History
The form factor was first used by the laptop manufacturer GRiD (who had the patents on the idea at the time) for their Compass model in 1982.
The first Motorola model to support the clamshell design was the StarTAC, created in 1996, although General Telephone & Electronics (GTE) held the trademark since the 1970s for its Flip Phone (one of the first small hand-held electronic phones), until 1993.
The design has since been copied by virtually all mobile phone manufacturers many times.
Motorola is best known for its clamshell models such as the RAZR.
The clamshell design has also been used in the Nokia Communicator series, with the first model released in 1996. Early models were very expensive and Nokia did not adopt the traditional clamshell phone design until 2004.
Clamshells were, as of early 2009, the most popular form factor for cellular phones in the U.S. However, they have been losing ground to phones with slide-out keyboards, and touchscreen slate phones like the Droid X.
Read more about this topic: Flip (form)
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—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
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—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)