Archive - April 2013

It’s difficult to go anywhere in the world without seeing people glued to their mobile telephones. Even in the developing countries I’ve visited, mobile devices seem to be in plague proportions. In fact, it’s been estimated that by next year there’ll be more active mobile or cell phones in the world than the earth’s human population.

By 2014 the world will have more cell phone accounts than people on Earth at the current growth rate for that service, concludes a recent study by International Telecommunications Union. The ITU expects the number of cell phone accounts to rise from 6 billion now to 7.3 billion in 2014, compared with a global population of 7 billion.

Over 100 countries have the number of cell phone accounts exceeding their population. – siliconindia

With such massive coverage across the globe it’s interesting to note that the cell or mobile phone has only just reached the age of 40. Admittedly mobile phones were a little less mobile back then but it was the dawning of a new age in technology. I wonder if the pioneers of the mobile revolution could have ever dreamed of the impact that their devices would have on the world.

On April 3rd, 1973, Motorola engineer Marty Cooper placed the first public call from a cellphone. In midtown Manhattan, Cooper called Joel Engel — head of rival research department Bell Labs — saying “Joel, this is Marty. I’m calling you from a cell phone, a real handheld portable cell phone.” The call was placed on a Motorola DynaTAC 8000x, which weighed 2.5 pounds, a far cry from today’s 4-ounce handsets. – The Verge

Of course mobile phones weren’t in common use for quite a few years after their invention. They cost a small fortune and they were mainly used for business purposes.

Our first mobile phone was a great big Nokia 2010 which I bought for my wife, Pauline, at Easter 1996. Our daughter, Emily, was due in June and I wanted Pauline to be able to contact me at any time. That meant that she would have to track me down at work or wherever there was a landline because I didn’t have a mobile phone at that stage.

The battery life on that phone was so bad that we had to have an extra, charged battery on hand at all times.

It wasn’t until May 1999 that I got my own mobile phone. That was a slightly smaller Nokia and by that stage Pauline had a smaller phone too. Not small compared to today’s phones but leaps ahead of what had come before.

These days I have an iPhone, which is so very different to those earlier models. We’ve come a long way in mobile technology.

Do you remember your first mobile phone?

Did you have something the size of a brick or did you enter the world of mobile phones when they’d slimmed down a little? I’d love to hear about your first experiences with this ‘new technology’.

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