Motorola StarTAC Dual Band Type ZFDA

Motorola StarTAC, Type ZFDA. Dual-band flip phone. The brick on the other page is the first handheld cellular telephone. This is the phone that made the brick look like a brick. Motorola called it wearable. It sold about 60 million units. PC World later ranked it among the 50 greatest gadgets of the previous 50 years.

From brick to flip

DynaTAC (1983-84) was the handheld slab. MicroTAC (1989) folded a mouthpiece down over the keypad - a half flip. StarTAC, announced January 3, 1996, folded the other way: a true clamshell, lid up from the display, about the size of a pager. Lightest analog pack was about 3.1 ounces (88 g). Launch price was about $1,000. The name is still TAC - Total Area Coverage - with Star in front because Motorola wanted it to look like a communicator you would wear, not a shoe you would carry.

Early StarTACs were analog AMPS only. Digital followed: GSM for Europe and a few U.S. GSM carriers, then TDMA and cdmaOne for the American 800/1900 mix. Type ZFDA is that later digital dual-band family.

What dual band means on this phone

In U.S. cellular language of the late 1990s:

• Dual mode = analog AMPS plus one digital air interface (TDMA or CDMA) on the same 800 MHz band
• Dual band = 800 MHz and 1900 MHz PCS
• Tri mode = digital 800 + digital 1900 + analog AMPS

A StarTAC labeled dual band Type ZFDA is the 800/1900 radio. Common mates for that type code era are TDMA 1900 with AMPS 800 fallback (ST7797 / ST7897 class) or CDMA 1900 with AMPS 800 (ST7867W class). The phone picks digital when the carrier has it and drops to analog AMPS when it does not. No SIM on the AMPS/TDMA/CDMA American units. GSM StarTACs are a different family and mostly single-band 900.

Typical dual-band StarTAC specs

• Form: clamshell flip, keypad under the lid
• Display: LED on early analog; LCD on digital units
• Weight: about 3-4 oz depending on battery
• Batteries: slim / standard / extra-capacity NiMH or Li-Ion; many units take a main pack plus an auxiliary pack at the same time
• Talk: on the order of 1-4 hours with the fat pack; standby tens of hours
• Features: VibraCall, Smart Button on later units, phone book, call timers, headset jack, holster
• SMS: receive on many digital models; send on later ones

How long they lasted

StarTAC owned the late 1990s pocket. Timeport and Talkabout reused the same hinge in silver and two-tone cases around 2000. Motorola's V-series and then the RAZR took the flip further. Analog AMPS under these phones died with the rest of the analog network in February 2008. TDMA and early CDMA followed as carriers refarmed 800/1900. The object stayed: the first phone that disappeared into a shirt pocket and a belt holster.

Place in the MicroBasement

US WEST brick: analog handheld, two pounds, fixed antenna, Baby Bell nameplate. StarTAC Type ZFDA: same company, same TAC idea, ten years later, an ounce of flip and two bands. The line from DynaTAC to MicroTAC to StarTAC is Motorola shrinking the telephone until it became jewelry. Then the industry spent the next decade putting a computer behind the same hinge.

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