There is, notes Angela, something about cell phones that just makes people want to customize, individualize, and otherwise mess with them. It probably has something to do with the way people adopt them as quasi-mascots, or perhaps it's because any device through which one conducts so many personal interactions tends to feel a bit, well, personal.
Whatever the reason, handset makers are beginning to get wise to this, viewing phones as both fashion objects and utility goods. A number of them have introduced models that stand out from the crowd in silly ways--but, as Angela puts it, it's an interesting form of silly.
Flip phones are the popular form these days, and the Motorola Moto Razr V3 is, Steve says, the phone equivalent of the old saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. There's a candy bar (non-flip) version (the SLVR V8, not available for review at show time), which is about the thickness of a Hershey's bar; in either case, snorts Angela, it's an anorexic little device.
Besides, fashion is fickle: just when the Razr makes its bid to be the last word in fashionable phones, along comes the Nokia 7280. At least the Razr announces itself, visually speaking, as a phone; the 7280, with its mirror, its camera lens, and its odd sliding mechanism, does no such thing. (Camera? Compact? You'll have to explain this one to friends before they'll be suitably impressed, the Duo suspect.) You key in numbers and messages with an IPod-like scroll wheel--a solution that looks bizarre but, the Duo admit, isn't too bad in practice. But after pricing the device at $500 (at show time), Angela won't go near the thing, while Steve demurs that it wouldn't match his laptop bag. (Face it: some episodes are just snarkier than others. This is one of the snarky ones.)
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