Motorola RAZR2 V9 Ferrari Special Edition
By Derek Fung on 29 August 2008
There's nothing technically wrong with RAZR2 V9 Ferrari Special Edition but if you want to Ferrari-fie your phone there are cheaper and better ways of doing it. For free.
- Good: Super thin phone • It's actually not a bad device ...
- Bad: ... but it's a cynical piece of cross-branding
- Specs: Flip • Bluetooth, Next G, 3G • 45 MB • Numerical keypad • See more specifications
- RRP: AU$629.00 • Where to buy? Check price listings
Design
When Motorola gave us the RAZR V3 oh so many moons ago it was the must have phone. It was slim, sexy and metallic. Topping it off it had not one colour screen but two colour screens. For a while the orders poured in and Motorola found itself wallowing in vast vats of cash. But after three years and countless derivatives, including the hideously gaudy Dolce and Gabbana version, last year Motorola finally coughed up a successor, the RAZR2 V9.
It's a nice looking phone, slimmer than ever before, but, for a world caught in the stampede to the latest touchscreen creation from the house of Apple, it wasn't enough to re-capture the zeitgeist. So, Motorola has gone back to its tried and true tactic and given us the Ferrari Special Edition.
So what does the extra US$89 over the standard RAZR2 V9 give you? Well it's piano black for one and there are red highlights on the lovely metallic keypad. There's a chequered pattern on the front posing, we guess, as imitation carbon fibre. A similar pattern adorns the rear battery cover and is presumably there to remind us about finishing flags or some such. Naturally there's a plethora of Ferrari material scattered around the place, like the Ferrari prancing horse shield on the back, ringtones and a set of animated wallpapers and screensavers. But the pièce de résistance are the sounds of Ferraris whooshing by every time the phone is started up or turned off — this should give everyone fair warning that there's a Ferrari fanatic in their vicinity.
Features and Performance
We could live with all this Ferrari showmanship if this phone delivered in one of two key areas: enhanced features and performance, or Ferrari-led design. Alas this phone has neither. It is, for all intents and purposes, apart from the cosmetic differences we've listed above, the same as other Motorola RAZR2 V9s.
Conclusion
So for your hard earned you get a good 3G phone — for a more complete run down of the ins and outs of the RAZR2 V9, read our review of the original phone — but one that doesn't do anything to justify the price increase over run-of-the-mill RAZR2s.
Unfortunately this phone is a damning indictment on what's wrong with Motorola at the moment: a company bereft of any ideas or creativity that can do little at the moment but relive past glories and slap other more successful brands on its own products in the vain hope that it will somehow bask in its reflected glory. Little wonder then that the company lost US$1.2 billion last year. What's even sadder is that Ferrari let itself be used in such a manner. Thanks to the wealthy playboys in Russia, the Middle East and China, the Maranello firm is not suffering a liquidity crisis, so it has no good excuse for putting its name to such a money grubbing venture.
If you're a Ferrari tragic and just have to show your love for the prancing horse on your mobile device, download some Ferrari wallpapers — there are plenty available on the Ferrari website — and install them on your phone. You can even do it on a normal RAZR2 V9.
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