Deconstructing Product Design

StarTAC Mobile Phone

Motorola, 1996

1. The StarTAC, TAC for “total area coverage,” is the progenitor of the revolutionary RAZR. The phone boasted a number of innovations — smallest and lightest phone of the time, first clamshell design, first mobile phone to have a vibrate option — and, like the RAZR, was frequently seen in the hands of the affluent and celebrity elite. The StarTAC was the flagship product for Motorola in the late 1990s, and the company believed the product would herald a new era of growth and success in wireless technology. Robert Weisshappel, former head of the Cellular Phone Division, comments: “The goal of Motorola has always been to take technology to the next level. Hence, we develop lightweight phones with longer talk ...