Josey Puliyenthuruthel: A sharp phone for the trendy

GIZMO GALLERY

When the history of cellphone design is written, Nokia Oy, the Finnish leader in the cellphone market, will be faulted for not reading a growing preference among customers for clamshell (basically, phones that have screens folding over the keypad) models.

That critical misreading of a trend caused the Helsinki-led company dear to lose out heavily in this segment of the market to Korean phone makers like Samsung and LG.

Clamshell phone models have now flooded the market and it has become exceedingly tough for manufacturers to differentiate their wares and wow customers.

Motorola accomplished precisely this difficult task earlier this year. As part of an effort to showcase their innovative DNA, the Schaumburg, Illinois-headquartered company asked its design and engineering teams to come up with the world's thinnest clamshell phone and in a distinctly avant garde form factor (read: shape and size). The result of this effort is the Motorola Razr V3.

The Motorola Razr V3 could easily rank at the top among mobile phones introduced in the year gone by.

With its ultrathin clamshell design and anodized casing, the Razr (pronounced "Razor") has been widely recognised the coolest-looking phone of the year and in addition scores highly on useful features like the speakerphone and Bluetooth connectivity.

The size and rectangular shape of the phone reminds you of a PDA (personal digital assistant or digital diary). Its thickness is just about 1.4 cm and it easily slips into a breast pocket alongside a cardholder.

There were more than a couple of occasions when I had to search around for the phone, weighing less than 95 gm, when I carried it in my trouser pockets even though it is taller and wider than several other clamshell phones in the market. The lightness of the phone comes partly from the use of alloy metals for the exteriors of the phone.

The Razr V3 comes with a small screen on the outer side of the phone screen. This external small screen gives details like time and flashes the number when there is an incoming call.

The same screen can be used to frame a self portrait while shooting with the VGA phone camera, which can snap photos in three resolutions of 640x480, 320x240 and 160x120, embedded on the outer shell of the phone.

The small outer screen also displays a small blue flashing LED (light emitting diode) when the phone's Bluetooth function is switched on. One crib about this small screen: it's backlight turns off automatically and cannot be turned on again unless you open the clamshell and close it.

There are a handful of camera phones in the market that boast of cameras with a resolution higher than one megapixel and the Razr V3 clearly misses on that score. A 4X zoom, self-timer, adjustable brightness or exposure settings and a choice of six lighting conditions deliver decent quality pictures.

Five shutter sounds, as well as a silent option, come as fringe add-ons. Shots can then be emailed or sent as multimedia messages, paired with contacts, saved as wallpapers or simply stored. One useful feature is a meter that tells you how much space remains in the 6 MB memory, which could use with some enhancement. Sorely missed is a pluggable memory card.

Open the phone and you are greeted with a screen on one side and a keypad made of metal alloy. The 2.5-inch, 260,000-colour display is vivid and crisp and does a credible job of showing photos and graphics.

The screen is easy to view even in direct sunlight unlike some of the other colour displays I've used. Another crib: the text size displayed cannot be changed.

The keypad, with its alloy keys, looks quite futuristic. The keys are actually not keys really, but touch pads. There are rubber borders that separate the keys making dialling and typing out short messages easier.

The Razr V3 can carry up to 1,000 names in the phone book with six phone numbers and an e-mail address in each entry; with the option to store an additional 250 names on the SIM card.

A choice of 14 monophonic or five polyphonic ring tones together with a vibrate mode are available. Text and multimedia messaging, MP3 file support, a calculator, voice dialling, a date book, an alarm clock, a WAP wireless Internet browser and a voice recorder.

The phone supports e-mail access, full Bluetooth connectivity and a USB port. To sum up, this is one of the niftiest phones around, but comes pricey at Rs 38,000. Motorola has tried to sweeten the deal by throwing in a Bluetooth headset worth over Rs 4,700.

The writer can be contacted at

josey@vsnl.net