Fold-school: the Motorola StarTAC
was the original clamshell kingSTUFF PROMOTION
After introducing the flip phone to the masses, and more than 15 years since the first
Razr took the world by storm, Motorola has rebooted its icon for a new generation
LIVING ON
THE EDGE
1
996 was a hell of
a year. Britpop was
at its peak, with
Oasis playing to
250,000 people over two rowdy
nights at Knebworth House in
Hertfordshire; at the pictures,
Trainspotting had everybody
hooked and proved British cinema
could go toe-to-toe with the
Hollywood big boys; and at
Wembley, England came closer
than ever to finally bringing
football home.
It was also a year of some
significant endings – Take That
split up, and Charles and Diana
got divorced – but there were new
beginnings too. The radio waves
carried the sounds of the Spice
Girls’ first single, Wannabe; Dolly
the sheep became the planet’s
first cloned mammal; and in
January, a new era began at
Motorola with the launch of
the StarTAC – the world’s first
clamshell mobile phone.
It’s easy to forget that, until
the StarTAC came along, mobile
phones were not neat, pocket-
friendly devices – they were
clunky, unwieldy things with huge
antennas and chunky keypads. But
the StarTAC set Motorola – and
the tech industry as a whole – on
a path towards a world where your
choice of phone was as much afashion statement as a way of
keeping in touch.
Of course, it wasn’t just Motorola
making a new start in 1996. That
November also saw the first issue
of Stuff hit the shelves – and it’s
hard to think of a pair that are
better suited. Since the beginning,
we’ve had a passion for gadgets
that combine innovative thinking
with gotta-have-it desirability...
and one that encapsulates that
ethos better than any other is the
original Motorola Razr.No sacrifice
While the trend among phones
in recent years has been for
bigger screens and more capable
cameras, in the early ’00s it was
all about shrinkage. Back then,
mobiles were for calling and
texting and not much more, soInternal affairs
Inside the new Razr you
get a 2.2GHz octa-core
Snapdragon 710 CPU,
6GB of RAM and 128GB
of built-in storage, with an
uncluttered version of
Android 9.manufacturers focused all of their
efforts on making them as slim and
pocketable as possible – and the
original Razr, which had people
queuing up outside shops in 2004,
absolutely nailed it.
“I think what made that product
revolutionary at the time was the
fact it was a fashion statement,”
says Ruben Castrano, Motorola’s
head of design, who joined the
company just months after the
original Razr was launched. “It took
a functional device that served a
very simple purpose and made it
beautiful and desirable.”
The use of aerospace-grade
aluminium immediately set
the Razr apart from the plastic
handsets that people were used
to, plus its slimline chassis meant
that it more than lived up to its
name. Crucially, it also made
no sacrifices when it came to
functionality, with a large metal
keypad to cater for the rise in
the popularity of texting and a
bigger screen to take advantage
of the emerging mobile internet
and multimedia.
The fact you could snap it
shut to end calls with a satisfying
flourish was an added bonus; and
with celebrity fans including David
Beckham and Bono, this was soon
the only phone to be seen with.
The Razr’s reign lasted longer than