History of Mobile Phones (Cell Phones)


History of Mobile Phones (Cell Phones)

The inventor of the first modern portable handset is Dr Martin Cooper, who was the general manager for the systems division at Motorola at that time. In 1973, Dr Cooper made the first call on a portable cell phone. He called his rival Joel Engel, head of research at Bell Labs, to give him the latest news on how the competition between them was turning out. The picture on left represents him and his first mobile phone.
The first commercial handheld cellular phone was launched by Motorola in 1983, and weighed 28 ounces. The device could be purchased for a price of ‘only’ $3,995!


In the 1990s, 2G mobile system appeared, such as GSM, IS-136, iDEN and IS-95. Along with the new way of information transmitting, a new trend of small 100–200g handheld devices started replacing the brick-sized phones. The change could be made thanks to technology advancement, which included smaller batteries and more energy-efficient electronics. Above it’s a picture of Nokia 100, the company’s first major cell phone product, which was a 1G phone.
In 1995, Nokia 2110 was the first mobile phone in the world to use vibrations, had dimensions of 148 x 56 x 25 mm and a weight of 236g. A year later, its older relative, the 6110, was the first phone to have ‘Snake’ installed.