Mind you, mobile phone technology is really only 40 or so years. But, when it comes to technology, 40 years can feel like going back to the stone age.
In 1973, a gentleman by the name of Martin Cooper made the first call using a mobile phone. Cooper was a senior engineer at Motorola, and the first call he made was to a rival telecommunications company to tell them the news.
He had made a mobile phone.
The phone used during the call weighed an ridiculous 1.1kg, and was the size of an average brick.
Next was to bring it to market. In 1983, Motorola introduced the DynaTAC 8000X; a mobile phone that gave the user 30 minutes of talk time, 6-hours of stand by, and the ability to store 30 contacts.
Not bad right? Well when you consider the price tag of $3995 at the time, yeah, it was pretty bad.
It was nothing near impressive in regards to design, but the technology shook the world. This shock wave would continue up until today, where mobile phones are now a ubiquitous piece of everyday life.
Courtesy of FactSlides, I had compiled a list of fun tid-bits about mobile phones in todays world.
- Your mobile phone has more computing power than the computers used for the Apollo 11 moon landing.
- Apple sold 340,000 iPhones per day in 2012.
- Over 250 million Nokia 1100 devices were sold, making it the bestselling electrical gadget in history.
- More people in the world have mobile phones than toilets.
- China has more internet users on mobile devices than on PCs.
Wait, so what about Smartphones?
Technically, a smartphone is just a glorified phone. Companies took the idea of a mobile phone and made it extremely versatile and expandable. At the core of it though, it still Cooper’s original brilliant invention.
Think about how many tasks, both small and large, you perform on your phone?
If you forget your lunch at home, no big deal. If you forget your phone at home, you’re racing straight home.
