The History Behind the Invention of the First Cell Phone

Often considered the greatest invention to ever come from mankind, the cell phone (also known as the mobile phone) has connected not only countries or continents. But it’s also connected the world.

People from the U.S.A. are now able to talk, in almost real-time with those in Australia with less than a second delay. It’s incredible.

Today we’ll talk about the history of the Cell Phone, but before we can do that we’ll talk about what came before the Cell Phone. The predecessor to the Cell Phone was the two-way radio, and before that, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. Two-way radios were used in Police cruisers, Ambulances and even by civilians to stay in contact with each other. This tech changed the world as we know it.

The invention Back in 1973, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Martin Cooper invented the first mobile phone that used a cellular connection. The first call was made later that year in April by Dr. Cooper himself. Martin Cooper was an executive of a mobile phone company you may know today, Motorola. Their first phone and the first-ever working cellular phone was called the Motorola DynaTAC, which weighed a whopping 1.1kg. For a handheld device, that’s pretty heavy! With the DynaTAC, you could get around 30 minutes of talk time, but then you’d need to charge it for 10 hours.

At first, these devices were extremely expensive. Much like the television when it was first released a long time ago. Many years later we’d see the network of cellular devices and infrastructure that we know today.

Today, our world is revolved around the internet and staying connected. From gaming to social media, there is no end to the network that is being built. With the release of many apps on smartphones, even you can win massive jackpots off your mobile phone with Betway.

Important points in the timeline

● 1979 – The first 1G mobile cellular network was launched in Japan.
● 1982 – The car phone was released, famously used in movies and TV when looking back at the 80s today.
● 1990-1991 – 1G is upgraded to 2G. Firstly in Finland, introducing 2G Cellular networks.
● 1992 – Text messages are commonplace today. The first one was sent in 1992 by Neil Papworth, his message was a simple “Merry Christmas”.

● 1993 – Touchscreen phones were invented. The phone had many features such as a PDA, Email & Pager. The phone was called “Simon”.
● 1994 – Bluetooth was invented in Sweden but did not become publicly available until 1998.
● 1994 – SMS, also known as Short Message Service was started in 1994 allowing messages to be exchanged between different mobile phones.
● 1996 – The forefather of the smartphone, the Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched. Becoming the world’s first modern smartphone.
● 1999 – Web Browsing became readily available on mobile phones in April 1999.
● 2000 – Camera phones were launched, starting with the J-SH04 by Sharp. First being available in Japan.
● 2006 – Betway is launched.
● 2007 – Apple revealed the iPhone model of smartphones. First launched in the USA on the 2G network.
● 2009 – HTC released the HTC Dream, being the first Android-based Google mobile phone using the platform.