Motorola
W450

The Motorola W450 (which was also known as the Motorola Active or MOTOACTV W450) was available exclusively via US carrier, T-Mobile USA. It was a semi-rugged handset, that was described by Motorola as being a phone that would be well-suited to “people with an active lifestyle”. The phone, which included a 1.3-megapixel camera, built-in MP3 player and a microSD memory card slot capable of supporting cards up to 2GB, had a built-in loop as part of the “chin bar” at the bottom of the phone. It also had the Mayo Clinic In Touch software (app) pre-installed on the device. This allowed users to look up first aid information and health tips. When the phone launched with T-Mobile USA it came in two colours, alpine white and black slate, with either “canary yellow or mandarin accents”. The device in the Mobile Phone Museum collection is an engineering sample (prototype) which has red accents. Rather infamously, the W450 was the only Motorola phone to use the Ajar operating system, a software platform developed by UK company TTP Communications (TTPcom) which Motorola bought in June 2006. Motorola had a long history of struggling with mobile phone software and its litany of failures including the story of Ajar can be found in this excellent article written by Simon Rockman. It has been argued that the W450 could be one of the most expensive phones ever developed. Given that Motorola paid $193m to buy TTPCom and some estimates indicate that it cost a similar amount of money to eventually close the business down it was a costly venture. Add to that the poor sales volumes, which are believed to be around 10,000 units, a probable cost for the software alone could be as high as $40,000 per phone . Although this is a flawed calculation given the intellectual property and other assets that Motorola gained from TTPCom, it is a stark indication of just how much the W450 ended up costing.