Here's a reprint of a review of Globalstar from Fortune Magazine published for display until May 8, 2000 entitled "A Phone Suited for Hairy Chests" by Daniel Roth:
It's too bad the retro craze died, because Globalstar would have a hit on its hands. At 12 ounces, the Globalstar phone (selling for $1,500) resembles a late-1980s brick phone, the kind Wall Street scoundrels used in the movies while standing on a yacht as bikini-clad ladies rubbed their hairy chests. I, too, have a hairy chest, but no use for the Globalstar phone.
Not that it's bad. The phone, which communicates on satellite or cellular signals, works fine. In a week of testing, it functioned perfectly as a cell phone. But to link to one of Globalstar's 48-low-earth-orbit satellites, I had to find an empty clearing and aim the marker-thick antenna to the sky. Once a satellite spotted me, the calls were pretty clear.
While making calls is easy, receiving them requires knowing which spectrum you'll be talking on. The Globalstar phone has a number for each mode, forcing you to say things like, "If I don't answer my cellular phone, try me on my satellite." That may have been fine in the '80s movies, but it just sounds weird today.
(End of article)
At the top of the article is a photo of a man (Mr. Roth, I presume) standing outside in a large open area squinting at the sky while holding his Globalstar handset to his ear (to portray satellite mode usage?). The bottom of the article has a photo of a Qualcomm handset, both antennae raised standing on end with a small Nokia cellular handset leaning against it (to illustrate the unwieldy attributes of the Globalstar handset?).
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