- 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.
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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 gotta 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.