This cell phone was a clamshell mobile phone manufactured by Motorola. It was released on January 3, 1996 and is noted for being the first clamshell mobile phone. The StarTAC is the successor of the MicroTAC, a semi-clamshell design that had been launched in 1989. Whereas the MicroTAC’s shell folded down from below the keypad, the StarTAC folded up from above the LED / LCD display screen. In 2005, PC World put StarTAC at No.6 in The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years.