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Rediff.com  » Business » How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago
This article was first published 11 years ago

How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

September 18, 2013 09:17 IST

Image: A child takes pictures with a mobile phone as Pope Francis leads the Angelus prayer from a window of the Apostolic Palace in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican.
Photographs: Max Rossi/Reuters

Mobile phones have gone from bulky, heavy luxury item used solely to place phone calls to ultralight computers used for just about everything.

Let's take a peek into the journey of mobile phones.

Source: CNBC

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Tags: CNBC

How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

Image: A man takes a picture of himself among participants during the annual City2Surf fun run in central Sydney, Australia.
Photographs: Daniel Munoz/Reuters

1973

Motorola launched the Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage (DynaTAC) portable phone in 1973, which laid the groundwork for present-day mobile phones. The then-president of Motorola, Martin Cooper, made the first phone call on the handheld device.

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How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

Image: A worker uses his mobile phone as he walks past sculptures in the City of London.
Photographs: Toby Melville/Reuters

1987

Hollywood actor Michael Douglas made Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, which weighed nearly a kilo and came with a $4,000 price tag, famous around the world when he used it in superhit film, Wall Street, in 1987. The phone was using the first 1G technology.

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How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

Image: A man speaks on a mobile phone next to Telefonica's tower in Barcelona, Spain.
Photographs: Albert Gea/Reuters

1993

IBM Simon, which had a price tag of $899, is considered the world's first smartphone. It was a mobile phone, pager, fax machine and personal digital assistant all rolled into one.

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Tags: IBM Simon

How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

Image: Men talk on their mobile phones while standing in front of an electronic information board at Vienna airport, Austria.
Photographs: Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters

1996

Motorola StarTAC was the first flip mobile phone in the world. It gained widespread traction in the market and also forced the telecom sector to introduce 2G technology.

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How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

Image: A man types on his mobile phone outside of the Trump Tower in New York City.
Photographs: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

1999

Nokia 7110 was the first mobile phone in the world that allowed access to Internet, while Samsung SPH M100 was the first to have MP3 service.

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Tags: MP3 , Samsung

How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

Image: A man uses his mobile phone in New York City.
Photographs: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

2002

Nokia 7650, which was featured in the Hollywood movie Minority Report, was the first mobile phone in the world to have a built-in camera. Sony Ericsson P800, which was launched in 2003, was the first to have a touchscreen. It ran on Symbian OS 7, had Bluetooth capability and VGA camera.

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How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

Image: A University of California Los Angeles student checks his mobile phone in Los Angeles, California.
Photographs: Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters

2003

BlackBerry Quark 6210, which turned out to be a hit with users around the world, was the first BlackBerry device integrating the phone.

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How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

Image: A man speaks on a mobile phone outside Monte dei Paschi bank in Siena, Italy.
Photographs: Max Rossi/Reuters

2007

The main operating systems until 2007 were BlackBerry OS, Symbian and Windows Mobile, but Apple changed the whole industry with the launch of iPhone on June 29, 2007.

At that time iPhones had a price tag of $499 for the 4 GB model and $599 for the 8 GB model.

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How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

Image: A man talks on his mobile phone as he passes an exchange office in Vienna, Austria.
Photographs: Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters

2010

Samsung took on Apple's dominance of the mobile-phone market with the launch of Galaxy S in March 2010. The smartphone ran on Google's Android system, had a large touch-screen display, Wi-Fi, a five-megapixel camera and the fastest graphics processor. In less than a year, Samsung had sold more than 10 million Galaxy S devices around the globe.

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How the journey of mobile phones began 40 years ago

Image: A cook takes a break as he talks on the phone in central Madrid, Spain.
Photographs: Susana Vera/Reuters

2013

Some of the biggest names in mobile-phone technology have launched new devices this year. Samsung came out with the latest Galaxy smartphone in March, BlackBerry introduced Z10, also in March, and Apple launched iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C early this month.

Today there are six billion mobile-phone subscriptions around the world, with about 87 per cent penetration of the global population.