Today, the most important device we carry with us is our mobile phone. We are so dependent on mobiles that if we lose it, we feel like we have lost a physical part of our body. Its applications that make our daily life so easy and comfortable are the reasons that we can’t survive without it. Right from waking us up with its alarm function, it contributes in our every work. Even for watching time, mobiles are used instead of watches. When we get bored, we play games or watch movies, or get on the social networks. Well not only when bored, even at the busiest hour our phones has many applications, hence we put our hands on mobiles to use calculator, or dictionary, or to check the updates, watch the news, etc.
The first mobile phone invented was not even close to today’s mobiles, but it was a stepping stone towards the digital world. Because of universal compatibility one has many applications to choose from to install in the applications, also because of innovative mind out there are constantly adding more and more applications; today mobile apps are so many that if one writes the number of applications available today and if you read this tomorrow, the number will certainly increase. As the mobile industry has a tough competition, the one who innovates gets a benefit in the race, right from the first mobile invented, many different manufacturers contributed in bringing the mobile phones to what they are today.
In this article, let’s have insights into important events and upgrades in the history of mobile phones, and also the manufacturing companies which innovated the upgrades.
First Mobile Phone was introduced by Motorola. On 3rd of April, 1973 Martin Cooper, a researcher and executive of Motorola made first ever mobile phone call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of rival company–Bell Labs–and said that he is calling from a wireless device. The handset was 4.4 lbs in weight. The mobile phones were commercially made available in the year 1983; it was DynaTAC 8000x, manufactured by Motorola, which cost about $4000. It was the first step of a never-ending journey of advancements of mobile phones.
If we talk about the upgrades of mobiles, equipping mobiles with touchscreens instead of mechanical touch pad may be considered as one of the most important upgrade for mobile. International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) is the first company to produce mobile phone with touch screen, it was IBM Simon. It was sold in the United States in the year of 1994.
IBM Simon also featured software applications; hence it is also called as the first smartphone.
First Bluetooth, a wireless technology to share the data from one device to another is invented by a group of engineers at Ericsson, a Swedish company in the year of 1994. Now, Bluetooth is managed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG); SIG is a committee of more than 25,000 companies, which is responsible for the regulation of standards for the Bluetooth. Any company who wants a Bluetooth to their devices must meet SIG. SIG develops Bluetooth and is responsible for upgrades in Bluetooth.
The first mobile which had applications like games, calculator, clock, calendar, currency converter was Nokia 6110 which was launched in 1997; Nokia thus ruled the mobile industry for the next decade.
Knowingly or unknowingly mobile’s capability to connect with the real time internet is one of the most important reasons of its common use. Nokia 9000 Communicator phone was the first mobile phone which had connectivity to the internet; it was in the year of 1996 in Finland. In 1999 in Japan, NTT DoCoMo launched i-mode, which was the first commercial launch of browser based mobile phone; and today even the cheapest phones have the internet service.
The first mobile having in-built camera was, J-SH04 made by Sharp Corporation of Japan. It was released in the year of 2000 and was sold only in Japan, it was a spark generated about 16 years ago, and today, mobile phones are sold on the quality of the camera it has.
Ericsson R380, the first Symbian phone was marketed as a “smartphone”, first time in the world. It was released in the year of 2000, and the journey of smartphones started.
In the late 2003, many companies introduced front-faced camera or front camera. Sony Ericsson Z1010 and Motorola A835 were the most popular ones.
On June 29 of the year 2007, Steve Jobs released the first iPhone, which had the best ornamental design equipped with the latest technology. In the era where everyone was making their devices for universal use, Apple created its own device which was not compatible with any other company’s accessories. Apple made its own way in the market and is still a biggest competitor in the mobile industry.
Every invention has led the competition into different direction, every detail, every patent and every upgrade makes a great impact in the mobile industry. But one technology has changed the competition into chaos, and that is the introduction of the Android Operating System.
Android is currently the most popular mobile operating system, its introduction in the mobile world has changed the course the way the mobile industry worked. Some successfully leveraged the technology and strived as leading providers, and some companies ignored to make changes in traditional operating system and lost the market.
The first Android was built by Google on Linux Kernel; the first mobile phone having Android as the operating system was HTC Dream, produced by HTC. It was released on 22nd of October, 2008. Today, not for only the phones but android is used for other devices like televisions, watches, tablets and many other wearable.
Mobile industry today is one of the largest industries, it connects an individual with the world, and mobiles have now reached to the every part of the world and available for every person. And because of globalization and person’s reach to the internet, big giants are threatened by the new formed companies. Staying with the technology and if possible, inventing something more in the mobile phones may add a great advantage to a mobile company.
