The new year has already begun and a well-known name in technology and communication is being – to use a computer science term – deprecated. Yes, the stalwart Motorola brand is being phased out in the consumer sphere, and will instead be replaced with the brand name “Moto.” That’s a term that has been used in the Motorola world for a while, but at the same time Motorola is the company that developed the first cellular phone known as the DynaTAC. The man in the header image is Martin Cooper, who developed the phone and made the first wireless call all the way back in 1977 using that phone, which was then released in 1983. Here’s a pic, and keep in mind it retailed for $4,000.

The Motorola DynaTAC

This particular phone is also notable from a historical perspective because prototypes were developed as early as 1973, it had to be bulky to incorporate the technology available at the time, and a version of this phone was released all the way up until the late ’90s!

Motorola continued innovating in the Cel Phone space, even maintaining the ‘TAC’ suffix (which makes sense as it’s actually an acronym for Total Area Coverage), with the much smaller flip-phone StarTAC, the phone that rendered the DynaTAC obsolete.

Motorola StarTAC

Motorola also had the “Hello Moto” jingle. let’s not forget that. Listen to its glory:

It always hurts a little when such an important name or brand in technology fades into the fog of history. I understand it, but the names have meaning. The Motorola name will live on in a corporate capacity, but like so many well-known names before it, as a brand it is time to move on. It will be Moto for high-end devices from now on, and we’ll see if that is enough to keep the brand going.