Your birth year
2006
Flip Phone
19961990s
Flip Phone is 10 years older than you
It's from 1996, before you were born.
- Maker
- Motorola (StarTAC)
- Type
- Clamshell mobile phone
- Debuted
- 1996
- Note
- Inspired by Star Trek communicators
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About
As of 2026, it's 30 years old.
The flip phone took a brick and gave it a hinge, and suddenly your phone could snap shut with the satisfying authority of someone ending an argument. Motorola's StarTAC, the breakout star, was small enough to clip to your belt and light enough to forget you owned.
It also handed the world its greatest lost art form: the dramatic hang-up. Tapping a glass screen will never, ever feel as good as flipping a phone closed mid-sentence.
The flip phone is the gadget that made answering a call feel like a tiny performance, one satisfying snap at a time.
