1. Motorola DynaTAC 8000X
The Motorola DynaTAC 8000x, aka the “brick phone”, became the first commercial cellular phone to receive FCC approval on September 21, 1983, making it the oldest cell phone ever in the world. Motorola had produced mobile phones for cars for several decades and wanted to develop portable mobile technology.
A prototype that is the predecessor of the Motorola DynaTAC was completed in 1973 and it was able to make a phone call.
Over the next decade, Motorola spent more than $100 million developing the Motorola DynaTAC, which was finally released to the public in 1984.
By today’s standards, the Motorola DynaTAC was heavy, large, and kind of a pain to use. It took 10 hours to charge and could only make calls for up to 60 minutes.
Despite all this, there was a waiting list to buy the Motorola DynaTAC and this legendary cell phone set off decades of innovation, research, and development that led to today’s smartphones.
2. Motorola MicroTAC 9800X
The Motorola MicroTAC 9800X was the world’s first semi-flip phone and was Motorola’s solution to the heaviness and large size of its earlier DynaTAC models. Initially, the mouthpiece was on the part of the phone that flipped down, but it was moved to the base of the phone.
This iconic phone influenced the design of every flip phone that came out on the market in the following decades.
The MicroTAC was 9 inches (23 cm) long when open and weighed in 12.3 ounces (350 g) and had a slim battery. The phone was small enough to fit into a shirt pocket. Motorola released several different version of the MicroTAC until it was succeeded by the Motorola StarTAC in 1996.
