Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “When Phones Were Fun: Motorola StarTAC (1996)”.
This video is sponsored by Surfshark. (, uplifting music ) To understand how this phone became one of the most popular of all time.. It helps to remember that not too long before its debut mobile phones were basically bricks with antennas.. So when the Motorola StarTAC hit the scene 25 years ago, with a footprint smaller than an audio cassette and a design straight out of Star Trek, it appended the entire industry, from clip-on accessories to unauthorized sequels, to lawsuits spawning knock-offs to branded companion products to bizarre revivals. As late as the mid aughts., It’s no exaggeration to say that the StarTAC launched the era of the fun phone..
Now I sourced a lot of StarTACs for this video, but this model 7868w Verizon, it’s a family, original. Yeah. This one belonged to my brother, the eponymous Blaikster from about 2000 to 2002. And, despite being over two decades old, it’s in remarkably good shape., Part of Motorola’s value proposition at the time was durability..
This was the same period. It was building phones for Nextel users who weren’t above using their phones as hammers., So Motorola made the StarTAC from the same tough plastic that doesn’t damage easily and hides it. Well, when it does., And unlike today, where it sometimes seems, companies will take any excuse to omit options., The StarTAC retained many standard features of its time.. The battery built into the flip was removable..
It came in several sizes and, depending on model, was one of the first lithium ion power packs to be used in mobile phones.. The 2.5 millimeter earphone jack was standard for an era. When bans on driving, while talking were just starting to hit the books. The antenna extended for ideal reception. And to tell you whether or not you had cellular coverage you had a service, LED that flashed green for service, yellow for roaming red for none. Fun. Fact. The TAC in the name stands for total area coverage, an acronym that goes all the way back to the DynaTAC of 1984..
Oh and while the ringtones are typical of the late nineties, aka soul, piercingly terrible. ( phone ringing ), The StarTAC was the first cell phone to give you an alternative. Yup. You know vibrate mode.
Well, you can thank Motorola for being the first company to bring it from pagers to cell phone. ( phone vibrating ). When you cram all those features into a package that even today, seems remarkably compact.. Well, it’s basically a license to print money..
The first StarTAC launched at an eye watering $ 1000, despite being an analog, only phone that could only handle voice calls.. Now, within about a year, prices came down as carrier partnerships were signed around the globe, resulting in over 60 million StarTACs being sold over next few years as digital variations hit. The market., My brother’s 7868w, was one of the CDMA versions for carriers like Verizon, but much more interesting to me are these anomalies from across the sea.. Now these are two different takes on the rainbow StarTAC model, which I teased in the intro as an unauthorized variant, because at first Motorola did not want it.
Made. ( upbeat music, ). This story comes to me from Ben Wood over at the Mobile Phone Museum.. Apparently, in 1996 Motorola’s European team had two things: a bunch of leftover plastic from a colorful phone called the Motorola Flare and inspiration in the form of Volkswagen’s limited run Harlequin from the same year..
The story goes that the European Motoroland’s asked Chicago headquarters. If they could use that surplus plastic to make a phone with this colorway. And when headquarters denied that permission well, the European team took the ad hoc Kirk approach..
The word too. The word is no. I am therefore going anyway. Yup, the folks at Motorola’s Easter inch plant in Scotland made it anyway., Despite the fact that it was more difficult to build, because the different color plastics had different durability. Characteristics., That’s why only one color configuration was offered.
And only on the cheapest StarTech 70, with its inferior display and lighter weight build quality.. Nevertheless, it was eventually authorized and Motorola would go on to sell between 70,100 and 25,000 units. All during the summer in which it was released., So why does it appear as though I have both a rainbow StarTAC 70 and a rainbow StarTAC 130, because this one is counterfeit. Yup, the StarTAC legend is so widely worshiped., Even a quarter century later that a robust Market exists for fake StarTACs, of which this is one that’s also true of other vintage brands, such as the razor by the by..
So, as always, I urge you to be vigilant when shopping for mobile artifacts, like this., That same appetite for all things, StarTAC drove an absolute avalanche of accessories and branded tie-ins when the phone was still on shelves. I’Ll show you, those plus a knockoff so similar that Motorola sued Qualcomm over it. After a word from my sponsor.
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( upbeat music, ). Okay to understand this accessory, you need to understand the limitations of even late model StarTACs, like my brother’s. Sure you can customize the banner text even connect to the internet through a tiny browser, but for calendars reminders. Even a humble note, taking app no way you’re out of luck.
See in the early 2000’s if you needed that kind of functionality. Well, you typically carried a PDA like a Palm pilot. Motorola couldn’t fit that kind of functionality into the phone, but sensing an opportunity.. It built a PDA of its own that plugged into the StarTAC accessory port and ran on two big coin cell batteries.
With the clip on organizer, you could manage a calendar, keep a to do list and store a thousand contacts, even dial them directly from the organizer. Sure typing without a touch screen was an exercise in frustration, but it came with desktop software., Interactive CD RAM.. So you could do all that work on a windows – 95 PC., There’s not much more to this thing.. I just love how Motorola has approached to this early phase of smartphone development was to literally build a PDA that you could clip to the back of the phone..
It’S perfect. Other companies got in on the fun in weirder ways. StarTAC passion on Instagram sent over a pair of StarTAC calculators, which I guess were sold as novelty items..
Of course, everyone and their brother got into the belt clip case game, particularly shameful period in mobile phone fashion, A Folder over a piece of leather stuck together with this elastic mid band, so it could expand.. Then these would be get like kind of instantly. Ratty and dusty and stuff, and they didn’t hold their shape when they were.
Oh God, I there’s just nothing that would instantly cheapen a phone back in the day as putting it in one of these crappy cases.. Even this is brand new. This is brand new and it’s already just malformed misshapen lump. Whoop, let’s get rid of this.
And on the higher end, apparently Fossil Group licensed the StarTAC brand for us special edition wristwatch. And it doesn’t do anything special.. It’S literally just a watch dressing up as a phone and it’s possible.. It never went on sale and was only issued to Motorola employees.
But it’s just one of scores of examples demonstrating the pervasiveness of the StarTAC brand at the time and in a true snake eating its own tail kind of thing.. I probably don’t need to remind you that the StarTAC was the first phone to come close to replicating the flip-top communicator from the original Star Trek series of the sixties.. But you probably didn’t know this. When the props department had to devise a new communicator for Star Trek Enterprise, the then newest Star Trek spinoff in 2001, the signal and battery graphics on that communicator were copied directly from the Motorola time port, the StarTAC close cousin.. It’S a wonderful case of art, imitating life imitating art. Now one company that was acutely aware of the power of the StarTAC was Qualcomm. Yup, the very same company that makes millions of Snapdragon chips powering modern smartphones all over the world.
At one time made mobile phones itself. – And this was one of them., Eventually I’d love to do an entire episode on the Q phone, which was basically a showcase for Qualcomm’s, CDMA technology that powered Sprint and Verizon networks.. But for today the key takeaway is that the Q phone looked a lot like the StarTAC so much so that Motorola sued Qualcomm over it, calling the design quote an intentional effort to copy the design and to confuse consumers. Unquote. This spawned a series of additional suits and counter suits. And at pretty much every stage.. It was Qualcomm that prevailed with Judge Napoleon Jones dope name by the way, ruling, essentially that the phones were different enough and that Motorola was not entitled to a monopoly on the clamshell form factor..
Considering my own long history with excellent clamshells from other manufacturers., I got ta say I’m pretty glad this went the way it did., The StarTAC’s white hot glow would eventually fade, but that decline was reluctant and prolonged, with Motorola authorizing two spinoffs for the Korean market.. This one from 2004 and another as late as 2007. Yeah the same year, the first iPhone came out. Today, it’s an archaic, call back to old, even to be legally activated on a wireless network, utterly unusable in a text and data first world but 25 years ago.
It’S no exaggeration to say that the StarTAC changed the nature of the mobile phone.. I was able to speak with Motorola engineer Glenn Schultz, whose first big project at the company was the StarTAC. And the thing that he told me that stuck out was that on his first day he was placed with a mentor at Motorola, who kind of pulled him Aside and said, look if you remember one thing remember this: nothing we do here is easy.. Everything is hard. And personally, I think a big part of the reason Motorola continues to endure in a very competitive market despite multiple takeovers is that it keeps doing the work. Despite the work being incredibly difficult, like cramming a folding screen into a rebooted razor for the 2020s., That’s one of the things that cements a legacy being the kind of company that then and now keeps phones fun. Special thanks to Ben Wood of the Mobile Phone Museum. Mobilephonemuseum.Com and also to David Chow to Blaikster StarTAC passion on Instagram, who sold me a ton of this stuff. And Motorola, which arranged that interview with Mr. Schultz., As always, Motorola had no editorial input into or early preview of this content and provided no payment in exchange.
For its production., Hey, if you owned a StarTAC, share your memories down in the comments. I’d love to hear them. Until next time., Thanks for watching and remember, to stay, safe and mask up when you’re around others.
As you stay mobile, my friends .