Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “When Phones Were Fun: Samsung’s Forgotten RAZR Rival”.
Sponsored by surf shark – all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. That quote from Battlestar Galactica is never far from my mind and it’s the one that came to me as I shuffled through a folder of photos I shot over 18 years ago on the very last dumb phone I ever carried as my solo daily driver. It was a time of more imitation than iteration and also a time when traditional mobile phones were plateauing as a newer, smarter form of Communicator was poised to take over I’m Michael fiser. The year is 2006, and this is the Samsung blade see when I say imitation. You can probably see what I mean, while in today’s world it’s Motorola chasing Samsung two decades ago it was the Overnight Celebrity of the razor.
That was the reason for this love because heyya when it comes to a phone, this sharp The First Cut is the Deepest yeah. The point is before we had the iPhone to endlessly point back to as the product that revolutionized the mobile industry. It was 2004’s Razer. V3, that first changed everything by proving people would pay a premium for a head. Turning design just like today, Rivals were quick to follow in the footsteps of the hot new thing and the fastest of those fast followers was Samsung which dropped this phone first in its Home Market of South Korea in May of 2005 as the SC v740, the nent Tech blogosphere of the time reported on this phone as the razor reboot. It truly was by calling it by what appears to have been its code name blade.
Alas, by the time it came to the US in the spring of 2006, the blade would be forced to ditch its edgy nickname for Sprints more straight placed a900 that brought it in line with Sprints earlier A500, A600, Etc from a more sensible era, when a models Were topped here instead of entry level and the 900 really delivered there see the first Motorola Razer had to make all kinds of compromises to fit in its zelt casing: a very low res VGA camera, a muted display and a poultry 5 megab of storage. Not enough for an MP3 player, even if the phone had one the A9 00 beat the razor in all these areas. Even at this point, Samsung was already known for its excellence in displays and it knew how to show them off too, with a glossy Jelly Bean. Like aesthetic to the system menus that makes good use of the 262,000 color TFT LCD and bright enough for outdoor use, even in 2024 at least not a cloudy day, I love these little system animations too, and this drippy soundscape I mean. Could this be any more mid naughties, not content, to beat Motorola merely on the display Samsung endowed the a900, with a media player and about 50 Megs of storage, though this was only enough for roughly an album’s worth of MP3s at the time and buying Tunes from Sprint’S music store would rock at $ 2.50 per track in a time when iTunes was still only charging a buck a song. That’S probably why I have no memory of ever using the a900 music player, while my 30 gig IP video from the same year continues to Soldier on to this very day at least the media buttons made for a handy way to wake the cover display to Sprint The MP3 functionality was just one way: the a900 could drive power Vision, the suite of online features and services.
It used to set itself apart from competitors by leveraging its then Speedy, evdo Network up to 700 kilobits per second fast enough for Mobile TV. If you’ve got the pockets for it, sadly, the once trailblazing CDMA network that gave Sprint Its All Digital. All PCS marketing tagline was sunset by Sprint’s new owner T-Mobile in March of 2022, so my eBay, acquired a900 here has no network to which to call home on either of its two bands. Thankfully, my friends at Phone Scoop continue to earn their reputation for excellent archival skills, and you can still read their in-depth a900 review, which I’ll link in the description among the universal takeaways from reviews of the time appreciation for the removal able battery. Because you’d need more than one to make it through a day, but that was true of the Razer 2o. That’S already an impressive amount of dunking Samsung did on Motorola, especially considering the a900 was almost as Slim and also made of metal still a rarity. In those days with a hinge that snapped authoritatively, both open and shut, but where the blade really cut deep was, in the camera, a 1.3 megapixel unit that embarrassingly outclass the razer’s 3 megapixel shooter, while also packing a trick that Samsung had used to great effect on Its A600, you could spin it that meant. You could take easy selfies in an era before the term, it even made it to the mainstream on either the main screen or the cover display.
If this feels a lot like a modern foldable, flip phone yep, remember that Battlestar quote: we opened with the phone’s status and notification light doubled as a camera flash and as long as you remember, to keep that recessed camera lens free of the dust that inevitably accured Within you can actually get some decent photos for the time digital packrat that I am I happen to have a handful of picks. I shot on my own a900, some 18 years ago, I’ll share them right after this. If you’re tired of hearing about surf shark, I get it after all. The company has been my sponsor for 4 years, but if you think about it, that’s a good thing thing.
It means surf shark has done its job of keeping me and its customers safe. While browsing the web all over the world, you also might have noticed that I haven’t taken a sponsorship from any other VPN company since I started and that’s not because I can’t it’s because I haven’t felt the need to use anyone but surf shark. In addition to securing my connection on Wi-Fi networks all around the world, it also guarantees I can still access media and services that might otherwise be restricted by the country I’m browsing from. If that sounds useful to You, Secure your privacy with surf shark enter coupon code.
Mr mobile, for an extra 3 months free at Surf, shark. dealm mrmobile, a beautiful sky on a sad day, the view from my favorite seat at the dive bar bar. We went to because we could afford it and the only two clear photos of me as a Sprint phone salesman which, if you’re a subscriber you’ve, seen many many times all these were shot on my personal a900 in the waning years of my college career, and it Will come as no surprise to hear that they conjure a measure of nostalgia. I still remember the new feeling of Freedom that came with being able to Capture Moments Of My Life as they happen.
Despite having left my camera at home, watching the summer sunrise on a 3 and a half mile, walk home from the local dive bar in my Long Island, Hometown, then catching up on some of the Lost sleep in a backyard hammock later in the day, driving to Williamsburg Virginia for an audition in a Starbucks that would lead to a 5-year voiceover career and my eventual move to Boston birthday, lunches, tender moments behind the scenes. Shots actors reading their own reviews, spying on Friends, buying wedding bands for their secret engagement, but even without the emotional subtext encoded within each of these they’re notable just for the look and feel that places them in a very specific digital time. Back in norick.
At the annual Harbor Fest, the underexposure digital grain and borderline sepat tone grade just screams 2006 and if you thought, Samsung phones of the 2020s have shutter speed issues. I’M here to tell you it ain’t, a new problem at least automatic exposure and zoom have gotten better. This believe it or not is De leopard and a final salute to 06 there’s a dedicated option in the menu to upload pictures to a local retailer like rit’s camera or Long’s Drugs for printing.
So why do we remember the razor and not its Rival? Well, ultimately, phones like people are more than the sum of their parts, while the a900 was the superior phone in many ways, it was also second on the scene with a less iconic design and availability confined to a single, not very popular carrier. Motorola would also quickly follow up its original razor with a fully fleshed outline up of four-letter models swiftly, closing the feature Gap with Samsung, even as competitors like Sano arrived on the scene with even more Shameless derivatives like the katana and, most critically, of all dumb phones Were about to be done, Blackberry was exploding in popularity as it transitioned from Enterprise to a consumer Focus Palm was pushing through a last gasp of low margin, expansion before a big reinvention Windows. Mobile was bringing incredible capabilities to all kinds of form factors and yes, the iPhone would arrive in 2007 to drive home the point.
The original razor proved. You don’t have to do everything you just need to do a few important things well, at least to start with. So after a respectable year plus on shelves, the a900 got some price cuts and one last act as a spin-off phone for ESPN mobile under the moniker of Samsung Ace before quietly Fading Into history.
This is a cycle that’s due to start again as smartphones Plateau, just as their feature phone forbears did, and those of us still chasing the high of what’s next strain our eyes to see what might replace them in the meantime, I’ll continue to take what Comfort I Can from a time when cameras, spun, ringtones, rocked and phones were fun in case you missed it. Folks Samsung just launched another big deal of a phone, and I spent way too long in San Jose trying to cover it check out. Mr Mobile’s review of the Galaxy s24 Ultra right here on the channel and please subscribe if you want to see more videos like this as Samsung, is a subject of these videos by the way not a sponsor.
The company had no editorial input, copy approval or early preview of this video. The loan sponsor is surf shark until next time from Michael fiser, Captain two phones on threads thanks for watching and stay mobile. My friends .