Motorola MicroTAC

The Motorola MicroTAC was a cellular phone first manufactured as an analog version in 1989. GSM-compatible and TDMA/Dual-Mode versions were introduced in 1994. The MicroTAC introduced an innovative new "flip" design, where the "mouthpiece" folded over the keypad, although the "mouthpiece" was actually located in the base of the phone, along with the ringer. This set the standard and became the model for modern flip phones today. Its predecessor was the much larger Motorola DynaTAC and it was succeeded by the Motorola StarTAC in 1996. "TAC" was an abbreviation of Total Area Coverage in all three models.

The MicroTAC, released by Motorola on April 25, 1989, was the smallest and lightest phone available at the time. Upon its release, it made headlines across the world. The phone was released as the "MicroTAC Pocket Cellular Telephone." The first MicroTACs were known as the Motorola 9800X, a continuation of the numerical name Motorola gave their phones in the 1980s. The MicroTAC was designed to fit into a shirt pocket. These very rare phones featured a black plastic housing and a red 8-character dot-matrix LED display, which was able to show more information than the display of its predecessor, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. However, dot-matrix displays of the time were still quite limited by today's standards. The inside of the flip piece had the "Motorola" logo on a diagonal, above thin blue diagonal lines. The badge on the front flip had a raised metallic Motorola logo, and "Micro T.A.C" in small blue letters above the display. The "micro" sized phone measured as long as over 9 inches (23 cm) long when open and weighed in 12.3 ounces (350 g) with the slim battery. The phone incorporated a built-in alpha-numeric phone book as one of the many standard features. A numerically organized menu allowed the user to select options for phone operations. Some of the many options included security codes, two phone number operations, a charge rate and currency calculator, secretarial memory scratchpads, hands-free operation, keypad tones, memory protection, phone number and name storage, as well as cellular system operation options.

In addition to the standard 12-button keypad, the MicroTAC had buttons for Power, Function, Name/Menu, End, Send, Clear, Store, and Recall. The left side of the phone featured two buttons for adjusting the volume up and down. While in alpha mode, the volume buttons toggled between upper-case and lower-case text. The model sold for between U.S. $2,495 and U.S. $3,495, and was produced into the early 1990s before being replaced by newer versions.

Several variants of the 9800X existed, most notably models that featured a 10-character alpha-numeric liquid crystal display (LCD), which had a green backlight. These uncommon variants were made for the Norwegian Storno and Italian SIP networks in the early 1990s. The Storno variants operated on NMT-450 and the SIP models were of the ETACS/RTMS-450 Dual Band. They kept the "MicroTAC" Blue logo on the screen, the same black housing, but had different metallic badges in addition to the LCD.

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