Cell Phones Through Time
April 8th, 2009Cell Phones Through Time
What would we do without cell phones? Well, with more cell phones than there are people in Europe and 72% of the Canadian population active cell phone users, let’s just say, it would probably be like taking away electricity for much of the Western population. Oh how things change in only 36 yeas.
The history of the modern cell phone begins on April 3, 1973, when Director of Research and Development at Motorola, Dr. Martin Cooper, made the first cell phone call ever, to his rival, Dr. Joel S. Engel, head of research at At&T’s Bell labs, as he walked down the streets of New York City. The Motorola DynaTAC cost $3,995, weighed over 2 pounds and took over10 hours to charge. But its large size, high cost and overall impracticality didn’t quite make it very appealing to the general public.
In 1983 the Motorola_Dyna 8000X became the first truly portable mobile phone on the US market, with an impressive one hour of battery life and the power to store up to 30 phone numbers!
The Nokia-Mobira Cityman, which came out in 1987 got a huge publicity boost when Mikkhail Gorbachev was pictured using one to make a call to his communications minister in Moscow. It weighed 800 grams and cost EUR 4,560.
In 1987, Japanese manufacturer NEC launched the NEC 9 A, which became the fastest selling handheld mobile phone. It was smaller, lighter and had more features than any other handheld mobile phone.
In 1989, Motorola MicroTAC became the first-ever flip phone. It weighed 12.3 ounces and retailed between $2, 495 and $3, 495
In the nineties, cell phones and pagers became a huge fad. The nineties also marked the widespread adoption of personal computers and the Internet. In 1993, the BellSouth/IBM Simon Personal Communicator became the first mobile phone to add PDA features: phone, pager, calculator, address book, fax machine and e-mail device, for a total cost of $900.
The Motorola StarTac came out in 1996, paving the way for sleek, lightweight (3.1 ounces) cell phones.
In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, it was all about the candy bar-style phones available in all sorts of colours. You could talk for 3.3 hours, they had internal antennas, PIM features and fit 5 lines of text.
In 2000, the Kyocera QCP6035 introduced the SmartPhone which cost $400-$500 and was the first Palm-based phone to be widely available to users. It only had 8MB of memory though.
The first commercial camera phone was the J-SH04 made by Sharp Corporation, which had an integrated CCD sensor and came out in 2001.
In 2002, the BlackBerry 5810 became the first to offer voice capabilities.
By late 2007, Apple came out with its long awaited iPhone, an internet connected multimedia smartphone. The iPhone featured a touch sensitive screen, 2 megapixel camera, the ability to sync iTunes to the phone, and more than 25000 apps. In 2007, the iPhone was named “invention of the year” by Times Magazine.
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By JMom, April 8, 2009 @ 9:29 pm
great post! What would we do now without our cell phones? It’s hard to remember the days when we didn’t have them.
By awesome, April 8, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
haha! things have changed!! considerably! thanks for the post!
By Milena, April 9, 2009 @ 2:59 pm
How fascinating. I’m old enough to remember some of the old styles and it is simply incredibly how much difference there is between those clunky phones and my current iphone. You should do another post in about a decade or so. I’d love to see how 10 more years makes the technology evolve.
By Phoenix, April 10, 2009 @ 1:49 pm
I can’t imagine not having my cell phone, or not being able to text… I’m glad I’m living now, not 30 (or even 10) years ago!
By kimmy, April 10, 2009 @ 8:33 pm
I can remember the 60′s when a limousine stopped in Kitchener and a suit got out and opened a briefcase with a phone in it. He then made a phone call. We were impressed.
Boy, things have changed.
By Clay, July 22, 2009 @ 8:21 pm
I hate when people make a timeline of important events in the life of a technology, and at the end add whatever is popular at the time. In my opinion the Iphone didn’t deserve to be on the list. I’m not saying I don’t like the Iphone but it didn’t introduce anything that previous phones didn’t…
By admin, July 23, 2009 @ 4:18 pm
It may not have introduced anything new but you can’t deny that every manufacturer these days are trying to de-throne the iPhone.
They didn’t introduce anything new but, some would argue, that it perfected the features and made many manufacturer and consumers alike realize what they needed to fix or want
By wansai, November 6, 2009 @ 4:41 am
This list is very incomplete. I realize it probably wasn’t intended to be so complete but you spent a great deal of time on the older models and then suddenly skipped MANY important generations.
When and what model was the first music phone?
You also skipped out on some of the more important models that transitioned to what would be modern 3G devices.
Where’s the first WAP device? That was an important model as are the communicators, colored screen phones, first mobile phone that could surf the full internet (yes those cam ebefore the iPhone using good mini browsers) etc…
This post makes it look like everything was ancient until the iPhone came along. By the launch date of the iPhone, everyone except US tech journalists felt the iPhone was VERY unsophisticated. It wasn’t until the 3GS that the iPhone became a modern smartphone.
By Mark, March 29, 2010 @ 6:11 pm
that is cool but still feel u missed some of the other phones but still cool try to find the oldest fone pic u can then post it and say the year
By Josie C, May 9, 2010 @ 8:08 pm
I am in my forties these days, and am just fascinated as to how mobile phones have evolved. Not just that, but the Internet, minus its corrupt material of porn, how fantastic is that? Everything at our fingertips and I am sure, much much more to yet to come. How about age? We now have eternal youth on our side, no longer do we have used by dates and especially for work. We can be eighty and work from home or out in a park while watching our young ones which we had in our fifties! Youth, computerised industries, culture mixes, new programming for our minds, roberts, ect ect. The list goes on and on, and its all apsolutely fantastic!!!! Hands down to great thinkers and doers and the mobile phone is one of the first in its line of successful outcomes….
By MLT, July 29, 2010 @ 4:08 pm
Wow, what a change. I remember spending a TON of money on the Simon and it was a pile of JUNK. They finally gave did a recall and gave my money back…The two happiest days, when I got the Simon and when I got rid of it!
By Omom, September 28, 2011 @ 11:37 pm
I had one of those Motorola StarTacs and I thought I was so cool! All my friends only had pagers then. LOL!