Motorola StarTAC
A Star Trek communicator finally landed in your hand — the Motorola StarTAC flipped open and changed what everyone thought a phone should be. At 88 grams and a $1,000 price tag, it was impossibly small and impossibly cool.
Motorola released the StarTAC on January 3, 1996 at $1,000 — a flipping, futuristic wedge that was the smallest and lightest cell phone up to that point, at just 88 grams (3.1 ounces). It wasn't technically the world's first clamshell, but it was the first flip phone that mattered, a form factor straight out of the 1960s Star Trek playbook: you snapped it open, you talked, you snapped it shut. Motorola marketed it as a "wearable" phone — something tiny enough to clip to your belt and carry like jewelry.
It looked like the future had already arrived, and the industry spent years catching up to it. In 2005, PC World named the StarTAC the 6th Greatest Gadget of the Past 50 Years, and the Motorola RAZR V3 — the next phone everyone had to have — is considered its spiritual successor, carrying forward the StarTAC's core idea: a phone could be sleek, foldable, and aspirational all at once.
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