Motorola DynaTAC 8000X Vintage Mobile Phone

History of Mobile Phones Includes:
Cellular telecommunications history     Cell phone systems table     Vintage & classic mobile phones     GSM history     UMTS history     5G history & timeline    

The Motorola DynaTAC phones are acknowledged as being the first widely available mobile phones on the market.

The DynaTAC became an iconic phone and was seen in many television series about the time when they were in use - they epitomised the mobility of telecommunications for that era and have earned themselves a palce in history.

Images courtesy of the Mobile Phone Museum
Used with permission

The Motorola DynaTAC 8000x was launched in 1983 after it gained approval from the US FCC on 21 September that year.

The phone gained its name from being an abbreviations of the words Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage, and it represented a totally new concept in telecommunications.

The phone was very large by today's standards, even looking rather comical when compared to some of today's phones. However it represented a major advance in technology for the time and it was enable many of the foundations of mobile telecommunications to be set in place.

The phone remained in production for a long while considering the pace at which technology was moving forward and it was still being manufactured over ten years later in 1994 when second generation phone networks were being established.

The work on developing the phone took many years as it had to contend with the development of the actual mobile phone network and standards being established. Nevertheless the phone was ultimately launched and many thousands were sold.

Although it was expensive - $3995 which is considerably more in real terms these days, it was a real success, becoming a large scale production item.

Several variants of the phone were made reflecting the success of the product. The DynaTAC series included names like Classic, ClassicII, Ultra Classic and the like. Some developments were incorporated into these phones, but even so they were still relatively basic.

The Motorola DynaTAC is true icon of the 1980s. Although, mainly used in the USA many were used in other countries including the UK where they were associated with the "Yuppies" - young upwardly mobile people who had plenty of money to be able to buy and run these phones.

Nevertheless these phones were used by many and were one of te phones that helped mobile communications to become well established and gain the place that it now has in our lives. Without this and other phones of the era, mobile communications would not have been able to become established.

More History:
Radio history timeline     History of the radio     Ham radio history     Coherer     Crystal radio     Magnetic detector     Spark transmitter     Morse telegraph     Valve / tube history     PN junction diode invention     Transistor     Integrated circuit     Quartz crystals     Classic radios     Mobile telecoms history     Vintage mobile phones    
    Return to History menu . . .