In today’s digital age, it sometimes feels like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives our devices. Button of the Month is a monthly column that explores the physical pieces of our phones, tablets, and controllers that we interact with every day.
Located on the upper left side of the keypad, the internet button was emblazoned with a blue globe and would open the Razr’s built-in internet browser. The problem, of course, was that in the heady days of 2007, when I first got a cellphone, I didn’t pay for data. Which meant that pressing the button was a recipe for getting hit with dreaded overage fees.
The Razr’s internet button was aspirational. It’s hard to remember it now, when the Razr is viewed as the ultimate expression of the feature phone. It was the final, soaring high of the era before smartphones would take over, with the iPhone and Android phones debuting just a few years later. At the timea two-year contract; the same price that the “entry-level” model of the original iPhone would charge when it debuted in 2007.