes to the very real design problems that plague generation after generation of its handsets. But does the company's leadership have the will to really shake things up? Some curmudegeonly engineers and managers are going to resist with every fiber of their beings. May the Force be with you, Mr. Jha.

Gizmodo columnist Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and author of the Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II.

They've both got 3G, Sprint's usual lineup of GPS Navigation, TV, Music Store, Email (which is inexplicably light years ahead of Verizon or AT&T's clients and fairly usable if you can do the T9 thing), etc. The VE20's big feature is the NFL Live package, which has live streaming audio of every game, and in November, video of eight NFL network games. Of the two, the VE20 wins because the UI and screen are much nicer, and they're both $99 with two-year contract and rebates. But overall these are pretty standard consumer-y flip phones, nothing that'll surprise you.

Accelerate your mobile world with MOTORAZR VE20, a high-performing, high-value device that runs on the blazing-fast nationwide Sprint Mobile Broadband Network. MOTORAZR VE20 offers one-touch access to its music player, text inbox and menu controls from its vivid external display to create a dynamic multimedia experience. MOTORAZR VE20 provides easy access to Sprint-exclusive content, including NFL Mobile Live, a new application that brings the excitement of the game right to your wireless phone. Offered free to Sprint customers with a data plan, NFL Mobile Live features live audio broadcast of all NFL regular season games, live audio/video stream of eight NFL Network games (beginning in November 2008,) exclusive team content and exclusive video highlights*. Additional features of MOTORAZR VE20 include Sprint Music Store for quick and easy over-the-air song downloads*,**, Sprint TV with extensive live and on demand programming*, stereo Bluetooth® wireless technology***, a microSD™ card slot and a 2.0 MP camera.

ENTERTAINMENT AND PERSONALIZATION
• NFL Mobile Live providing live audio broadcasts of all NFL regular season games, live audio/video stream of 8 NFL Network games (starting in November 2008,) live 24/7 stream of the NFL Network, exclusive team content, exclusive video highlights from all games and fantasy tools*
• Sprint TV® with an extensive selection of live and on-demand programming*
• Sprint Music StoreSM offering over-the-air downloads of full-length songs*,**
• Sprint Radio with more than 150 channels *
• Built-in media player with microSD card slot
• Integrated 2.0 megapixel camera and video camcorder
• Sprint Picture MailSM and Video Mail*
• Picture caller ID on the internal color display*
• Downloadable Java® applications, games, ringtones and wallpaper*

PRODUCTIVITY
• Sprint Navigation with GPS-enabled audio and visual turn-by-turn driving directions, one-click traffic rerouting and more than 10 million local listings*
• Live Search for Sprint, powered by Microsoft®, provides easy access to directory information, interactive maps and one-touch click to call access*
• Integrated stereo Bluetooth wireless technology***
• Sprint Mobile Email for access to POP3 email including AOL®, Yahoo!®, Gmail® and corporate email*
• Text messaging, Instant Messaging and Voice SMS*
• Wireless Backup to manage the contacts list in the event that the phone is lost, stolen or damaged
• High quality speakerphone
• Productivity Tools: Alarm clock, Calendar, Calculator, World Clock and more

SPECIFICATIONS
• Dimensions: 2.0” x 3.9” x 0.6”; 3.5 oz
• Internal Display: 2.2” 262K-color TFT (240 x 320 pixels)
• External Display: 1.6” 65K-color CSTN (120 x 60 pixels)
• Standard battery: Lithium ion battery provides up to approximately 4.0 hours of talk time****

Katana Eclipse by SANYO is Sprint’s first multimedia phone to combine unique lighting effects with the advanced speeds and features of the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network. The innovative and fun illumination capability allows the user to assign lighting effects to specific callers as well as alerts and messages. Katana Eclipse offers a host of advanced features including live and on-demand TV, over-the-air song downloads, integrated GPS navigation, web browsing, and gaming. The microSDHC Memory card slot supports cards up to 8GB to hold songs, pictures, video, and contact back-up. Additional features include a built-in speakerphone, stereo Bluetooth® technology, external music navigation controls and an internal antenna. The attractive and slim phone easily slips into a pocket or purse.

ENTERTAINMENT AND PERSONALIZATION
• 40 different lighting effects that can be assigned to callers, messages, alerts, and playing music including blink, pulse, echo, and multi-color patterns
• Built-in MP3 player with MicroSDHC card slot supporting up to 8GB (256MB card included)
• 1.3MP camera with 12x zoom and video camcorder
• Sprint TV® with an extensive selection of live and on-demand programming
• Sprint Music StoreSM offering over-the-air downloads of full-length songs
• Sprint Radio with more than 150 channels
• Downloadable screen savers, ring tones, applications and games

PRODUCTIVITY
• Sprint Navigation with GPS-enabled audio and visual turn-by-turn driving directions, one-click traffic
rerouting and more than 10 million local listings
• Sprint Mobile Email for access to POP3 email including AOL, Yahoo!, Gmail as well as corporate email
• Integrated Stereo Bluetooth
• High-quality speakerphone
• Sprint Mobile Email for access to POP3 email including AOL, Yahoo!, Gmail as well as corporate email
• Text and SMS Voice Messaging capable
• Voice-activated dialing
• Wireless Backup to manage contacts list in the event that the phone is lost, stolen or damaged
• Restrict and Lock allows the user to set limits on when and how the device is used
• Built-in productivity tools including a calendar, scheduler, to-do list, world clock, calculator, stopwatch
and alarm clock
• Internal phone book holds up to 500 name entries (700 phone numbers, 1,000 email and 500 Web addresses)

SPECIFICATIONS
• Dimensions: 3.6” x 1.9” x 0.7”; Weight: 3.4 oz.
• Internal display: 2.0” 65K color TFT LCD (176x220); External display: 1.0”
• Standard battery: Rechargeable lithium ion (LiIon) battery provides up to 4.6 hours continuous talk time

[Sprint]

In nine years, I've gone through five mobiles. A Nokia brick my dad gave me (left in the back of a taxi), an Ericsson flip T28 (the flip eventually flopped), an Ericsson T68 (honestly, the best phone ever, lasted three years), a cheapo, tiny Panasonic I picked up at Dubai airport for 50 bucks, and the RAZR.

Perhaps its because, as phones have become more sophisticated, they have become more fallible. The RAZR promised so much—and I'm not talking about bumping into Beckham at the supermarket checkout here—and failed to deliver.

As my first cameraphone, it made pictures that looked like something I drew on Etch-a-Sketch a couple of decades ago, but I can live with that. What I can't live with is the sluggy interface. Or the buttons that don't work, with their eerie backlight that just shows up all the hideous detritus that my phone has picked up from being chucked into the black hole-esque dustbin that is my bag. Or the seemingly random volume control. I can't see a thing on the screen when the sun is shining. And I have room for just 13 incoming SMS messages at any one time before I have to start deleting them.

So, let's talk about the good times with my RAZR. *tumbleweed blows across the page* I was pissed off the day I bought it because the shop didn't even have the black one I wanted. I'd liked the look of that when it came out, but by the time my Panasonic gave up the ghost, all that was available was silver. Why did I go through with it? It was small enough to fit into my pockets without making me look like a ladyboy, and I'd heard good things about Motorola from other friends. They're not my friends any more.

I asked myself what I liked about it, and there was one thing: the wallpaper is a picture of Jesus taken the day after he asked me to marry him, and I'll be sad to see that go. But the quality is so shite—honestly, I'd have got better results from a pinhole camera—I know that it won't travel. Plus, for some reason, I can't send photos via SMS.

I can't even lose it, like older more beloved phones. I left the RAZR in a club a couple of months ago, and I'd made it halfway down the block when some guy came running up behind me. "You left this on the bar," he wheezed. (Everyone in Spain smokes, and I'm a fast walker.) As he palmed the RAZR back into my hand, I could swear there was a look of pity on his face.

In truth, this isn't about the RAZR, but what comes after. I bleeding know it's time for a new phone, but which? No prizes for guessing which one Jesus wants me to get. But even when the 3G model of the iPhone eventually deigns to park its arse at an Apple Store near me, I am still digging my heels in over certain issues—internal memory too small, eminently crackable screen for my klutziness, a rather larger size than a closed RAZR, etc etc. I also know that the largest-capacity 3G iPhone would be molto 'spensivo, and I don't know whether I really want to spunk that much on a phone. Pathetic, isn't it?

So here I am, willing but unable to put the RAZR out of its misery. Until it breathes its last, when the ringtone that sounds like J-Lo bellydancing sputters to a halt, as the little screen with the M logo fades to gray, when the buttons lie dull and unresponsive beneath my desperate fingers, that will be the time to replace it. Got any recommendations?

They said:

The image that you see is actually the result of shading applied to the clock background graphic to give it more of a three-dimensional appearance, in line with the theme of the phone. The graphic is actually built as concentric circles stacked on top of each other, with a lighting filter applied to give it depth. Unfortunately, the result is something that has some readers questioning what they see, and Motorola apologizes for any perception of impropriety as it was certainly not our intent at all. The graphic is only in a few models of our phones with certain software builds installed. We're already taking steps to ensure that the clock face graphic in question will not appear in any future products. If someone wants to remove the graphic from their view, they can either select Menu -> Settings / Personalize / Home Screen / Clock / Digital, or Options/Customize Home/Clock Style/Digital, depending on their phone model.

To us, we can't make out any raised bump or three-dimensional appearance to cause this wang-like specter, but maybe it's like that image of the vase that's also a face. Once you see the face, you can't un-see it—except in this case the vase is a penis and the face is another penis.

•The RAZR V9m is the CDMA version, and will be available on Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, Us Cellular, and MetroPCS. Many of the differences here are on the "CLI", the RAZR2's haptic external touchscreen. Oh, and none of the CDMA versions have crystal speak, the tech that turns up volume of the earpiece when a bus rumbles by, while also noise cancelling the rumble in the microphone. (CDMA quality is better than GSM, and doesn't need this, according to Motorola.)

Alltel and US Cellular's V9m has the CLI buttons in this layout: Recent Calls, Music, Messaging.

Verizon's V9m has vCast music stores, and it's CLI buttons like so: Camera, Music, Voice.

Sprint has its music store, TV, and a multimedia CLI like this: SprintTV, Camera, Music.

•The V9, sans "M" is AT&T's. It's a hair thicker, because it has a lot of stuff in there for GSM/GPS (Assisted, likely)/ HSDPA, UMTS. AT&T's CLI interface is actually very music oriented: Play, FF, and RW. It also has MobiTV, XM streaming, and a full HTML browser.

•The V8, which is not so dumbed down that it needs a different number designation, is T-Mobile's. It is different, though. EDGE, of course, and 2GB of built in memory that can't be swapped out by MicroSD like the other phones with the "9" in their names. It also has a music oriented CLI interface, with Play, FF, and RW, but that won't show up until your music is playing. The home page has that TMO faves menu, too. It also is a linux based OS, maybe their MOTOMAGX OS. Like the AT&T GSM phone, it has a full HTML browser.

All have stereo bluetooth streaming, and all the specs we noted back on the handset's May launch.

[RAZR2 at Giz]

Sprint Launches RAZR2 press release:

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - Aug. 10, 2007 - Bringing the "third screen" of mobile video to two screens instead of just one, Sprint (NYSE: S) today announced plans to launch the latest Motorola handset, RAZR2 V9m with key features that make it stand out from the crowd. Sprint's RAZR2 V9m provides the ability to watch video on the external screen with the flip closed - a first for the U.S. wireless market.

Harnessing the speed of Sprint's Power VisionSM EVDO network, the RAZR2 will deliver exclusive access to multimedia content1 including:

· NFL Mobile, a Sprint-exclusive wireless application that brings fans access to same-day audio and video highlights, a live stream of NFL Network's broadcast, real-time statistics and scores, customizable team and player alerts, injury reports and other information updated every two seconds.

· Sprint Music StoreSM, powered by Groove Mobile, which allows users to browse and wirelessly download full-length songs directly to their phone from a selection of more than 1.6 million songs.

· Sprint TVSM with more than 50 channels of live television and on-demand video and audio including a comprehensive portfolio of ABC news and entertainment video programming from ABC Entertainment, ABC News and Disney Channel such as on-demand, full-length episodes of ABC programs, including the hit shows "Desperate Housewives," "Grey's Anatomy," "Lost" and "Ugly Betty."

· Sprint Power View, the industry's first made-for-mobile sports and entertainment video programming network.

· Sprint Navigation, powered by TeleNav, providing full-feature GPS navigation including voice and on screen turn-by-turn driving directions with real-time traffic alerts and more than 10 million business listings.

(Standard data charges apply to all downloads from Sprint.)

"We are excited to pair our advanced multimedia capabilities and network speeds with this beautifully designed wireless phone," said John Garcia, senior vice president of product management and development for Sprint. "Customers will find Sprint's version of RAZR2 to offer exclusive video content that is both enjoyable and relevant. They will also appreciate that this device is the first clamshell in the industry to provide the option of watching video on both the internal or external display."

The design of RAZR2 has a sleeker, more sophisticated look and feel than its predecessor. At the core of RAZR2 is a stainless steel internal frame to help provide strength and durability. The large exterior lens is made with chemically hardened glass to be more scratch resistant.

Both the internal and external screens on the RAZR2 are significantly larger than the original RAZR- external is 2.0" and internal is 2.2" - with twice the resolution. The external display incorporates Motorola's breakthrough haptics technology, which provides users with vibrating feedback in response to their finger taps. This allows the user to effortlessly control their music, video and camera without opening the flip.

Additional features available on RAZR2 V9m by MOTOROLA include a 2.0 megapixel camera with digital flash and zoom and advanced stereo Bluetooth® wireless technology.2 The device will also offer OnDemandSM with customizable up-to-date sports, weather and news information, Sprint PCS® Picture Mail for sharing and printing digital pictures and Wireless Backup to quickly restore contact information if the device is ever lost or stolen.

The RAZR2 V9m by MOTOROLA will be available at www.sprint.com and by calling 1-800-SPRINT1 on Aug. 22. It will be in all Sprint retail outlets by Sept. 4. The device will cost $249 with a 2 year agreement (without any required rebate).

Customers purchasing RAZR2 V9m by MOTOROLA as a replacement for an existing mobile phone are encouraged to recycle their current phone, battery and accessories through Sprint Project Connect. One hundred percent of the net proceeds from Sprint Project Connect are used to help keep kids safer online through Sprint's 4NetSafetyprogram with partners that include the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the NEA Health Information Network. More information, including a free postage-paid mailing label, can be found at www.sprint.com/projectconnect.

1 Network dependent feature, not available in all areas. Airtime, data charges, and/or additional charges may apply.

2 This device supports Bluetooth BIP-ImagePush, BPP-SenderDev, DUN-GW, FT-Server, GAP, GAVDP, Headset-AG, HFP (1.5) AG, OPP-Client, OPP-Server profiles. In order for Bluetooth devices to communicate with one another, they must utilize the same Bluetooth profile. To determine the profiles supported by other Motorola devices, visit www.hellomoto.com/bluetooth. For other devices, contact their respective manufacturer.
Certain Bluetooth features including those listed may not be supported by all compatible Bluetooth-enabled devices, and/or the functionality of such features may be limited in certain devices, or by certain wireless carriers.