There’s a lot we take for granted these days, but the ability to talk to anybody in our life, at any time, must be close to the top of the list. Many of us don’t remember a time before cell phones. But these days, 97% of Americans own cell phones, and 85% of them own smartphones. By 2025, the people of Earth will own 18.22 billion mobile devices, a substantial number of which will be smartphones.
How did we get to the point where cell phones are essentially required for daily life and earning a living? What’s the history of cell phones? Let’s see where this technology came from and how we got here.
To understand where the cell phone came from, we need to know where and how the concept of telephony itself came about and how new innovations took it mobile. Here’s a quick crash course in phone technology before we get into the specifics of modern cellular networks:
For the last several years, major technology companies have been in constant competition to develop faster, lighter, and more appealing smartphones. This hardware is inevitably paired with robust software ecosystems, like that provided by Apple and Google.
Today, citizens send more than 200 million text messages in America alone. A reported 83% of smartphone users take pictures with their devices; 60% listen to music; 46% play games; and 32% exchange videos. And this is just the start of what modern cell phones can do.
Cell phones aren’t just one technology – they contain multiple components requiring several disciplines to perfect. Getting these technologies right, one at a time, made modern telephony possible. Here are some of the primary technologies that needed to come of age before they could find their way into cell phones:
Although the latest iPhone models eschew the SIM card and SIM tray, the development of SIM cards in Germany in 1991 made modern cellular networking possible.
In 2010, the iPhone 4 became the first smartphone to use the newly redesigned micro-SIM to save space. iPhone 5 was the first smartphone to use the further reduced-in-size nano-SIM in 2012.
IBM’s Simon – introduced in 1991 – was the first cell phone with a touchscreen. Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, after acquiring FingerWorks, with the intention of creating the “smartest” touchscreen ever.
It was Sharp that first integrated digital cameras into cell phones. That was in 2000. Now, every smartphone on the market has at least one camera. Today, some flagship smartphones have camera sensors capable of capturing detail at more than 100 megapixels.
GPS has origins in the Space Race of the 1960s and the Department of Defense. A company called Benefon was the first to launch a commercial GPS-compatible cell phone in 1999. It led to the introduction of additional GPS-enabled phones in the following years. Qualcomm released assisted GPS tech in 2004, which combined cell signals with GPS to further improve location-finding accuracy.
Cell phones didn’t have LTE modems until 2011, which caused a sea change in smartphone speed and capability. Samsung’s Galaxy was the first smartphone to include one; the HTC ThunderBolt followed in 2013.
It seems like the pace of innovation in the cell phone market has slowed in recent years, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t exciting developments on the horizon. We’re still writing the history of cell phones.
Mobile carriers and smartphone makers are eyeing satellites as the next mobile network. Additionally, form factors keep changing; Samsung is all-in on foldable phones, and the rumor mill says Apple is working on its own pricy, foldable smartphone. Now that we know more about the history of cell phones, where will this journey take us next?
