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Motorola's march toward mobility
We owe a lot to Motorola and its team of inventors and engineers. The company made breakthroughs in portable radio and brought us one of the first-ever cellphones. It launched the flip phone, the clamshell and the wildly popular RAZR V3. There have been some ups and downs along the way, and the company's endured more than its share of corporate hand-changing, but with its Moto series and Nexus 6, it's now back amongst the smartphone elite. In this week's Rewind, we take a look at some of the milestones in Motorola's quest for portable communicators.
It's been 40 years since the world's first mobile phone call
On April 3rd 1973, Martin Cooper made the first mobile call on the nine-inch (and 28-ounce) Motorola DynaTAC. Dialing up a rival at AT&T, he apparently said that he was ringing "to see if my call sounds good at your end." While briefcase-size models had come before it, it's Motorola's truly mobile (that is, handheld) phone that became the go-to power accessory for the likes of Gordon Gekko, Zack Morris and, er, American Psycho's Patrick Bateman. Since its heyday, however, the AMPS analog networks that the phone used to run on have now largely disappeared, replaced by digital ones that have added better call clarity, not to mention data connectivity at ever-improving speeds. We've come a long way.
iPhone-DynaTAC smackdown
TUAW reader Ashton Tibbitt sent in this great pictorial comparison between his iPhone and a Motorola DynaTAC. The DynaTAC 8000X dates back to the early 1980's and was one of the first mobile phones approved by the FCC. My favorite shot of this series is the side-by-side comparison shot showing exactly how thick the DynaTAC was and how thin the iPhone is. %Gallery-9780% So how do the two phones compare? Here's a TUAW exclusive iPhone-DynaTAC smackdown. Battery Life. The iPhone is the clear winner. Tactile dialing feedback. The DynaTAC's physical buttons nudges it into the win zone for that force feedback experience. Portability. You can stick the iPhone in your pocket. Inserting the DynaTAC into clothing (or other areas) may cause permanent physical harm. Expandability. Neither the iPhone nor the DynaTAC officially supports third party apps. (But you can still hack your iPhone. Just don't tell Steve Jobs.) Muscle Development. You're not going to develop any muscle tone by lifting an iPhone. Suitability for use as doorstop. No contest. DynaTAC for the win. Thanks to Ashton for sending these in. I hope you enjoy looking through the pictures as much as I did.
Zack Morris chic: China's BW-A888 brickphone
Following a uniquely Asian trend as of late, the BW-A888 brings retro-cool to an everyday handset. This phone can run on its own or be snapped into the giant brick enclosure to instantly impart that early '83 Motorola DynaTAC cool. Not only does the "brick" component give you extended battery life, added weight, and a big speaker, it has what appears to be a compass mounted on the side in place of bothering with fancy technology like GPS. We kinda like this idea; not enough to go out and buy one mind you, but enough to at least check out the pics and smile a little wayback-when smile.
