Thank you to Tony for this great auction find!
Were you a doctor in the 90s? A glitzy glam on the go? Did you need to be reachable anywhere?
Behold, the 1993 Motorola BAG phone. Yes, the battery on this thing was SO heavy and clunky, the phone came with a seperate carrier for the battery and Antenna.
Motorola introduced the Bag Phone line in 1988.[1] These phones offered more durability and higher power output (up to 3 watts) than more conventional cell phones of the time, such as Motorola’s own DynaTAC and MicroTAC handheld phones, making them popular for truckers, boaters, and people in rural areas. Because of their durability, many examples of these phones are still in working order today.
The Bag Phones are a derivative of the Motorola Tough Talker series of transportable phones, which in turn descended from the DynaTAC car phones introduced in 1984. All of these phones feature a modular design in which the handset attaches to the transceiver, which is then powered by either a vehicle’s power system (in the car phones) or a battery pack (in the transportables). By reducing the size and weight of the transceiver and battery pack, and introducing more fashionable bags (originally nylon on the earliest models, but changed to leather in about 1990 or so) in which to contain them, Motorola was able to make them more marketable to the average cellular phone consumer, and hence the Bag Phone.
Although they are technically all similar, Motorola produced many different models of the bag phone, differing in features and display type. These can be determined by the model number on the underside of the handset, beginning with SCN (TLN on early models). Each type of handset also had its own transceiver, marked with a model number beginning with SUN. Random handsets can be used with random transceivers, but some mismatches may result in unusable functions. For example, plugging a 4500 handset into a 3 Button transceiver will result in the Up/Down, one-touch, VOL and STO buttons to be either unusable or perform a totally different function. Some transceivers will detect a mismatched handset, and display “LOANER” upon power-up.
Alternate Versions and Models:
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Motorola Digital Concert Bag Phone with color LCD display, in upright bag.
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Motorola 2950 Special Edition Bag Phone, in Attaché Carry Case.
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Motorola 2900 Bag Phone with color LCD display, in Attaché Carry Case.
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Motorola Power PAK Bag Phone.
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Motorola America Series 820 Bag Phone.
*Information Courtesy of WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Bag_Phone