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Earlier this spring, while contemplating another phone line for my house, I decided it was time to go walkabout with the second phone and spring for a cell phone. After checking out a handful of PCS phones, I ended up being seduced by perhaps the sexiest of all digital cell phones: the Motorola StarTAC.
While other cell phones are cheaper and offer similar service, high-tech fashion sluts will be hard pressed to find a cooler looking cell phone. I rejected other slightly cheaper PCS phones because the StarTAC just felt so right to me. It's smaller than a pack of cigarettes (3.9 oz) and slim enough to fit into my breast pocket without making a bulge. For the true "deep geek," there's an optional hands-free headset, but that felt too Star Trekkie to me. Ditto for the belt holster. The flip phone design means no accidental dialing while you pogo at a nightclub or fidget during a staff meeting. If you have big fingers, or are used to larger keypads, the pads may seem small but I've had no misdialed numbers and the keys are very responsive. The StarTAC comes with a ton of features (some of which depend on your PCS provider): call waiting, caller ID, built-in voicemail, cell broadcast messaging and a decent phone book that stores up to 255 numbers (100 on the phone, 155 on the smartcard that comes with it). A quick glance at the screen lets me see if I have voicemail waiting, the battery status and displays caller IDs and matches them up with my preset phone entries to identify callers by name. The smartcard used by the StarTAC is a plastic card with a chip in it that slides into your phone with all your personal presets and phone numbers stored on it. Each card is coded to a specific user so that my smartcard would work in other phones, letting me charge my account and have access to my own numbers. It took me a few hours to figure out all the bells and whistles on the StarTAC. Navigating the menus can be tedious but there are single-key shortcuts for all of the basic functions and you can customize many of the menu items. You'll probably be limited in choice to the PCS provider in your area. I use Pac Bell PCS services and the coverage area is quite good where I live (in Northern CA) but not yet as extensive as analog cellular service. There are no roaming charges so that I pay the local rate when I'm travelling in a city that has coverage. Long distance rates are 10 cents a minute. My .35 plan came with 80 weekday minutes and 380 weekend minutes. The standard NiMH battery gives you about 36 hours between charges in standby mode and with moderate use. There are optional lithium ion batteries available as well. For a pretty steep price, the StarTAC is an impressive little gizmo that offers state of the art cell phone features. There are cheaper phones out there that offer similar services but none do them as seamlessly as the StarTAC. The StarTAC is something special, the ultimate calling machine (at least for the moment). - Matthew Hawn [7/6/98] Other digital cell phones reviewed on Street Tech:
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