📱 Motorola RAZR V3 — Object No. 010

The Motorola RAZR V3 was announced on 27 July 2004 and reached U.S. shelves that autumn through Cingular at $450 with service. Its pitch was visible before it was technical: an anodized-aluminum clamshell, a metal-etched keypad, and a profile about half an inch thick. 123

The specification sheet is more modest: a 2.2-inch, 176 × 220 display, 5.5 MB of storage, a VGA camera, Bluetooth 1.2, mini-USB, and a removable 680 mAh battery. The original RAZR made those ordinary features feel like an accessory. CNET describes its silhouette as the spark for a thin-phone revolution; the RAZR2 arrived in 2008 as the line's next shape. 45

A $450 launch price is about $793 in July 2026 purchasing power: $450 × (332.813 ÷ 188.908), using the FRED CPI-U all-items series sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The comparison is approximate; it measures general purchasing power, not what a phone with the same capabilities would cost today. 67

The final card is an editorial reconstruction of a circa-2005 use scene, showing the RAZR as personal communication that was also meant to be seen.

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