New Moto Fones and CDMA Slvr

Just a day after Motorola announced to its wildly successful Razr V3 cell phone, the company ended its Chicago analysts' meeting by unveiling even more ultrathin handsets. Designed for emerging markets and first-time mobile buyers, the Fone series (Motorola really needs to work on its naming convention) is styled after the Slvr candy bar phone, which the company brought to Cingular earlier this year. Of course, the emphasis here is all about design. Both versions in the series measure just 0.35 inches thick, which is trimmer than both the Slvr and the Samsung SGH-T509. That's a bit impressive, yes, but I think the race for the world's thinnest phone is getting out of hand.

The Fone series comes in both GSM and CDMA versions. Both models offer a set of solidly low-end features including a speakerphone, polyphonic ring tones, and voice prompts. There's no camera or digital music player here; even the color display was thrown out. The new Fone series is supposed to be part of the company's Scpl line, which Moto announced at CES this year.

And finally, on a related note, Motorola also announced the long-rumored CDMA version of the Slvr. Called the Slvr L7c, it will offer a VGA camera, Bluetooth, a MicroSD card slot, speakerphone, and an MP3 player. We'll see this phone on Verizon most likely, but a formal release date was not announced.