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LGR Tech Tales - The Story of Motorola (Patreon)

Published:
2016-06-08 18:08:04
Edited:
2016-06-08 23:31:41
Imported:
2021-03

Content

Chances are, you've had at least one Motorola product in your tech life (or know someone who did.) Turns out their story is more fascinating than you might think!

Files

LGR Tech Tales - What Happened to Motorola?

This episode covers the origin of Motorola as Galvin Manufacturing, and its eventual split into separate companies. Join me in LGR Tech Tales, looking at stories of technological inspiration, failure, and everything in-between!

Comments

Anonymous

Motorola 68000 for life ! \o/

Anonymous

Ooh, can't wait to watch this, I used to work at Motorola

Anonymous

Nostalgia, Motorola was my first mobile phone

Ezydenias

I actualy (and probably told already a thousand times) own a motorola Internation 3200 from about 1992. Was hiding in our attic for a long time. I just replaced the batteries (I mean I replaced the batteries inside the batteries) put in a simcard and it works! Yes it works of course it is a D-Netz Telefon, that is why and for some reason it only accepts Vodafon (maybe even Telecom) but no O2 cards (google the names if you need). Also you can't talk to computers because it doesn't do anything when you push buttons while you are calling someone. But still it is pretty awesome that such an old device still works and I must say it was pretty great for it's time, also it really fits well into the inner pockets of a coat, except the antenna of course!. Seriously it is way more comfortable to carry as you might think.

Anonymous

There is speculation that Apple short changed Motorola on purpose with the ROKR E1 which was to be the first iTunes phone, and this was what assisted with their demise. As the ROKR E1 had to deal with all kinds of silly restrictions (only 100 songs!) there is no wonder when they announced the iPhone which could have well more than 100 songs on it, and work seamlessly with what I would say at the time was the most popular music library software (iTunes) that people simply left the ROKR to die. I guess there were more failed models after this as all of the "trendy" models they produced came before 2006 (the RAZR, SLVR and PEBL). It's a shame. I had a Motorola RAZR HD (which is maybe as far from a RAZR as possible!) only a few years ago and it was great. Of course this was during Google's ownership of the company. It will be interesting to see what Lenovo do with the company - a company who in my opinion destroyed the legendary ThinkPad brand with cheap nasty build quality, dodgy pre-loaded software and many failed "revolutionary" design attempts (like removing the caps lock key from a laptop - Carbon X1 Gen 2!).

Anonymous

Make a video about Nokia too ;) It has a bit similar and result as Motorola. As I'm from Finland, all my phones except one have all been Nokias ;)

Lindsay Michelle

My first cell phone ever was Motorola... got it around when I was going to start high school in 2002. Later in high school I remember the RAZR being THE PHONE to get, haha. I was so jealous of my friends who had one - never had one myself, though. But yeah, Motorola seemed to just have slowly died out without me really noticing, I guess... but they have a really interesting history! (And I'll never stop adoring those brick cell phones from the 80s-90s! :D) This is probably one of my favorite Tech Tales videos thus far - a lot of interesting history with just the right amount of focus on each part of it. Was totally engrossed and focused on the video from the beginning :)

Troy Wilkins

Interesting, however I would have liked to have seen more about their 68000 and other computing technologies, as they were perhaps a bigger rival than AMD to Intel for a while - powering many computers of the mid to late 80s and up until the mid 90s...

Anonymous

Very nice, thank you! My recommendations for Future Tech Tale Episode Topics: - Parrot Corporation Limited -- (lots of drama) -- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot_Corporation" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot_Corporation</a> ////////// - Percom Data -- (tragic) -- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percom" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percom</a> ////////// - Xybernaut Corporation (lots of Drama) -- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xybernaut" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xybernaut</a> ////////// - Peter Norton ////////// - Cromemco -- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco</a> ////////// - ZEOS, Northgate, AST Research etc ////////// - Origin Systems / Richard Garriott ////////// - Warcraft Adventures ////////// - Cyrix ////////// - Olivetti //////////

LazyGameReviews
>>1942795

That's a subject for another video entirely :) Much larger story that was too big to fit in this episode

LazyGameReviews
>>1942432

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Shame you never got one of those Razr phones, it would've changed your LIFE :P

LazyGameReviews
>>1942102

Yeah, there was a lot of conspiring against Motorola during those years, I almost included some of those stories but decided against it to keep it more focused. Perhaps in another episode!

Evan B

great job! ... lol i almost commented on the razr re-release but then heard your outro haha :)

SuperBunnyBun

very nicely done. very respectful to them

Anonymous

Anyone remember the Motorola ROKR E1 Apple iTunes phone? It was the big huge overhyped "Apple" phone in 2005 before the real iPhone came out. Boy was THAT a bust.

Justin Dotson

Man they couldn't catch a break in the 2000's.

Anonymous

This is why I'm a patreon supporter. Well done man, thanks a ton!

Anonymous

Nice documentary, but being a human from outside the US I might have a different point of view. Here in Scandinavia the Motorola phones where very popular in the early 90s. But the introduction of GSM in 1991 (all digital and shorter wavelength) allowed phones to be much smaller and without the antenna. This was good for Nokia since they were located in Finland, one of the first places to get GSM. Motorola on the other hands still made AMPS compatible phones until the late 90s, and only made adaptations of those to work on the GSM network, this made Motorola phones bigger and less attractive than the small Nokias (note that USA received bigger AMPS versions of the Nokias, like the '99 AMPS compatible 8250 sold in US being bigger and heavier than the GSM only 8210). Needless to say Nokia won big in Europe, Japan and Australia where GSM was introduced early.

Anonymous

Another great video and I love those historic photos you feature. They really add to everything.

Anonymous
>>1943193

Yup. Gosh I remember the hype for that - and yes, it was a bust indeed.

Anonymous

Great overview. It's so weird to think they grew out of radios, before coming into all the telecommunications and CPU stuff. I do remember having one of their phones… though not for long before I switched over to Nokia. Still, Such an iconic firm for a number of reasons, and such an excellent episode to boot!

Anonymous

Great video! Back in the day I had a Slvr L7. Didn't matter how big your microSD card was, you were limited to 100 songs. Like most, I have moved on to an Apple product but not because I love iTunes. Back in 2010 I moved to Scottsdale, AZ to work for General Dynamics in the old Motorola plant. That was some time after they were bought by GD though. But there are many there that remember the "Motorola" days.

Anonymous

Enjoyed this one. Thanks Clint.

Anonymous

I love Tech Tales! So much interesting stuff!

Anonymous

Great work as usual! Very informative.

Anonymous
>>1951979

Nice to be back supporting you BTW. I had my hours cut in half at my last job so my finances suffered a lot. Have a new full time job so cheers.

Anonymous

m68k cannot be beaten!

Anonymous

That was really good. Please do one on MOS!