A brief history of the Mobile Phones

GAURAV SHARMA
5 min readJan 22, 2020

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What is the First Telephone call? What were the first words ever spoken on the telephone? They were spoken by Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, when he made the first call on March 10, 1876, to his assistant, Thomas Watson: “Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.”

“Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.”-Alexander Graham Bell

In your childhood, you experimented with the Tin can telephone. Where using two tin can and one rope transmitted sound from one can to others. And how this all communication started at the early age of this great invention. If you did not try ever, you can DIY by using this article.

After the motivation of tin can telephone experiments, lots of scientists contributed to this topic. Credit for the invention of the electric telephone is frequently disputed, and new controversies over the issue have arisen from time to time. Charles Bourseul, Innocenzo Manzetti, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Alexander Graham Bell, and Elisha Gray, amongst others, have all been credited with the telephone’s invention. Time beingly we saw lots of improvements on the wired phones to wireless phones to mobile phones to smartphones.

Do you know whoever released the first mobile phone in the market? Motorola was the first company to produce a handheld mobile phone. On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher, and executive, made the first mobile telephone call from handheld subscriber equipment, placing a call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, his rival.

On 1 July 1991, in Helsinki, the first telephone call on the GSM G2 network was made by Harri Holkeri, the Prime Minister of Finland. He used a prototype Nokia GSM phone to make the call. In 1992, the first GSM phone, the Nokia 1011, was made commercially available. As per the booming market and emerging technologies, lots of companies suddenly showed their keen interest in mobile phones and released with a variety of designs, like fold phones, flip phones, music editions, camera edition, etc. The main pioneer company in this sector was Nokia, Motorola, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, etc.

Do you know who and when the first smartphone released in the market? Yes, it’s a common guess, it’s Apple iPhone. But not exactly it’s true. Rob Stothard/Getty People didn’t start using the term “smartphone” until 1995, but the first true smartphone actually made its debut three years earlier in 1992. It was called the Simon Personal Communicator, and it was created by IBM more than 15 years before Apple released the iPhone. The device had many of the modern elements we attribute to current smartphones and mobile devices. Highlights included:

  • Touch screen
  • Email
  • Fax
  • Notes and Calendar
  • Apps and other widgets that would become widespread decades later.

While it was a bold entry into the market, it wasn’t exactly the smoothest starting point for a mobile device. You could say it was ahead of its time, and most consumers didn’t jump on board.

Then Came Blackberry, the first BlackBerry mobile device was the BlackBerry 5810. It had most of what you think of when you hear “Blackberry”:

  • Calendar
  • Music
  • A full keyboard
  • Advanced security
  • Internet access

But you had to make calls through a headset. BlackBerry primarily targeted business professionals. They kept releasing more and more advanced devices and became the market leader in smartphones until the iPhone gained steam.

Finally, Apple enters the smartphone race and changed the market fully. Apple had already begun transforming how people use portable technology with the iPod, and the stage was set for them to unveil their latest device in 2007.

The iPhone was one of the most advanced consumer smartphones the market had ever seen. Priced at $499 for the 4gb unit and $599 for the 8gb model, users flocked to the device — and to the AT&T carrier, it was exclusive to.

Apple sold 1.4 million iPhones in its first year on the market, and the device exploded to 11.6 million sold in 2008.

Then android OS launched into the market with HTC phones. Do you know originally android is not developed by Google? It was Android Inc.(was founded in Palo Alto, California, in October 2003). In July 2005, Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million and improved android as we can see today in the market.

Then the smartphone with the touch screen market goes viral, and the mobile apps market changed the world’s culture that never happens before. In this meantime, Microsoft launched its windows phones with Nokia, Nokia Lumia series was the most popular name at that time for windows phones. But the customer's response to the windows phone was not so good, they still carry with iPhone and Android phones.

In 12 years, Apple launched 24 iPhone variants into the market which started from Apple iPhone(2007, also known as iPhone 2G and iPhone 1 with iOS 1) to Apple iPhone 11 (2019, three variants 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max with iOS 13).

Nowadays, this smart mobile phone market has emerged with the on-screen fingerprint sensor, a biometric sensor, lots of camera on rear and front, AI-based apps, voice-controlled, folded and portable touch screens, long-lasting battery life, etc.

Let’s see what’s new innovations jump into this sector.

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GAURAV SHARMA

Enthusiastic, geek, product maker and self-pride driven individual.