Mobile Phones

Mobile Phones Today

It's hard for most people to think about life without mobile phones, whilst that might be a sad point to raise, it is true for most of us. Be that the pull of social communication, business or just for emergencies we all have the need for a mobile phone.

Mobile phones as we know them haven’t been around for very long, and have only really been around for the last 20 years or so evolving and meeting our every day needs as time went on.

History of Mobile Phones

So where did it all start? The mobile phones we mostly use today are known as smart phones, these phones are a long way off of where mobile phones started out life.

The history of mobile phones dates back to 1908, this is when a US patent was issued for a wireless telephone in Kentucky.

We then jump forward to the 1940s where engineers at AT&T developed cells for mobile phone base stations.

Not so interesting fact, the Americans refer to mobile phones as cell phones.

When you start to look back at the very first mobile phones, these weren't actually mobile phones at all. (well not as we know them today) They were more two-way radios that allowed people like emergency services to communicate.

These earlier mobile phones connected by using one powerful base station covering a large area. Today we have multiple base stations that pass the signal from one to another and allow for a seamless call experience. Meaning that the call doesn’t drop when you go out of range of the base station your call originated from.

Motorola were the first company to mass product the first handheld mobile phone on the 3rd April 1973! Motorola are still around today producing smartphones that keep up to date with the needs of the current technology.

Current mobile phones often rely on 3G or 4G mobile technology, back in the day these new mobile phones were often referred to as 0G mobile phones, or Zero Generation. This doesn't seem like a massive step forward but put them side by side (if you could afford to buy one of these first mobile phones) and it would become clear!

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The first Mobile Phone

The first mobile phone was developed by Motorola an employee name Martin Cooper, he became a key player in the evolution of mobile phones.

The technology that allowed a mobile phone to be used in a vehicle was actually developed prior to Martin Cooper’s, but Martin’s was the first fully hand held mobile phone.

Martin Cooper made history in April 1973 when he successfully made the first call from a handheld mobile phone. back to top

What is a SmartPhone?

A smartphone is a type of mobile phone that provides technology above and beyond a traditional mobile phone. This could be anything from a camera, a web browser or a high resolution display, normally a touch screen.

Other features of a smartphone include large storage space, memory card slots to allow to you further upgrade this.

Most mobile phones that are bought and sold these days are smartphones, this is what most UK mobile phone users have become accustomed to.

The very first smartphone was launched in 1994, way before we knew that most people in the UK would one day own a smartphone! The first smartphone was called ‘IBM Simon’, it came with a price tag of $899 and only ever worked in the USA in a total of 15 states!

Modern Mobiles

Mobiles developed massively over the next decade, particularly with the introduction of handover technology.

Handover technology allowed users to keep their connection between base stations, this allowed people to start a call on one base station and remain on the call whilst they move between base stations, providing a seamless call experience for the mobile user.

Second Generation mobile phones or 2G, were born in Finland in 1993. This was also the year that the first text messages were sent from handheld mobile phones, as well as the introduction of data services. These data services would later play a massive part in our day to day mobile phone usage.

2001 saw the introduction of 3G of Third Generation mobile phones, this allowed uses to make and receive video calls and HSPA mobile data.

In late 2012 4G was commercially made available. This is the technology that most people are utilising today, although some networks still are using 3G. 4G brings much fast data which enabled mobile phone users to really embrace the whole smartphone experience allowing them to stream videos and music on the move with speeds matching those that they are used to getting with their home broadband. back to top