History of the Cell Phone
I remember the day I was first exposed to a cell phone, I was about 10 years old, my aunt and uncle had one and it was inside a briefcase with a handset attached, I thought it was so cool; things have obviously changed a lot since then, especially today with the rapid advancements in smart phone technologies. When I look at the difference from my iPhone to the suitcase that my uncle lugged around in the 80’s it really amazes me how far we’ve come. In an attempt to take a deeper look into exactly how far we’ve come I’ve drafted this paper.
The cell phone was developed based on radio technology that was essentially discovered in the 1940’s, most of this technology was used early on in taxis and police cars to enable communication with a dispatcher or central office. It is believed the first actual cell phone was used in 1946 by the Swedish police, there system consisted of two way radio technology connected to a telephone network; unfortunately there system wasn’t very efficient though, it took a merely six phone calls to deplete the battery. A year later D.H. Ring of Bell Labs created the technology our modern systems are based on today, he created hexagonal cells and later another engineer from Bell improved on this idea by allowing the cell towers to transmit and receive signals in three directions rather than the two that were used in the previous system. This was the basic building block that was developed as a basis for the modern technology we have today, most of the advancements that took place prior were based on changes in the electronics that operated on these networks.
It was about another decade from the time of the hexagon tower technology was invented, until the electronics used for cell phones was developed and in 1967 mobile phone technology was made available, but it still had many limitations in comparison to today’s systems. One of the largest to shortcomings of this technology was the lack of hand-off capabilities, so you needed to stay within the range of one cell area base station. So you had a set range that you must stay in to maintain connectivity, later in 1970 Amos Edward Joel another engineer at Bell developed what we come to know today as the call handoff system, this facilitated the overlap between one cell tower range and another so calls wouldn’t be dropped when you went outside of the range of your initial cell tower range. A year later in 1971 AT&T submitted a request to the FCC for cellular service and it wasn’t until 1982 the request was approved and they allowed the frequencies 824-894 MHZ band to Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) which started as an analog service and was later changed to a digital service in 1990.
So although the technology existed for decades it took a long while for the related electronics to be developed, some early phones weighed as much as 80 pounds and some later versions weighed about 20, pretty amazing when you compare that to the devices used today. I mean the current iPhone I use weighs ¼ of a pound, that portability factor dramatically improves the utility of the phone.
This portability really started with Motorolla in 1983 when they introduced the first truly portably mobile phone called the DynaTAC 8000x (DYNamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage) people often referred to it as a brick as it was the size of a brick, but it was much more portable than its predecessors. It took this phone fifteen years to come to market and it cost over 100 million dollars to develop. From 1983 to the end of the 1980s, cell phones grew in popularity due to the innovations in cellular networks that were able to handle phone calls in either one area or hand them off to other areas. While most cell phones were not made to be carried in the hand, all phones were made for permanent installation in the car. Besides car phones, there were a few models that came in tote bag configurations that easily hooked up to a car’s battery via the DC outlet, similar to the one I recall my uncle carrying around. One of the common tote bag style phones of that era was the Mobira Senator which was invented by Nokia in 1982. These phones were all considered to be first generation phones up until 1990 when second generation phones were introduced.
Second Generation phones started to be introduced around the early 1990’s being identified mainly by the changes in mobile phone networks such as GSM, IS-136 (TDMA), and IS-95 (CDMA), and these phones made use of digital switched transmissions making network signaling quicker, increasing call quality and lowering the amount of dropped calls. These phones were also much smaller than the brick phones of the first generation, mainly due to the advancements in battery and computer chip technology; due to these advancements the use of cell phones grew significantly in this period. One of the most popular phones of this time was the Motorola MicroTAC released in 1989 as the worlds first flip phone weighing in at 12.3 ounces and selling for $2,500-3,500 and seven years later Motorola took there concept to the next level with the StarTac weighing a quarter of the MicroTAC at 3.1 ounces and selling at $1,000. The StarTac also introduced new features such as SMS messaging and lithium-ion batteries, which are pretty standard on todays phones. Two years after Motorola’s introductions a Canadian company Research in Motion (RIM) combined the functionality of a PDA and a cell phone with the creation of the Blackberry. The Blackberry started with RIM 850/950 in 1998 including features like two-way paging, QWERTY keyboard and it was capable of managing contacts, email and calendars, from this model the original Blackberry was created with the introduction of the Blackberry 5790, which took the market like wildfire. There were two other major phones introduced during the 2G era the Nokia 3210 and the Motorola RAZR, the Nokia 3210 was a very success, selling about 160 million units of the 3210, it’s not clear what made this phone so popular, but some of the innovative features included an internal antenna, 40 ringtones, predicative text, picture texting and included games such as snake and memory. Motorola sold more than 50 million RAZR phones in its first year of release, making it the most popular clamshell cell phone of all time. The RAZR had a stylish design, super slim profile, and a few relatively uncommon features for its time, including an electroluminescent keypad and video playback.
Shortly after 2G was introduced third generation phones had become available, due largely to advancements in technology and service, which varied from network to network. As 3G isn’t really a rigid standard, it’s more of a set of requirements that cell phone providers follow. There are two main requirements: they include 2 Megabits of maximum data rate indoors and 384 Kbits for outdoor use. During the introduction of 3G phones we started seeing many new features including SMS text messaging, email, internet access, streaming radio, video, cameras and Wi-Fi. The most predominant 3G phone of the time would be the Apple iPhone invented in 2007 including features such as a touch screen, mobile app market and it has been continuing to overtake the market since it’s introduction. About a year after Apple’s iPhone the T-Mobile G1 was introduced as the first phone to run on Google’s Operating System and Android Marketplace, unfortunately it couldn’t put much of a dent in Apple’s stake in the market. Since then the iPhone has released several new models and many other companies have attempted to catch up with phones including the Palm Pre, which didn’t last to long, the Motorola Droid which was still a way from the iPhone, but it did seem to close the gap a bit. Later HTC introduced the Nexus One which was another attempt to get into iPhones leader role, but it didn’t pan out to well probably mainly due to fact it was only initially available on the T-Mobile network.
The most recent generation is 4G, which is in the process of gaining widespread usage. Fourth generation mobile phones will have higher data transmission rates than 3G, as their planned data transmission rates are planned to be up to 100 megabits per second on the move and 1000gigbits per second stationary. This has a significant impact on the way that we will use our phones, for example, 4G Technology will allow users to download a full-length feature film to their cellular phones, laptops, or other devices within 5 minutes, meaning that travelers in an airport can download a movie or two to watch on a flight. Devices will also be able to stream high-definition television and radio to hand-held devices, and allow users to walk from one network to the next without an interruption in reception.
Overall it took cellular phones about 37 years total to become commercially accessible in the US. According to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, today there are more than 60 million customers with cellular phones, even though wireless service was just invented nearly 50 years ago. The cellular business was a $3 million market 25 years ago and has grown increasingly to close to a $30 billion per year industry and it doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. It seems as though we are going more towards mobile devices for the future and moving away from desktop computers, I anticipate seeing what the future holds in this realm.
Bibliography
AT&T. 1946: First Mobile Telephone Call . 17 01 2005. 2012 24 04 <http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/46mobile.html>.
John Dixon Technolgies LTD. History of the Cellular (Cell/Mobile) Phone. 2012 04 24 <http://www.historyofthecellphone.com/>.
Keith, Robert D. The Cell Phone Timeline. 26 01 2003. 2012 04 25 <http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall04/keith/history1.htm>.
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