14 DAY TRIAL // It's very important for a mobile phone manufacturer to look into the future, think outside the box and come up with something new and innovative that will appeal to customers instead of re-vamped versions of old products.
And at the moment, there probably are several such manufacturers that aren't doing this at all. One of them is Motorola that refuses to leave the past aside and has now announced a new version of the Startac, the Startac III MS900.
When the first Startac was released, in 1996, it was incredibly popular and the first clamshell mobile phone available on the market.
Not to mention that comparing it to the bulky mobile phones available then, the Startac was lightweight and extremely stylish. It was so popular that when asked, most people will say that they remember some movie where the star was using one of these phones.
Needless to say, that was all in the past, and today's consumers won't be as easily impressed unless a product is truly innovative in some way. This is why this retro-looking Startac III MS900 doesn't blend in too well in a world filled with touchscreen-equipped and feature-packed mobile phones.
It was recently released in Korea and comes with a 262k color screen with a QVGA resolution, MP3 player, 128 MB internal memory and GPS. Seeing it's being offered in Korea, it also comes with mobile banking support, an e-book reader and a Korean-English dictionary.
Sadly, the new Startac doesn't come with even the most basic camera or an external display. The mobile phone has in fact announced that it has designed this phone to be free of unnecessary functions and concentrate on the basics but it might still just end up being tagged as one more of those low to mid-level clamshells you get to see everywhere lately.
While it might not be a bad phone, and should provide everything a less pretentious user would need, it's pretty clear that the days when Moto's Startac was famous are pretty much over. The Startac III will only be available in Korea for the time being and there is no information regarding its price.