When Phones Were Fun: Nokia's Star Trek Communicator (2009)

Опубликовано 21 мая 2022, 23:15

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[WHEN PHONES WERE FUN: NOKIA STAR TREK COMMUNICATOR]

Star Trek may not have directly inspired the first mobile phones … but when it came to giving the cell phone a pocketable form factor, the name “Motorola StarTAC” kinda tells the whole story (don’t @ me, Total Area Coverage stans!). With the StarTAC – which I covered in an earlier installment of this series – a generation of Star Trek fans that had waited three decades for a flip-top mobile communicator finally got something that at least felt close.

But it would take another ten years before the cellphone industry finally gave Trekkies a proper “Star Trek phone” … only to cruelly beam it away before it ever saw the light of day. I found one on eBay about twelve years ago – and now, at the dawn of a beautiful new era of televised Star Trek, seems the perfect time to tell the tale of the Nokia Starfleet Communicator that never was. 


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[ABOUT WHEN PHONES WERE FUN – NOKIA STAR TREK COMMUNICATOR]

This is the nineteenth in a series of MrMobile videos exploring the mobile tech world's most vibrant period in design and experimentation. In “When Phones Were Fun,” Michael Fisher re-reviews cellphones from the golden age of mobile, the decade-long span from the turn of the century to approximately 2009.

When Phones Were Fun: Episode 19 features the only known Nokia Star Trek Communicator device, number 05 of 12, purchased by Michael Fisher in 2010. No manufacturer or carrier paid a fee or otherwise offered compensation in exchange for this coverage, nor did any such company preview or approve this content before publication. The lone sponsor of this video is Incogni.


[MRMOBILE’S WARDROBE PROVIDED BY VOLANTE DESIGN]

Starfleet 2256 jacket [Volante Design]:
bit.ly/2W8swBA


[LINKS]

Avi Greengart [Techsponential]:
techsponential.com

Cingular Releases Star Trek Phone as 3125 [TrekToday]:
trektoday.com/news/130906_02.s...

Create a Star Trek Communicator Edition RAZR [Instructables]:
instructables.com/Create-a-Sta...

How-To: Make A Star Trek Bluetooth Communicator [Make]:
makezine.com/2009/11/02/star-t...

HTC 3126 / Smartflip / 8500 / Star Trek [PhoneScoop]:
phonescoop.com/phones/phone.ph...

iPhone and Android biggest winners in mobile market in 2009 [Ars Technica]:
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/0...

Meet "The Father Of The Cellphone," Dr. Martin Cooper [Pocketnow]:
pocketnow.com/martin-cooper-in...

Sound Effects: TrekCore
trekcore.com/audio

Special Edition Star Trek Communicator Phone [UberGizmo]:
ubergizmo.com/2005/08/special-...

Star Trek Communicator Phone by Sona Mobile [Internet Archive]:
web.archive.org/web/2006020602...

Star Trek Nokia 5800: Set half-assed movie tie-ins to stun [CNET]:
cnet.com/tech/mobile/star-trek...

Star Trek: Why Enterprise Was Cancelled [ScreenRant]:
screenrant.com/star-trek-enter...

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As “Fun, Watchable” [The Onion]:
theonion.com/trekkies-bash-new...


[MUSIC]

"Moon Traveling" by Neon Beach [Soundstripe]:
app.soundstripe.com/songs/1377...

"Retro Waves" by Mikey Geiger [Soundstripe]:
app.soundstripe.com/songs/8755

"Welcome to the Apocalypse" by Neon Beach [Soundstripe]:
app.soundstripe.com/songs/1234...


[CHAPTERS]

00:00 From Star Trek To StarTAC ...
01:13 ... to HTC's "Star Trek" (?!)
02:19 Sona? More Like No-Na
03:12 Saved by a "Bad Robot"
04:08 Unboxing a 23rd-century communicator
08:05 Prototype blues
10:24 Bluetooth saves the day


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[DISCLOSURES]

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#startrek #nokia #startrekcommunicator #whenphoneswerefun #mrmobile #starfleet #communicator #retro #throwback