July 24, 2006 - According to many Trekkers, each time we grab a cellular telephone to make a call from a car or an out-of-the-way park, we should take a few seconds to whisper words of thanks to Star Trek.  As strange as that may sound, it's not entirely without merit. Former Motorola Chief Engineer Marty Cooper, the "Father of the Cellular Telephone" was responsible for much of the initial work on cellular communication devices in the 1970s, and he claims to have been originally inspired by the flip-up communicator seen in the first Star Trek TV series. 

If it's true that today's flip phones were inspired by Star Trek, things have come full circle.  HTC, the Taiwanese manufacturer of too many Windows Mobile devices to count, recently received FCC approval for their STRTrK Windows Mobile 5 smartphone, which is, at least in part, designed around Star Trek reminiscent styling.

The ultra-slim HTC STRTrK is powered by a 195MHz OMAP processor and features the standard array of Windows Mobile 5 smartphone applications.  Bluetooth 1.2 is also built into the phone, along with a microSD card slot and a 1.3MP digital camera.