The cellphone: a portable wireless device on which you make calls. The cellphone has evolved quite a bit from what it was to what it is today. Martin Cooper was the one credited with the original cellphone in 1973, but the history goes further back to the trenches of WWII.
Technology is perfected over time by making small changes and tweaks until you come up with a bigger (or in some cases smaller) and faster technological advancement. Technology is always improving and with it, our lives change a little bit more. Today everything is “smart.” We have smart TVs with cameras as well as smartphones with many apps all designed to make life easier.
Vintage Cellphones: The Very Beginning
Created in the early 1970s, the cellphone has been “the brick” to Apple’s “iPhone.” However, the history of the cellphone actually goes further back to the 1950s. Even during WWII, soldiers used a version of walkie-talkies that helped to contribute to cellphone technology. The “walkie-talkies” were called short-range mobile radios and for good reason. The range was only about a mile. The men were able to talk to each other from the trenches.
From the short-range radios, you then had a transistor which was a small device that amplified electrical signals broadcasted through a loudspeaker as early as 1948. The transistor evolved into the transistor radio in the 1950s. While this was happening, car phones started appearing on the scene in 1948 although only about 5000 Americans owned them, and they weighed about 80lbs.
Motorola executive Martin Cooper saw the car phone as just a stepping stone to the kind of phone we have today. the first to make a phone call on a cellular device on April 3, 1973, roughly 51 years ago. This was our first introduction to “The Brick,” true to its name, which was, actually, built like a brick. Its official name was DynaTAC 8000X and it was the first official cellphone made available to the general public.
Vintage Cellphones: From “The Brick” to iPhones
However, the cost of the first cellphone, DynaTAC 8000X was about $4000, which in today’s money is equivalent to $10,000. If you were to purchase a DynaTAC 8000X it would be even more expensive today.
It wasn’t until 1989 that Motorola came out with a flip phone, and roughly 10 years later that was the start of cell phones becoming lighter and slimmer. Also, it was about a decade later in 1984 that the DynaTAC was made available to the general public.
It was thought at the time that the cell phone would not replace standard car phones. “The Brick” took about ten hours to charge and was around 2.5lbs and 9 inches tall. It powered for about 35 minutes of conversation.
Now we’ll jump ahead to the original smartphone. In 1993, the world’s first smartphone, the Simon personal communicator, was made by Bell South and IBM. It was marketed as a cellphone first and a computer second and only cost around $900.
The first smartphones with a camera came out in 2002 which included the Nokia 7650 and the Sanyo SPC-5300. The benefits of the Nokia were a 176×208 pixel color display and the Sanyo advertised three user-controlled tones, white balance, and zoom. In comparison to the iPhone 5, it pales but it was another great invention of its time. The iPhone 5 offers us face detection and an eight-megapixel camera with auto flash.
Vintage Cellphones: Still Today’s Hot Item
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Do you remember the Blackberry? In 2003, it was the top-notch phone of its day. It offered consumers several capabilities such as email, texting, web browser, and a Blackberry messenger service used amongst Blackberry owners. On the other hand, the first iPhone came out in 2007 and combined three services into one handheld device: a mobile phone, a communication device, and an iPod.
The iPhone and Samsung Galaxy create the ultimate feud of the IOS or Android phone amongst users today. Many would argue for the iPhone, but the Samsung Galaxy is not to be beaten out so easily. The first Android followed closely on Apple iPhone’s heels and came out in 2008.
Samsung and Android seem to be destined to be in this competition forever. They are both top-of-the-line phones that can serve for your everyday purposes. It all depends on what you like best. As a user of both Apple products and Android, I’d describe the difference as a different way of thinking of doing the same thing.
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About the Author
A freelance journalist, Corinne Crowe has been writing for about five years. She worked as a journalist for three years for a small-town newspaper called The People Sentinel based out of Barnwell, South Carolina, and an online newspaper, AntiochTenn based out of Nashville, Tennessee. She graduated Suma Cum Laude from Amridge University with her Masters in Human Services in 2020.
She is an avid collector of Pop! figures with an emphasis on Stitch and Disney Princesses. In her spare time, she loves to read. Her favorite genres are historical fiction and nonfiction, biographies, and young adult. Corinne lives with her husband, Andrew, of eight years, daughter Aspen, and her dog Piper who thinks she’s a lap dog, in Tuscumbia, Alabama.