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.[1] 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 long when open and weighed in 12.3 ounces with the slim battery.[2] 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.
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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.
The original models can be distinguished by their elongated antenna base, white-translucent keys and gray keypad background. Accessories for the phone included car, desktop and overnight travel chargers, installed hands-free car kits, leather cases, and a selection of batteries. The slimmest battery then available was the Slim and Slim Extended (Life), followed by the Standard, XT, and Talk-Pak XT batteries. The Talk-Pak XT and XT used Nickel Metal-Hydride while the others used Nickel Cadmium. A Lithium Ion battery was introduced in 1994.
The early 9800X-era MicroTACs were the only phones to have the microphone and ringer in the mouthpiece. These components were moved to the main phone body in all other models.[3] On all models, and unlike the Motorola DynaTAC, the plastic antenna served no functional purpose, and was strictly for aesthetics.[3]
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In 1989, the Digital Personal Communicator, or DPC, was introduced as a lower cost alternative to the 9800X. Light or dark gray in color, the phone featured a green or orange 7-character segment LED display. It closely resembled the 9800x in terms of the keypad design and background and the main body. Early DPCs of the 9800X-era featured the elongated antenna base, round-top side grips, and white-on-gray keypad. Later versions (most likely after 1991) lost the 9800X-specific physical features, but kept the same basic form. Bone white models were also available as special editions to cellular providers in the US. An upscale version of the DPC, known as the MicroTAC 950, or the MicroTAC Alpha in later years featured an 8-character green or orange dot-matrix LED display and the return of the alpha-numeric phonebook. The Alpha phones were "upscale" in that they had more user-programmable options. Also, Alpha phones featured the side grip arrow keys. Soon, an "affordable" DPC 550 came to the market. Almost identical to the Digital Personal Communicator, the DPC 550 featured little with the most basic of operations.