On the phone with my sister and my phone keeps cutting out on me.  All of a sudden it shorts big time and my call drops.  I try to call back but none of the damn keys on the stupid thing work above the row of 4.  Well I have just absolutely had it with Motorola and Verizon.  This is the 3rd Razr V3C I have had as a replacement.

Man back in the day when the first iteration was released on October 2005, this phone was the shiznit.  It put Motorola on the map.  Freaking PC World listed this damn phone #12 in “The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years.”  Can you believe that?  There was nothing out there like it.  This damn thing sold for $600 dollars with a contract and $800 without.  So yeah, when you guys complain about the new iPhone wah wah it costs so much, wah!  This was only 3-4 years ago man how quickly you guys forget.  Just think about this P.O.S and its initial cost!  This was THE fashion cell phone to have.  You can read all about the nifty background story and the thousand variants and colors here at Wikipedia.

They made so many variants of this thing with only tiny adjustments like colors, screen sizes, and media features just to reclaim that initial innovative.  All they really was just milk the crap outta that cash cow, slaughter it, and feed it to the golden goose who was later eaten by the dead beaten horse.  It didn’t matter though, no matter the tweaking, they will not come back to that original blockbuster public acclaimed release.  That hasn’t stopped them from blaming everyone but the idiots in charge at that company.  Laying off their design team, read here, and cutting their R&D team, read here.  What could you expect them to come up with when those in charge of making new products were put out on the street.

At any rate, enough with the history lesson.  The thing that pissed me off was that this was the third damn phone I have gone through.  I said enough of this crap and took it apart to see what the HELL was going on here.

Well to my surprise I find a fully exposed coper connection almost the full length of the flex cable as well as a connector pad which has tiny contact points for which to communicate.  This was done on purpose, I mean it had to be because this is a pressed/printed.  However, having the copper exposed like that?  Here is the relacement part.  Here is what happens when you leave copper exposed with no oxidation protection:

I am not an engineer okay, but I can see no other reason to do this than to design this product to fail.

Now let me be clear, I don’t recommend nor condone taking apart your cellphone and take no responsibility in your own actions.  So don’t be a dumb ass, be smart and just ask for the phone to be replaced or fixed under warranty.

In the interest in Science and cause I am a tech head, I wanted to see if I could fix it myself.  Now, I am prally sure there is a fancy dancy cleaner for oxidation on copper, but having done this before, I made a solution using equal parts white vinegar, distilled water, and salt.  I am not really sure this is recommended but this is what they use to clean copper pans and appliances.  This stuff instantly took off the oxidation with no residual damage.  Oh and here is a tangent, I found this cool video of cleaning your computer with vinegar:

I am sure it will make it smell like crap and I am not sold on using it on my screen.  Anyway, so after cleaning off the oxidation, I put the cell phone back together and ….  BOOM TADA!  It works like a champ and shows none of the problems I was having before.

Freaking P.O.S phone, thats just bad design, I mean really WTF people.  I don’t wanna hear “oh you dropped it in water” or “it got wet”, I tell you what, this thing has been taken care of like a queen okay.  Humans sweat, and even just a little is just enough to get this to start oxidation over the course of a year.  Just enough time to be out of warranty and for you to need to buy a new one.

As if it wasn’t the only thing to hate on this phone!  The fact that Verizon locked all the cool stuff this phone is capable of like blue tooth file transfer, making an overlay menu which makes this phone crazy slow to navigate, etc.  I am sure they did this so you have to pay Verizon for a MMS message to get your photos off this thing.  If you don’t have a plan with MMS included, its like 3 bucks per MMS!!!  Oh and even when it was brand new, talk time of only 3 hours!  More like 1.5 hours in my real experience, and now about 5 minutes on this year old battery.

I HATE this phone!  I cant wait till this weekend when I replace it with a iPhone 3G.  I am off this ride you hear that Motorola and Verizon!  Enough with the nickel and diming!  Enough of your crap phones which prove you have no sense of the market, don’t listen or care about your clients, and which show your lack of innovation by your constant recycling of old boring crap to the public!

When I get that iPhone, I swear … I SWEAR!  I am going to crush this RAZR with a sledge hammer!