Since the mid-1990s, mobile (or cell / cellular) phones have gradually become more important in our daily lives.
Whereas early phones were able to do no more than make phone calls and send text messages, today's smartphones are more like small computers rather than phones.
I constantly hear people at work talking about the latest apps they have downloaded to their iPhone or Android phone.
And although many of the apps are useful, many are not.
Because, for many of us at least, our attention span tends to be fairly short, we have this urge to keep downloading new apps to keep ourselves entertained.
The Size of Handsets We have all seen photos of the handsets of the late '80s and laughed at how big they were.
It's hard to believe that they were 'mobile' phones at all.
Martin Cooper, who led the team that developed the first cell phone (the Motorola DynaTAC - 1973) once commented on the fact that although the battery life of the phone was only 20 minutes, that was not a problem because you couldn't hold the handset for that long due to it weighing so much (2.
2 pounds - 1 kg).
During the course of the 1990s, the size of handsets gradually got smaller until by the early 2000s they were so small that the keypads were, for many people, virtually unusable.
I myself had such a phone and in the end had to give it to my son because my fingers were too big and I found it very difficult to avoid pressing two characters on the keypad at the same time.
Some of the Early Pioneers I've already mentioned Martin Cooper who led the team that developed the first cell phone in 1973, but there have been plenty of other people who have played a significant role in the history of the mobile / cell phone.
Going way back to people such as Samuel Morse and Michael Faraday who made early breakthroughs in fields such as telegraphy and electromagnetism, moving through to Alexander Graham Bell and Guglielmo Marconi who played significant roles in telephone systems and radio transmissions, respectively.
Generations of Mobile Phone The history of the mobile phone history is often divided into generations (first, second, third and so on) to mark significant changes in capabilities as technology has improved.
First generation (1G) mobile phones The first commercially automated mobile phone network (the 1G generation) was launched in Japan in 1979 by NTT in Japan.
Within a few years, the network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan and became the first nation-wide 1G network.
Second generation (2G) mobile phones During the 1990s, the second generation (2G) mobile phone systems emerged.
These were primarily using the GSM standard.
2G differed from 1G by using digital transmission instead of analog transmission, and also fast out-of-band phone-to-network signaling.
The rise in mobile phone usage as a result of 2G was explosive and this era also saw the advent of prepaid mobile phones (pay-as-you-go).
Third generation (3G) mobile phones In the mid-2000s, the 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol emerged.
There were also 3.
5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G protocols.
Fourth generation (4G) mobile phones By 2009, it had become clear that 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media.
Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized 4th-generation technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up to 10-fold over existing 3G technologies.
The first two commercially available technologies billed as 4G were the WiMAX standard (offered in the U.
S.
by Sprint) and the LTE standard, first offered in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera.
Whereas early phones were able to do no more than make phone calls and send text messages, today's smartphones are more like small computers rather than phones.
I constantly hear people at work talking about the latest apps they have downloaded to their iPhone or Android phone.
And although many of the apps are useful, many are not.
Because, for many of us at least, our attention span tends to be fairly short, we have this urge to keep downloading new apps to keep ourselves entertained.
The Size of Handsets We have all seen photos of the handsets of the late '80s and laughed at how big they were.
It's hard to believe that they were 'mobile' phones at all.
Martin Cooper, who led the team that developed the first cell phone (the Motorola DynaTAC - 1973) once commented on the fact that although the battery life of the phone was only 20 minutes, that was not a problem because you couldn't hold the handset for that long due to it weighing so much (2.
2 pounds - 1 kg).
During the course of the 1990s, the size of handsets gradually got smaller until by the early 2000s they were so small that the keypads were, for many people, virtually unusable.
I myself had such a phone and in the end had to give it to my son because my fingers were too big and I found it very difficult to avoid pressing two characters on the keypad at the same time.
Some of the Early Pioneers I've already mentioned Martin Cooper who led the team that developed the first cell phone in 1973, but there have been plenty of other people who have played a significant role in the history of the mobile / cell phone.
Going way back to people such as Samuel Morse and Michael Faraday who made early breakthroughs in fields such as telegraphy and electromagnetism, moving through to Alexander Graham Bell and Guglielmo Marconi who played significant roles in telephone systems and radio transmissions, respectively.
Generations of Mobile Phone The history of the mobile phone history is often divided into generations (first, second, third and so on) to mark significant changes in capabilities as technology has improved.
First generation (1G) mobile phones The first commercially automated mobile phone network (the 1G generation) was launched in Japan in 1979 by NTT in Japan.
Within a few years, the network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan and became the first nation-wide 1G network.
Second generation (2G) mobile phones During the 1990s, the second generation (2G) mobile phone systems emerged.
These were primarily using the GSM standard.
2G differed from 1G by using digital transmission instead of analog transmission, and also fast out-of-band phone-to-network signaling.
The rise in mobile phone usage as a result of 2G was explosive and this era also saw the advent of prepaid mobile phones (pay-as-you-go).
Third generation (3G) mobile phones In the mid-2000s, the 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol emerged.
There were also 3.
5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G protocols.
Fourth generation (4G) mobile phones By 2009, it had become clear that 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media.
Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized 4th-generation technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up to 10-fold over existing 3G technologies.
The first two commercially available technologies billed as 4G were the WiMAX standard (offered in the U.
S.
by Sprint) and the LTE standard, first offered in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera.