Last month, had anyone asked me 'from whom are you buying a new cellular phone?'; I would have answered 'either Laqtel or Digicel, but Digicel is the more likely.'
Today, I would answer 'neither TSTT nor Digicel!'

Digicel is aggravating me with their learnt-from-a-book marketing strategy and policy. It's all theoretical and impractical.
Why are they reluctant to publicize the mobile units they will offer in 2006? Particularly in a small market where the main competitor has stolen a march on you. Is it not commonsense that their advertisement advising consumers to wait 'til January would have more force if one were aware that similar or better phones are on the horizon?

What's the secret? Digicel aren't making super-cellulars in a Port-of-Spain lab!?
More than likely the mobile phones they sell will echo that of the competitors'.

This silence for silence sake is annoying, but not surprising, as Digicel's ad campaign is pointless, untargeted, and verbose. It just is not working!
Digicel should fire their ad agency.

Anyway, I have a review for you of the Motorola Razr V3 that everyone and their tanty are fussing over.

Introduction:
The Motorola may be new to most local users, but this unit was launched and available for sale -internationally- in Oct 2004. This is not a technological gift to Trinidad and Tobago citizens.
At the time it retailed for US450 but it's being shopped to us at around US300; a considerable departure from it's initial RP (retail price).
To someone as myself (unfussed over this cellphone business) it does not have any immediate impact, visually. But, I tested its appeal to the young trendsetters and they were blown away.


Design:
I used a black version for my test and the colour is far from rich, but it's a cellphone so any shade of black (if that exists) is important.
The Razr VE measures 3.8 x 2.0 x 0.5 inches and weighs less than a quarter of one pound.

It is wider than many flip-phones but seats comfortably in the pocket -important to me because I detest those mooks with phones on the side of their trousers or skirts- and it has a uselessly light feel in your hand. 'Yuh cah lick down any mango wit dis phone.'
Importantly, the hinge that facilitates the 'flip' is sturdy and should be able to support thousands of 'flips-up' before you have to queue for forty days and nights to have it serviced/replaced by an TSTT overpaid technician.

There is an external display at the front that reminds older users of those notebook stickers with the chameleon LCD effect. I did not describe that particularly well but if you are over 30 you'd understand. On this display one can view information as TIME, BATTERY LIFE, and SIGNAL STRENGTH.
The display also acts as a viewer -when the clip is closed- for the camera lens (situated above the screen, almost un-noticeable). There is this cool -for two or three minutes- effect using the external display where you can turn the camera 360 degrees and it 'right-sides' the image it is displaying.

A voice recorder button is at the phone's right-side, with controls for the camera and volume on the left. It does not take much practice to manipulate them by feel, only.

Flip-up the phone and you see a really ugly bottom panel for dialing and whatnot. I was not impressed visually, but it is sturdy. The top-panel, naturally, is the screen; and it is a beautiful 2.5 inches, 256000 color display. Large enough to view, record, and playback images and video.
Navigation by feel takes some time getting used-to, but nothing is stopping you from looking at the keys. What's your hurry?


Bells, whistles, bonuses and features:
The Motorola can store 1250 names -250 on the SIM card- with accompanying phone-numbers (asmany as six) and an email address. There is support for POP3, SMTP and IMAP4 -in other words EMAIL, for the illiterates.

A standard USB port sits at the side, and judging by it's shape can be easily replaced at any RadioShack -if it ever came to that-. The usual features; vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, speakerphone, calculator, alarm clock, are present.
Other features include MP3 support, Bluetooth connectivity, and AOL Instant Messenger (hmmmn).

And of course, a camera. A beautiful VGA Camera supporting three resolutions:
160 x 120 and 320 x 240 for email and wallpaper
640 x 480 for everything else.

There is a 4x zoom! That's the same as my Nikon, wtf? But, just 6MB of memory; not enough in my opinion, but for fucks sake its a cellphone, so you should feel satisfied. Also included is one J2ME (JAVA) game and a slide show to view your pictures. It goes without saying you can personalise your camera-phone with wallpapers, sounds, ringtones, etc.


The basics:
Usually when one buys a phone, the most important aspects are making/ receiving phone calls and volume.
In Trinidad and Tobago it is near impossible to tell if any problem with the former is a problem with the phone or the Telecommunications company, but all phone numbers dialed were answered (that's the best I can do).
However, I thought the volume, both naturally and with the speakerphone, needs to be more audible.
The battery-life is an acceptable 7 hours.

Rating: 7 out of 10