So recently MSN had an article that talked about the history of cell phones in pictures and it was so interesting to see how technology has changed the way we communicate nowadays. I just had to post this on my blog. Although my version wont include details such as the features of the phone, it will still provide you with pictures and names so that you can see how far we have come since 1982.
The first phone in the line up is the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (1982) which was a phone introduced for commercial sale in 1983 and on its
introduction it weighed in at 2 lbs and was more than 1 foot in length and cost around $4000. It also allowed you to store only 30 numbers and provided only 1 hour of talk time.
After that came the Nokia Mobira Senator (1982) which was a phone meant to be for use in the car. The reason for its “car use only” disclaimer was that this bad boy weighed 21 lbs!
After a major leap to 1993, we see the BellSouth/IBM Simon Personal Communicator (1993) which was the first mobile phone to add PDA features because aside from being a normal phone it was also a pager, calculator, address book, fax machine, and e-mail device all in one. Weighing in at 20 ounces it cost around $900.
The next phone called the Motorola StarTAC (1996) brought out the idea that style was also important and it sure was stylish. It was the smallest and lightest phone during its time in 1996.
Nokia’s Candybar style phones specially the Nokia 6160 (1998), are sometimes even seen today who grip onto it for dear life. These were some of the most popular phones when it was released in 1998.
Kyocera’s QCP6035 (2000) was the phone that came about with the smartphone concept. Although smartphone has come a long way, back in 2000 it only came with 8MB of memory and a monochromatic display.
The Handspring Treo 180 (2001) created waves with its introduction and included a full qwerty keyboard as it focused more on the PDA aspect than the phone aspect of the device.
The Danger Hiptop (2002) was a breakthrough and although it has known as the “sidekick” now it pioneered the swivel design and was the first to be a truly mobile IM and web-browsing phone.
The BlackBerry 5810 (2002) was when blackberry came to be known as the phone with the greatest data capabilities such as email, web access, etc. The 5810 added voice capabilities among features such as push button email and organizer features.
The Sanyo SCP-5300 (2002) was a phone that claimed to be the first phone in America with a camera built in and in those days it boasted a 640 x 480 resolution picture which today is too low to even be the standard.
The Nokia N-Gage (2003) was supposed to be the phone that roped in gamers as part of its market but unfortunately for Nokia the N-Gage was a no go.
The Motorola Razr v3 (2004) is the phone that set the standard for slim and stylish phones and even today most people are seen using a version of the Razr phone.
Being one of the first phones to bring about iTunes in a cellphone package, the Motorola Rokr (2005) was unsuccessful at doing so. Consumers didn’t like the slow download speeds and the limited storage capacity for their songs. All in all, a great effort by Motorola.
The Blackberry Pearl was the phone that RIM had worked a long time on. The Pearl was the first blackberry to feature a camera and an audio/video player and when put together in a package that has excellent data capabilities, it wasn’t a surprise that the Pearl was a hit.
Apple’s iPhone (2007) is by far the most anticipated phone of the season and being the first completely touchscreen phone it will be interesting to see what tricks Apple whips out of the bag for the iPhone.
Source: MSN
