Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “When Phones Were Fun: Motorola V60 (2001)”.
Everyone remembers the motorola razer, but few recall the ancestor that laid the groundwork for its ascendance and that’s a shame, because this is a phone worth remembering i’m michael fisher, the year is 2001 and this is the mini metal moto, the motorola v60. To understand why the v60 was so noteworthy, it helps to remember the phones that were common in the us when it launched back in 2001, my parents carried devices like these across bell atlantic soon to become verizon nextel soon to become sprint, and the old att wireless Sooner becomes singular than att all over again. My own samsung 3500 was the most modern of the bunch, but by 2001 it was already a two-year-old design and, like the rest, it was made entirely of plastic. With the v60 motorola subverted those established norms with a pint-sized design made of aluminum and stainless steel lightweight, but not too light at 103 grams cold to the touch and beautifully brushed to a satin sheen, with a back cover that clangs with authority when you drop it On a desk, and even as compact and design forward as the v60 was motorola still managed to pack in new features like a cover screen, so you didn’t need to open it to see who’s, calling, while preserving other common conveniences of the time like removable batteries.
These days, we’ve gotten used to carting around big power banks to back up our big phones, but back in these days, you could carry a spare cell that fit easily into a shirt pocket ready to pop as needed into the phone that either vanished into a pant Pocket or just as commonly clipped onto a belt just watch those corners. When you finally ran down those batteries using all your daytime minutes, you could top up both at once. If you wanted to shell out for a dual dock charger, these same batteries were used across motorola’s portfolio from the mini metal, moto all the way up to the big nextel radio phones. So it was easy to find official or aftermarket versions at your local phone shop or mall kiosk. You can choose from slim 780 milliamp hour batteries and up the phone’s girth swelling like the belly of a competitive eater as the modified battery doors ballooned to accommodate up to a 1050 milliamp hour pack massive for the time you could also buy custom backplates. If you wanted more personality than the stock, gunmetal gray gave you, and in an age when everyone was swapping faceplates on their nokia, 3310s motorola made sure v60 buyers didn’t miss out. He just popped a tiny release, catch with a thumbnail and slid the new faceplate. On that led to an explosion of both stock and aftermarket cases, some of which were thoughtfully included by the long time mr mobile fan from buffalo new york, who sent over most of this collection. Thank you.
Anonymous moto appreciator, you’ve, probably noticed by now that case color and battery size, aren’t the only things setting all these v60s apart. The line was so successful that it would spawn a slew of silver sequels, stretching all the way out to 2005. An alphabet soup of suffixes tagged onto the end of each v60 denoted different features or network compatibilities c for verizon cdma t for att’s tdma g for gsm.
You get those different air interfaces demand a different antenna as well notice how the straightforward stub of the v60x differs from that of the tdma model, while verizon’s networks demanded first, the extendable version of the same and finally, a full height aerial. At the end, some of these antennas became infamous for breaking off by the way, which i remember well, because at my first cellular retail job, i had to learn how to replace them. Whenever you have this many variations of something there’s a tendency to pick a favorite and while later models would modernize the line with newer features i’ll talk about in a second.
For me, it just doesn’t get any better than this v60c for verizon. The contrast of bright brushed metal with that black checkerboard inlay, the declarative, boldness of the motorola logo and the inverted version of the same on the caller id screen. When you opened it up, even that extendable antenna with its big loading coil, it just all works. It’S easy to see why this phone was a big enough hit to make cameos in everything, from jlo music videos to dramatic novels and well-regarded enough to be sold as an integrated accessory with some models of mercedes and bmw. That tiny 96 by 64. Black and white display is just so deliciously retro, especially once you fire up the backlight, whose indiglo aqua marine was a big upgrade over the bile yellow side lighting that prevailed at the time there was no bluetooth, certainly no camera. If you wanted a gimmick, you got voice notes yeah you held down the side key and left yourself a reminder to buy tickets to minority report or, in my case, drunken advice, usually recorded in the midst of a roaring college party, a reminder figure out how to Do flash animations, so you can get a job at new grounds. The ringtones were gloriously monophonic, which you could compose yourself if you had the patience or just stick with the stock selection, so familiar to anyone who grew up in this era and in a time when phone calls were still king, the v60 delivered sound quality that one Reviewer called some of the best out there, all of that helped justify its high launch price of around 400 or about 660. Today, to be clear, there were many drawbacks to the v60, like those breakable antennas, unreliable charging, ports and the weirdly complex user interface, anchored by send and end keys that were in opposite positions of most cell phones at the time.
I don’t know why motorola did this, but the company did its best to iron, those out with upgrades to the model through 2003, when a bitter rivalry between two carriers led to a total reimagining of the v60 i’ll. Show you those final wonderfully weird models right after this i’ve been covering tech for over a decade, and quite a lot of it has come from today’s sponsor. I’M not talking about a company, i’m talking about taiwan.
For years, taiwan has been a crucial trading partner to the united states and in june the two countries announced their new trade initiative for the 21st century. This initiative is focused on values. The u.s and taiwan share like protecting worker rights, eliminating forced labor in global supply chains and promoting gender equity. Taiwan and the us will also work together to support green jobs and the growth of low-carbon economies and along the way, they’ll work toward transparent and fair regulatory practices for small to medium enterprises.
It’S all meant to support digital trade and deepen the friendship between the us and taiwan, one of its most reliable partners and a consistent source of technological excellence to learn more hit. The link in the description and thanks to the taipei, economic and cultural representative office in the united states for sponsoring this video before i became sentimental about them. In retrospect, the v60s tiny screens and lack of any whiz-bang accessories became a real problem, as the competition included. More and more features, not least of which were built-in cameras.
The v60 never got one of those, but its tdma version did get a color screen in 2003. Technically, anyway, it was an utterly drab stn lcd crammed into an even smaller footprint, but as the branding on the cover proudly proclaimed, it was technically color and that combined with the new d-pad below meant, you could play brew games like kick champion and moto gp. It’S no gentian impact, but there’s something endearing about the simplicity of these early mobile games, whose ambitions ended at helping you burn time in line at the grocery store, but which were quite addictive. Nonetheless, it would take verizon wireless seeking to steal customers from rival nextel for motorola to give the v60 the wonderfully weird makeover that it would ultimately go out on.
In a previous episode of this series, i told the tale of how nextel skyrocketed to success on the back of big spending users dependent on its direct connect, push-to-talk feature and in 2003 verizon finally launched its competing service on the specially built v60p to make it work. As a walkie-talkie motorola added a dual vent speakerphone on either side of the keypad push to talk and speaker mode buttons to toggle it and the biggest battery. The company offered look at the size of this meatball, which proved necessary since verizon’s ptt service, absolutely devoured power.
At the start, on top of that, it suffered from latency and reliability problems and the whole thing ultimately fizzled, leaving verizon with a lot of v60p dead stock, its solution to ask motorola to rebrand them as v60s models with the push-to-talk button reassigned as a second smart. Key, that’s the one i’ve got here. The final chapter for the v60 was built atop, those, but it was so significant and overhauled that it demanded a new model number.
The v65p later also offered, as the v65s was an almost totally reimagined phone. Both displays were bigger. The inner screen sported real color this time and the redesigned keypad’s blue backlighting was ratcheted up to make sure everyone knew that this phone was with it. The very loud speaker that came over from the previous model made the new polyphonic ringtones sing, [ Applause, ] and all that combined with the by now proven platform to make the v65 a fitting send-off four years after the line.
First debuted. Oh an interesting side. Note the same basic design had come to sprint in early 2004 as the v60v rekindling a long chilled relationship between sprint and motorola. Ultimately, though, a send-off it had to be bigger and sharper displays, integrated cameras and more comfortable keyboards were becoming must-haves, all of which motorola delivered in its well-received v600 for 2004. I will never believe that that model name is any kind of coincidence and then, of course, the razer would launch as the v60s true replacement, changing the face of the flip phone forever. The motorola that brought us that razer and the v60s before it has been legally gone for some time now. Its mobile division, gobbled up at google in 2011, then sold to lenovo in 2014.. But despite that, double acquisition.
Much of the spirit and institutional knowledge that gave us the v60 seems to live on in the motorola of today. That’S the impression that i got anyway after the company brought me, along with other members of the media, to its chicago headquarters, for a set of briefings. This week and i got to talk to several employees – who’ve worked there since the v60 was still on store shelves. While i can’t yet share what i was briefed on the fact that there’s so many legacy employees still actively working at the company.
Well, it has me hopeful that maybe it has another v60 or razer or moto x, up its sleeve. At any rate, it was a privilege to film portions of this video on the stomping grounds of a brand that helped define mobility with devices like the v60 back when antennas extended, headphone jacks were still around and still 2.5 millimeter and phones were fun. Disclosure motorola provided travel, lodging and entertainment for my visit to chicago for the june 2022 media briefing, but this video was already on my schedule and the timing of that briefing was just a happy coincidence. In any event, i never give manufacturers editorial input of any kind into my content, nor early previews of same you’re, seeing this for the first time right alongside motorola, if you’d like to continue down the retro rabbit hole check out my episode on the aol, mobile communicator. Also from 2001 or see what old, flip phone ideas, i think would help the modern foldables gain the traction i believe they deserve on mr mobile’s other series into the fold until next time from michael fisher.
Thanks for watching and stay mobile, my friends .