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History
Main article: History of mobile phones
Analog Motorola DynaTAC 8000X Advanced Mobile Phone System mobile phone as
of 1983In 1908, U.S. Patent 887,357 for a wireless telephone was issued in
to Nathan B. Stubblefield of Murray, Kentucky. He applied this patent to
"cave radio" telephones and not directly to cellular telephony as the term
is currently understood.[4] Cells for mobile phone base stations were
invented in 1947 by Bell Labs engineers at AT&T and further developed by
Bell Labs during the 1960s. Radiophones have a long and varied history going
back to Reginald Fessenden's invention and shore-to-ship demonstration of
radio telephony, through the Second World War with military use of radio
telephony links and civil services in the 1950s, while hand-held cellular
radio devices have been available since 1973. A patent for the first
wireless phone as we know today was issued in US Patent Number 3,449,750 to
George Sweigert of Euclid, Ohio on June 10, 1969.
In 1945, the zero generation (0G) of mobile telephones was introduced. Like
other technologies of the time, it involved a single, powerful base station
covering a wide area, and each telephone would effectively monopolize a
channel over that whole area while in use. The concepts of frequency reuse
and handoff, as well as a number of other concepts that formed the basis of
modern cell phone technology, were described in the 1970s; see for example
Fluhr and Nussbaum,[5] Hachenburg et al.[6] , and U.S. Patent 4,152,647,
issued May 1, 1979 to Charles A. Gladden and Martin H. Parelman, both of Las
Vegas, Nevada and assigned by them to the United States Government.
Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive is widely considered to
be the inventor of the first practical mobile phone for hand-held use in a
non-vehicle setting. Cooper is the first inventor named on "Radio telephone
system" filed on October 17, 1973 with the US Patent Office and later issued
as US Patent 3,906,166;[7] other named contributors on the patent included
Cooper's boss, John F. Mitchell, Motorola's chief of portable communication
products, who successfully pushed Motorola to develop wireless communication
products that would be small enough to use outside the home, office or
automobile and participated in the design of the cellular phone.[8][9] Using
a modern, if somewhat heavy portable handset, Cooper made the first call on
a hand-held mobile phone on April 3, 1973 to a rival, Dr. Joel S. Engel of
Bell Labs.[10]
The first commercial citywide cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT
in 1979. Fully automatic cellular networks were first introduced in the
early to mid 1980s (the 1G generation). The Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT)
system went online in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden in 1981.[11]
Personal Handy-phone System mobiles and modems used in Japan around
1997–2003In 1983, Motorola DynaTAC was the first approved mobile phone by
FCC in the United States. In 1984, Bell Labs developed modern commercial
cellular technology (based, to a large extent, on the Gladden, Parelman
Patent), which employed multiple, centrally controlled base stations (cell
sites), each providing service to a small area (a cell). The cell sites
would be set up such that cells partially overlapped. In a cellular system,
a signal between a base station (cell site) and a terminal (phone) only need
be strong enough to reach between the two, so the same channel can be used
simultaneously for separate conversations in different cells.
Cellular systems required several leaps of technology, including handover,
which allowed a conversation to continue as a mobile phone traveled from
cell to cell. This system included variable transmission power in both the
base stations and the telephones (controlled by the base stations), which
allowed range and cell size to vary. As the system expanded and neared
capacity, the ability to reduce transmission power allowed new cells to be
added, resulting in more, smaller cells and thus more capacity. The evidence
of this growth can still be seen in the many older, tall cell site towers
with no antennae on the upper parts of their towers. These sites originally
created large cells, and so had their antennae mounted atop high towers; the
towers were designed so that as the system expanded—and cell sizes
shrank—the antennae could be lowered on their original masts to reduce
range.
A 1991 GSM mobile phoneThe first "modern" network technology on digital 2G
(second generation) cellular technology was launched by Radiolinja (now part
of Elisa Group) in 1991 in Finland on the GSM standard which also marked the
introduction of competition in mobile telecoms when Radiolinja challenged
incumbent Telecom Finland (now part of TeliaSonera) who ran a 1G NMT
network.
The first data services appeared on mobile phones starting with
person-to-person SMS text messaging in Finland in 1993. First trial payments
using a mobile phone to pay for a Coca Cola vending machine were set in
Finland in 1998. The first commercial payments were mobile parking trialled
in Sweden but first commercially launched in Norway in 1999. The first
commercial payment system to mimic banks and credit cards was launched in
the Philippines in 1999 simultaneously by mobile operators Globe and Smart.
The first content sold to mobile phones was the ringing tone, first launched
in 1998 in Finland. The first full internet service on mobile phones was i-Mode
introduced by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in 1999.
In 2001 the first commercial launch of 3G (Third Generation) was again in
Japan by NTT DoCoMo on the WCDMA standard.[12]
Until the early 1990s, following introduction of the Motorola MicroTAC, most
mobile phones were too large to be carried in a jacket pocket, so they were
typically installed in vehicles as car phones. With the miniaturization of
digital components and the development of more sophisticated batteries,
mobile phones have become smaller and lighter.
Handsets
A Nokia phone with box.
A printed circuit board inside a mobile phoneThere are several categories of
mobile phones, from basic phones to feature phones such as musicphones and
cameraphones, to smartphones. The first smartphone was the Nokia 9000
Communicator in 1996 which incorporated PDA functionality to the basic
mobile phone at the time. As miniaturisation and increased processing power
of microchips has enabled ever more features to be added to phones, the
concept of the smartphone has evolved, and what was a high-end smartphone
five years ago, is a standard phone today. Several phone series have been
introduced to address a given market segment, such as the RIM BlackBerry
focusing on enterprise/corporate customer email needs; the SonyEricsson
Walkman series of musicphones and Cybershot series of cameraphones; the
Nokia N-Series of multimedia phones; and the Apple iPhone which provides
full-featured web access and multimedia capabilities.
Features
Main articles: Mobile phone features, Smartphone, and iPhone
Mobile phones often have features beyond sending text messages and making
voice calls, including call registers, GPS navigation, music (MP3) and video
(MP4) playback, RDS radio receiver, alarms, memo and document recording,
personal organiser and personal digital assistant functions, ability to
watch streaming video or download video for later viewing, video calling,
built-in cameras (1.0+ Mpx) and camcorders (video recording), with autofocus
and flash, ringtones, games, PTT, memory card reader (SD), USB (2.0),
infrared, Bluetooth (2.0) and WiFi connectivity, instant messaging, Internet
e-mail and browsing and serving as a wireless modem for a PC, and soon will
also serve as a console of sorts to online games and other high quality
games.
Some phones include a touchscreen.
Nokia and the University of Cambridge are showing off a bendable cell phone
called the Morph.[13]
Software and Applications
A phone with touchscreen feature.
Mobile phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants 1997–2007The most commonly used
data application on mobile phones is SMS text messaging, with 74% of all
mobile phone users as active users (over 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion
total subscribers at the end of 2007). SMS text messaging was worth over 100
billion dollars in annual revenues in 2007 and the worldwide average of
messaging use is 2.6 SMS sent per day per person across the whole mobile
phone subscriber base (source Informa 2007). The first SMS text message was
sent from a computer to a mobile phone in 1992 in the UK, while the first
person-to-person SMS from phone to phone was sent in Finland in 1993.
The other non-SMS data services used by mobile phones were worth 31 Billion
dollars in 2007, and were led by mobile music, downloadable logos and
pictures, gaming, gambling, adult entertainment and advertising (source:
Informa 2007). The first downloadable mobile content was sold to a mobile
phone in Finland in 1998, when Radiolinja (now Elisa) introduced the
downloadable ringing tone service. In 1999 Japanese mobile operator NTT
DoCoMo introduced its mobile internet service, i-Mode, which today is the
world's largest mobile internet service and roughly the same size as Google
in annual revenues.
The first mobile news service, delivered via SMS, was launched in Finland in
2000. Mobile news services are expanding with many organisations providing
"on-demand" news services by SMS. Some also provide "instant" news pushed
out by SMS. Mobile telephony also facilitates activism and public journalism
being explored by Reuters and Yahoo![14] and small independent news
companies such as Jasmine News in Sri Lanka.
Companies like Monster.com are starting to offer mobile services such as job
search and career advice. Consumer applications are on the rise and include
everything from information guides on local activities and events to mobile
coupons and discount offers one can use to save money on purchases. Even
tools for creating websites for mobile phones are increasingly becoming
available.
Mobile payments were first trialled in Finland in 1998 when two Coca-Cola
vending machines in Espoo were enabled to work with SMS payments. Eventually
the idea spread and in 1999 the Philippines launched the first commercial
mobile payments systems, on the mobile operators Globe and Smart. Today
mobile payments ranging from mobile banking to mobile credit cards to mobile
commerce are very widely used in Asia and Africa, and in selected European
markets. For example in the Philippines it is not unusual to have one's
entire paycheck paid to the mobile account. In Kenya the limit of money
transfers from one mobile banking account to another is one million US
dollars. In India paying utility bills with mobile gains a 5% discount. In
Estonia mobile phones are the most popular method of paying for public
parking.
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