Motorola lays off another 4,000

Motorola has announced another round of layoffs - 4,000 to add to the 3,500 jobs it slashed in January. The first lot are on schedule to be off the premises by the end of June, while the new round will take until the end of the year to clear their desks. The cuts are an attempt to get the company back into profitability. …

[Stewart Cunningham]

Old Razr Firmware

If their previous incarnation hadn’t been so appalling then they might not be having problems shifting the new ones. They still haven’t fixed the firmware to stop the constant freezing, turning off and “Please Wait” messages on my current phone so why should I trust them with my next one?

Whats worse is that everyone at the nearby motorola tech support knows about it and seem to have no power to get it fixed

[Daniel Dainty]

...and nobody's surprised!

I had a Motorola once - the v3x. "One of the most powerful 3G phones on the market". Massive megapixel camera. Huge resolution screen. Haptics vibration features. Stereo speakers on the phone. Best of all, it looked sexy and had blue LED lighting.

Three weeks later, I sent it back and got a Nokia. Why? Because the text message application crashed. It was too clever; it learnt words that I used frequently. But if I used one key combination to type two different words with equal frequence it would surprise me with which one it would put on the screen.

Take any other phone, and you know that when you press 63 you get "of" and then you can change it to "me" - the Motorola would see which word you have used more and would display that one first. So I'd need to wait for the phone to display what I've typed on the screen (I haven't seen a use for a keyboard buffer since Windows 3.1) and then I'd have to alter it.

Also, I have a big phone book. Huge. I've been using mobiles since I was 15, and it's a good few years on from there. I've taken most contacts with me, and the synchronisation software had quite a problem with taking a contact (with DOB, photo, email addresses, postal addresses, etc) and either filtering what it can't handle or storing it all on the phone.

Once I did get it all on the phone, and the phone book application failed to load.

So, I sent it back, received my Nokia, installed the software, synchronised my entire phone book no questions asked, and have been a happy Nokia fan ever since.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of quality will always kill you in the end.

When will companies learn that no matter how flashy the package, if the important guts are low quality and the software isn't stable, eventually consumers wise up and quit buying the junk you're selling.

I'm reminded of another company that sells crap wrapped in a pretty skin...Chrysler. How many times have they almost gone out of business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Razr is only good for slashing your wrists

I have a Razr and suffer from the the weekly (or more) white screen of death - usually at the most inconvenient times. I know I can never get back the time I spend watching the "Please Wait" message, but I know I won't make the same mistake again - buying a Motorola phone.

I decided to check for a firmware update recently and found nothing, my friends see similar issues, so Moto must have their head in a bucket of sand if they don't know about it.

To finish things off, they should really understand what an intuitive software interface and menus are really like. (hint: buy a Nokia and play with it). Configuring it can be a maze, and that's if it lets you configure the things you want. (e.g. going to silent mode using the side buttons without making really loud sounds)

Their hardware people seem to be up to the task, but the software people leave a bit to be desired.

[Nexox Enigma]

RE: Lack of quality will always kill you in the end.

My bet is that they'll learn once the majority of consumers gain the ability to differentiate between low and high quality, and learn to withhold their cash for low quality products. So 'Never' is a good estimate.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you get for a human rights violation...

...otherwise known as the load of bollocks they call a user interface, three skins which can't be added to that include colours like flourescent bile green, and a resolution that reminds one of lego. Did I mention multitap? Rather stick five fingers in my arse...

Word of advice, now you know you have a decent industrial designer, go pay the extra five quid and get a bloody UI developer. Probably get a two for one deal.

Only would Motorola be arrogant enough to think that they could keep slapping lipstick on that five year old pig of an operating system. Eventually people figure these things out you know...