Flip phone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A flip phone is a type of telephone design most closely associated with mobile phones, particularly those of Motorola. Rather than a unitary design similar to a typical landline handset or a design in which the microphone section of the phone unfolds downwards, the flip phone is a clamshell design with the speaker and often an LCD screen on the top half and the keypad and microphone on the bottom half.
The flip phone design is generally agreed to have been inspired by the Star Trek original series communicator [1]. A key difference, however, is that the grid that opens on the TOS communicator is solely an antenna, according to The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual, while the upper part of the flip phone contains much of the functionality of the phone itself (the antenna is either internal or extends from the top of the lower half of the phone).
The first such model was the Motorola StarTAC, created in 1996. The design has been copied by other mobile phone manufacturers, most notably Samsung, and Motorola is still best known for its flip phone models such as the RAZR.
While the flip phone form factor is most closely associated with the mobile phone market, the design is also used on some landline phones, particularly cordless phones.
