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first us patent for a wireless phone
u.s. patent number 887357 for a wireless telephone, issued 1908 to nathan b. stubblefield of murray, kentucky. he applied this to "cave radio" phones and not directly to cellular telephony as we know it today. -
cells for mobile phones
the introduction of cells for mobile phone base stations, invented in 1947 by bell labs engineers at at&t, was further developed by bell labs during the -
introducing text messaging
text messaging began in the late 1980’s by a group of europeans who were trying to improve systems for the global system for mobile communications, but was used by a civilian in 1993 by an engineering student totally by accident. -
pre-iphone introduction
a cell phone with added pda functions isn't news today. but in 1993, it was a novel idea. the simon personal communicator, jointly marketed by ibm and bellsouth, was the first mobile phone to add pda features. it was a phone, pager, calculator, address book, fax machine, and e-mail device in one package, albeit a 20-ounce package that cost $900. -
first commercial text messaging
the first commercial usage of text mesaging was implemented by nokia in china and japan in 1995 -
web integration to cell phones
nokia's candybar-style cell phones were all the rage. sporting a monochrome display, an external antenna, and a boxy, 5.2-inch tall frame, the nokia 6160 was the company's best-selling handset of the 1990s. the somewhat sleeker nokia 8260, introduced in 2000, added a colorful case and lost some of the 6160's bulk: it stood only about 4 inches tall and weighed 3.4 ounces, compared with almost 6 ounces for the 6160. -
intro to black berry
the blackberry is a wireless handheld device introduced in 1999 which supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services. -
cell cameras
today, most cell phones come with a built-in camera. but, just a few years ago, a camera phone was hard to come by. in 2002, sanyo and sprint debuted the sanyo scp-5300 pcs phone, which they claimed was the first mobile phone available in america with a built-in camera. (a camera phone from sharp had been available in japan for a few years.) at its highest resolution, it captured vga (640 by 480) images--a far cry from today's 5-megapixel camera phones like the nokia n95. -
3g standardization
not long after the introduction of 2g networks, projects began to develop third generation systems. inevitably there were many different standards with different contenders pushing their own technologies. quite differently from 2g systems, however, the meaning of 3g has been standardized in the imt-2000 standardization processing. this process did not standardize on a technology, but rather on a set of requirements at that point, the vision of a single unified worldwide standard broke down and s -
music cell phones
it promised to bring together the best of two worlds: apple's excellent itunes music player and motorola's cell phone design expertise. the motorola rokr, released in september 2005, was the first music phone to incorporate apple's music software. it allowed users to transfer songs purchased from itunes to the phone for listening on the go. unfortunately, users found song transfers to be painfully slow, and many were stymied by the 100-song limit imposed on their music collections. still, this h
