Motorola, Carriers Announce MOTORAZR2 Plans

Prompted by Verizon, Motorola officially took the wraps off of its next-generation MOTORAZR2 mobile phone platform on Friday.

Three phones -- the V9, a 3G HSDPA phone; the V9m, featuring 3G EVDO CDMA; and the V8, a GSM phone -- are all part of the new family, Motorola said. They will be offered by a host of providers, including Alltel, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, US Cellular, and Verizon Wireless.
Motorola launched the RAZR2 platform in May, revealing many of the phone's features. Motorola said then that the three phones would be released in August.

According to sources, Verizon prompted the early confirmation of the new phones by announcing its support of the V9m early on Friday. The carrier will offer the phone for $299.99 upon the purchase of a two-year agreement, plus a $50 mail-in rebate. The exact date of the phone's availability was not disclosed.

That will be cheaper than AT&T, which said it would offer the phone at $299.99 for a two-year commitment "in early September,", but without the rebate. AT&T will use it as a platform for AT&T Mobile Music, which allows customers to sideload music from eMusic, the MusicID song recognition service, XM Radio Mobile, The Buzz music news portal, Music Videos and others. The handset is also MobiTV-capable.

Sprint, meanwhile, said it would offer the phone at $249.99 on Aug. 22 for the same two-year contract, without the need for a rebate. It will support features like its own OnDemand services with customizable up-to-date sports, weather and news information, Sprint PCS Picture Mail for sharing and printing digital pictures and Wireless Backup to restore lost contact information.

The phones are two millimeters thinner than the older, first-generation RAZR and, doing away with the familiar antenna "hump" at the bottom of the phone. The outside of the metallic flip phone is marked by a huge, 2-inch color LCD screen with touch-sensitive buttons that make the phone vibrate when pressed. The phone also has a 2-megapixel camera and plays AAC, MP3, and WMA music files.

In addition, the phones ship with the ability to raise and lower the volume depending on surrounding noise, a feature Motorola calls CrystalTalk. The higher-speed models, the HSDPA V9 and the EVDO V9m, will run Motorola's older Synergy operating system. All will have a redesigned user interface, Motorola has said.


source:pcmag.com