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T-Mobile Gets The Razr2 V8

Richard Baguley Published on October 16, 2007 Comment on this

16th Oct 07 – T-Mobile became the last of the major carriers to jump on the Razr2 bandwagon today, with the appearance of the Motorola Razr2 V8 in their online store. Their version of the Razr2 is priced at $249.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate

T-Mobile decided to go with the V8 version of the Razr2, making them the only carrier to do so (AT&T offer the V9, while Sprint and Verizon offer the V9m). The major differences are 2GB of internal memory and no 3G radio. The former is an interesting choice; replacing the memory card slot with internal memory does make the phone a more attractive package, but it can't be expanded or swapped out . However, it may not be that much of a selling point, as a 2GB micro SD card currently costs about $25, so users looking to store significant amounts of music and video can do so on the other Razr2 models without spending much more.

The lack of 3G is no big surprise: T-Mobile does not currently have a 3G network, although they are rumored to be rolling one out shortly. If they do, the V8 won't be compatiable with it; T-Mobile's 3G network will run on frequencies that are not supported by the V8. It is, however, a quad-band GSM phone, so it will work with GSM networks worldwide. T-Mobile claims a talk time of up to 8 hours, and a standby time of up to 11 days.

There are also a few differences between the hardware of the V8 and the V9 models; the V8 has a 500Mhz processor, while the V9 has a slower 255MHz model. T-Mobile is also the only carrier to use Motorola's own Motomagx OS; the other carriers replaced this with their own OSes to offer a more consistent user experience across phones. Our experience with these proprietary Oses (such as the one found on the Verizon V9m and the Sprint V9m was mixed; we found that the hardware was often held back by the limitations of these proprietary operating systems. However, we will have to wait for our full review before we can see if Motorola's own OS improves on these.

The T-Mobile V8 is available now for $249, after a $100 instant savings rebate and a $50 mail-in rebate.