Your Razr sucks
I’ve been sitting on this post forever and finally just had to push it out the door before it became completely stale.
I didn’t want to be the one to have to tell you this and I’ve been putting it off for a while now, but, umm, your Motorola Razr is a piece of shit.¹ Now, I know that some of you are immediately going to accuse me of the usual gadget elitism, and sure, that’s probably part of this little rant, but after seeing everybody and their damn brother² run around with this phone, I just had to set the record straight. Does it look cool? Absolutely. It’s gorgeous, and when they popped up on the rumor sites a couple of years ago I was blown away. But here’s the rub: its pros end there.
Obviously a lot of my friends have Razrs (everybody and their brother), including my girlfriend (and her sister and mother), but the funny thing is, if you ask them if they like it (and really push them), almost all will concede that it’s not so great (especially if they have any previous mobile phone experience). Why is this?
Well, let’s see. It’s dainty and feels like it’s going to break when open. The speakerphone sucks. The screen resolution and colors suck. It’s barely got any memory. It’s still got a freakin’ VGA camera (Motorola, 2002 called and said they wanted their technology back) equipped with perhaps the worst viewfinder display I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t support data transfer rates above GPRS. And to top it all off, it’s got Motorola’s notoriously nasty user interface written all over it. BUT, it looks cool and everyone has one so it must be awesome!
Now, I obviously don’t care what phone you buy or use (it’s your money and you can throw it away however you want), rather, it’s the herd mentality that really upsets me. It’s kind of like the fact that if you are a girl under 30 you’re now compelled to wear eskimo boots (though this fad seems to be fading). You can see it a mile away: <insert Hollywood’s current it girl here> wears eskimo boots one day because she doesn’t care what others think and a week later every teeny-bopper girl is chomping at the bit to harpoon a whale. The whole thing is ridiculous.
Again, far be it from me to tell someone what phone they should buy, but please, for the love of god, don’t run around talking about how the Razr is the end-all, be-all of mobile phones because it’s at the bottom of the barrel. I obviously don’t fault Motorola for sucking this phenomenon dry (what self-respecting company wouldn’t?), but I find it a bit disconcerting that people can be so enamored by nothing more than the look of a device (trust me, I do appreciate its design, more than most I’m sure), without even thinking about its features and the fact that there are so many better phones out there that offer a much more satisfying user experience. Then again, if your user experience is limited to making sure that everyone notices you and your super-thin Razr, you’re all set.
