My dad had the bag phone, but the bag itself sat on a shelf in the closet. The handset was mounted to the dashboard of his truck, so we used the term "car phone" rather than "bag phone."
The Evolution of Motorola Phones
21–30 of 49 posts
Re: The Evolution of Motorola Phones
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The period when Google owned Motorola was very interesting. The Moto G was a great budget device that I think was killed by carriers who wanted to push $1000 phablets that required consumers to finance them.
The moto g's continue to be great budget(ish ~200 new) devices. They're the last two phones I've bought, the first lasted ~3 years before I broke it, still good enough for the internet at large when I did. Replaced it with a G8 a couple years ago, still going strong. Minimal fucking with android, microsd slot, magnetic compass, enough battery to last a weekend if you're careful.
Moto G Power lasts for days and costs $150 unlocked. I got one for one of my kids and it's been incredible. Thinking of getting one for myself. The difference in features between it and a $1000 flagship just aren't that noticeable anymore. And battery is the number one differentiator for any device now.
Re: The Evolution of Motorola Phones
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish the CEO's had been right. Keyboards > touchscreens. The iPhone allowed normies to ruin everything. Instead of programs, we have apps. Instead of websites, we have walled gardens. Instead of bbs systems and forums, we have IG, Facebook and TikTok. Blame the normies. Edit: Your downvotes mean nothing to me. I've seen what makes you upvote.
The only problem is nobody knows how to make a useful keyboard that fits in my pocket. I hate touch screens in general, but a phone in my pocket is useful in many situations where I wouldn't bring a keyboard.
I got to play with an HP Veer circa 2011, a phone the size of a credit card, specifically to try out the keyboard (specifically, I remember visiting this website).
It was a far better typing experience than the iPhone SE ever was. Tactile feedback was solid, shockingly so.
Re: The Evolution of Motorola Phones
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The moto g's continue to be great budget(ish ~200 new) devices. They're the last two phones I've bought, the first lasted ~3 years before I broke it, still good enough for the internet at large when I did. Replaced it with a G8 a couple years ago, still going strong. Minimal fucking with android, microsd slot, magnetic compass, enough battery to last a weekend if you're careful.
Moto G Power lasts for days and costs $150 unlocked. I got one for one of my kids and it's been incredible. Thinking of getting one for myself. The difference in features between it and a $1000 flagship just aren't that noticeable anymore. And battery is the number one differentiator for any device now.
Camera is a bit shit (by 2020 standards) but that's my only complaint (my current phone is the g8 power) and that might be fixable with a different camera app.
Re: The Evolution of Motorola Phones
#25Cool to see, I used this one for some years: [0], specifically because it was a Linux phone. That fact never had any impact on the use of it, sadly, I was expecting some hackability back then, while the openmoko remained vaporware...
[0] https://phonesdata.com/en/smartphones/motorola/a780-892/
Re: The Evolution of Motorola Phones
#26It's not talked about much, but RAZR was a skunk works program inside of Moto started by a small group of engineers independent of management. By that point the company had been largely taken over by cost cutting style management. Lean/6 Sigma was everywhere, and pretty much all research/innovation centres were being shut down. C level was incredibly incompetent. Ed Zander, the most incompetent choice of all, was app…
I wish the CEO's had been right. Keyboards > touchscreens. The iPhone allowed normies to ruin everything. Instead of programs, we have apps. Instead of websites, we have walled gardens. Instead of bbs systems and forums, we have IG, Facebook and TikTok. Blame the normies. Edit: Your downvotes mean nothing to me. I've seen what makes you upvote.
My brother, any time I see someone use 'normie' unironically, I automatically stop listening to what they have to say. 'smart' phones prior to the iphone were terrible from a user experience point of view.
Re: The Evolution of Motorola Phones
#27This is mostly OT, but I really miss smaller phones. I found my old iphone 3g the other day, and I realized it was the perfect size for a smart phone. I really like motorolla, but their phones have become hulking monstrosities...
Re: The Evolution of Motorola Phones
#28It's not talked about much, but RAZR was a skunk works program inside of Moto started by a small group of engineers independent of management. By that point the company had been largely taken over by cost cutting style management. Lean/6 Sigma was everywhere, and pretty much all research/innovation centres were being shut down. C level was incredibly incompetent. Ed Zander, the most incompetent choice of all, was app…
I guess the huge leap of capacitive touch over previous technologies is kind of a footnote, but definitely bears mentioning here. Probably CEOs/COOs would have been plenty familiar with resistive touch which was much worse technology before 2007.
Gamecom, Palm, Casio would have employed this virtually unusable stuff, and the very idea of a touchscreen might have still seemed funny, if you hadn't have tried it yet.
Re: The Evolution of Motorola Phones
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only problem is nobody knows how to make a useful keyboard that fits in my pocket. I hate touch screens in general, but a phone in my pocket is useful in many situations where I wouldn't bring a keyboard.
I got to play with an HP Veer circa 2011, a phone the size of a credit card, specifically to try out the keyboard (specifically, I remember visiting this website). It was a far better typing experience than the iPhone SE ever was. Tactile feedback was solid, shockingly so.
The Veer's keyboard really worked well. The small screen was problematic for many sites, sure, and not having a good browser hurt it a lot (and especially the bugs, like reloading a webpage on first touch after inactivity, which means reloading it immediately after a long load time...). But the keyboard makes me want to use it again.
Re: The Evolution of Motorola Phones
#30It's not talked about much, but RAZR was a skunk works program inside of Moto started by a small group of engineers independent of management. By that point the company had been largely taken over by cost cutting style management. Lean/6 Sigma was everywhere, and pretty much all research/innovation centres were being shut down. C level was incredibly incompetent. Ed Zander, the most incompetent choice of all, was app…
I wish the CEO's had been right. Keyboards > touchscreens. The iPhone allowed normies to ruin everything. Instead of programs, we have apps. Instead of websites, we have walled gardens. Instead of bbs systems and forums, we have IG, Facebook and TikTok. Blame the normies. Edit: Your downvotes mean nothing to me. I've seen what makes you upvote.
I'm sort of on the fence on that one still. The web is a fucking mess these days and the well developed apps are quite refreshing in comparison to half baked piles of excrement web offerings from the big technology companies and open source ecosystem.
What I really want is Gopher and a few well engineered portable native apps that aren't supported by advertising hegemonies.
Oh and nothing freedesktop has gone anywhere near.