Razr phone gets iTunes-lite

Motorola has announced an upgrade to its hit RAZR mobile phone that features the crippled version of Apple's iTunes software.

The mobile iTunes was announced to great fanfare in September, but to date, is only available on one device - Motorola's ROKR E1. However the ROKR spent so long in development that its specifications fall far behind what's considered the leading edge today, causing some wags to nickname it 'the CROCKR'. Early indications suggested that even with a large advertising campaign behind it from Cingular, interest in the $249 phone has been tepid.

While the mobile version of iTunes syncs perfectly with its PC or Mac version, the phone is limited to carrying 100 songs at any one time.

The new RAZR V3i looks the same as its predecessor, but features a 1.2 megapixel camera, up from the VGA camera in current versions, and a micro-SD flash slot.

If Apple and Motorola are serious about phones as a digital music player, they need to shape up fast. Thanks to a single-chip design, Nokia is able to push today's high-end Symbian smartphones down into the midrange next year, and features like WiFi are standard across next year's N series and E series models. More importantly, Nokia is determined to allow users to share their songs and playlists over a personal area network connection using WiFi or Bluetooth - something that Apple is extremely reluctant to do. As the cheeky graphic nicely illustrates.®