The end of the RAZR®

My wife is finally gonna give up on her ancient Motorola RAZR® cellphone (at left).
It’s almost four years old — maybe five.
Anyone hip to recent cellphone technology knows the RAZR® is an antique.
We thought the world of it when we got them. They were such a step up from what we had.
As you can tell, yrs trly had one too, at first.
But it got dunked, so had to be tossed.
That was the time I learned the value of backing up my contact-list.
I had to completely reconstruct my contact-list on my replacement phone.
At that time Verizon, our cellphone service, wanted money to back up.
Now they don’t.
Even when they wanted money, which wasn’t much, I backed up.
My replacement phone wasn’t a RAZR®, but it was close enough.
Verizon no longer sold the RAZR®, and cellphone technology had caught up.
By the RAZR® I had been through three previous cellphones.
The RAZR® was number-four, a quantum-leap from number-three.
My replacement got dunked too.
I replaced with a phone identical to the dunked replacement.
And of course it was slam-dunk easy, since my contact-list had been backed up.
Then replacement two began to go wonky.
It wouldn’t recharge.
Finally it ran out of volts and died.
Meanwhile my hairdresser had shown me his Droid® Smartphone.
It looked interesting, so I upgraded to a DroidX to replace my dead cellphone.
In other words, my DroidX probably would have replaced my RAZR had my RAZR not been dunked..
Meanwhile, my wife continued to use her RAZR.
She had no interest in a Smartphone.
She also had no interest in a non-Smartphone upgrade, since it would probably mean learning operation of the upgrade, which might be different from the RAZR.
But the battery in her RAZR is original, and it’s getting flaky.
It won’t hold much charge.
Verizon no longer sells the RAZR.
We could replace the battery, but why bother? Cellphones don’t last forever.
And the RAZR is an antique.
We visited a local Verizon store yesterday (Friday, August 5, 2011), and perused various basic phones they had for $99 or more.
“But we just got this flyer that has a basic phone in it for $10.”
“Well, that’s online; ya gotta go online to get a $10 phone.
After you get it, ya bring it here, we activate it, and set it up.”
So back home.
My wife visited the Verizon site last night, where she can get 89 bazilyun basic phones for free.
“NOW WHAT!”
A phone-purchase has to be done from my account, since we have a family plan.
Plus I got an e-mail from Verizon suggesting we upgrade her phone. It supplied a surfeit of samples.
Replacing her RAZR is turning into a hairball.
Thankfully, as I see it, cellphone operation is pretty much standard across the board. I think it has to be — legally.
My replacements were all identical to my RAZR; my RAZR was different than previous cellphones.