Who invented cell phone first

The service was slow to take off, however, with only a few thousand customers in about localities in total. The system required an operator at a switchboard to set up a connection and the users had to push a button to talk and let go of it to listen, making it more like a military radio than the existing telephone system that people were used to.

The service was also expensive, and the number of channels available for active connections remained limited to as little as three channels in some places, and with a conversation taking up the entire channel for the duration of the call, there could never be more active conversations than there were available channels.

Bell Labs engineers were working on a new system that would improve the efficiency of these channels in the s. However, Douglas Ring and W.

Other significant developments in the s enabled automatic cell switching and signaling systems that allowed for devices to maintain a connection as they moved from one cell to another, expanding the area that mobile telephone networks could service. But all of these developments were put to use developing mobile phones in automobiles. It would take an upstart to give us the first hand-held cell phone, as we know it today.

They had spent much of their efforts developing what we used to call the car phone. The reason we don't all have car phones today was because of the work of a small company called Motorola, and a man named Marty Cooper.

Build it they did. On April 3, , before stepping into a news conference in Manhattan to demonstrate the new device that would go on to revolutionize communications, Cooper tested it by placing the first public cellular phone call in history.

It was in the year that the Nokia was launched. As well as becoming one of the most iconic phones of all time, it remains one of the biggest-selling cell phones to this day. The first Bluetooth cell phone was the Ericsson T39, after which other manufacturers started introducing this technology as well.

The Nokia was the first mass-market Symbian OS cell phone and the first Nokia cell phone with a built-in camera. Then in , innovation came in the form of the Sanyo SCP, a phone which allowed photos to be seen on the screen, rather than having to plug the device into a computer.

This groundbreaking phone also featured dual color displays and a camera with flash. And again, the phone kept getting smaller and more capable, with Nokia and Motorola dominating markets across the world.

The camera game also got a level-up with Nokia introducing the , their first smartphone with a 1-megapixel camera. They also introduced the first true global roaming phone, the Nokia The first waterproof phone popped up in This was the Casio G'zOne, which could sustain being submerged up to 1-meter depth. One of the biggest events in cell phone history took place in The first iPhone, known as iPhone 2G, was launched and blew everyone away due to the removal of most physical hardware buttons in favor of a touch-based interface.

The introduction of the Android operating system was criticized due to its lack of functionality and third-party software, but was, nevertheless, considered innovative due to its notifications system and integration with Google's services. The first release of the Long Term Evolution LTE standard was commercially deployed in Norway and Sweden in and has since become common throughout most parts of the world.

The first phone to come with the free Google Maps Navigator installed was the Motorola Droid which was also released that same year. The following years saw further innovation.. Apple released the iPhone 4 , which introduced the Retina display as well as FaceTime. It was also the first iPhone to have a front-facing camera. In , Samsung launched its new flagship — the Samsung Galaxy S. At the time, it was the thinnest smartphone at 9. Many other pioneering features came to market in Motorola launched the Razr, which was, at the time, the thinnest phone at only 7.

Sony Ericsson went after the mobile gaming market and created the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play , a game-console-like phone focused on the gaming experience.

Motorola focused on adding security features and had released the Motorola Atrix, the first phone to feature a fingerprint sensor. In , Xiaomi launched their first phone — the Xiaomi Mi 1 — which was only available in Asian markets. A year later, Samsung came out with the Galaxy S3 , a phone with a personal voice assistant of their own, as well as novel features such as eye-tracking.

This phone introduced a highly sensitive capacitive screen and wireless inductive charging and was the first to feature optical image stabilization OIS. LG launched the G3 , the first flagship with a QHD screen, while Samsung launched the Galaxy S5 , the first smartphone to feature a heart rate monitor. A year later, in , they launched the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge , the first phone with curved display edges that allowed additional functionality.

Google launched several Nexus phones such as the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P , which would be followed by the first-ever phone designed completely by Google — the Google Pixel. It was lauded for its best-in-class camera and came with the bonus of unlimited cloud storage. In , Sony launched the Xperia XZ , the first phone to feature an HDR display, and Motorola launched the Moto Z , a phone with magnetic accessories providing additional functionalities.

The same year, Apple launched the iPhone 7 Plus , which featured a dual-lens system, had no headphone jack, and was the first officially waterproof iPhone. Nokia also surprised the world with a remake of their iconic , which shared the same design language of the original yet had modern features such as a camera and Bluetooth.

Naturally it was unscathed and went on to sell million units. The only snag? Nepal was one of the first countries in southern Asia to launch 3G services. Now dubbed the O. G of Android phones, it was a long way from the high-end Android smartphones we use today. Not least because it retained a physical keyboard and a BlackBerry-style trackball for navigation. The technology, which was supplied by Huawei, achieved a peak downlink rate of Mbps.

WhatsApp also launched that year, letting customers send and receive calls and messages via the internet. The messaging system now has 1. Ten years later, Britons were sending a billion messages per month. In , British text volume reached its highest point, with billion sent in the UK alone. The free augmented reality game uses the smartphone camera and location to show Pokemon characters in the real world.

Despite this, it still retained our favourite features from the original , including the iconic design, super-long battery life and even an updated version of Snake. Needless to say, it stole the show at the Mobile World Congress MWC tech expo and was one of the biggest hits of the year. Apple marked ten years in the smartphone game with the all-screen iPhone X and ditched a physical home button for the first time.

See the latest mobile phone deals. Specs included a monochrome LCD screen, extendable antenna and a memory capable of storing 99 phone numbers. The most expensive and desirable phone on the market at the time of its release, the StarTac debuted the clamshell design and was the lightest and smallest phone on the market. This little known German-made and impractically minimal handset was the first phone that had no visible external antenna.

Although its uninspiring design and tiny 97 x pixel display failed to set the world on fire, it more than merits a place in the annals of mobile phone history. Sponsor of London Fashion Week in , it was an instant success and kickstarted the vogue for customising your handset. Nokia Another first for the Finnish phone-maker, the was the first handset to feature a WAP browser.

That meant it was capable of browsing the internet. Or at least a stripped down and incredibly slow version of it that was of little use to most people. Motorola Timeport. A must-have for self-proclaimed citizens of the world. And the hordes of Gen X-ers heading to Asia on the backpacker trail. As was the fashion of the time. The first serious attempt at an internet-enabled mobile phone, the Communicator was ahead of its time.

But on the plus side, it had 8MB of storage and a full keyboard, you could use it as a personal organiser, as well as a web browser and email support. Billed as the first commercially available camera phone, Sharp's effort was only sold in Japan and had a camera resolution of 0.

Legendarily sturdy, the was the phone that launched a thousand memes. And with million units shifted, stands as one of the biggest-selling phone of all time. The best part of a decade and a half and one smartphone boom later, it remains the best selling mobile phone of all time. The last great flip phone, the Razr was impossibly thin at only 14mm. Unusually for the time, it also had an aluminium casing that looked achingly slick.

Ironically, the overwhelming success of the Razr was probably the main cause of the downfall of Motorola. The first true Blackberry phone, which integrated a phone with fully functioning email, web browsing and the much loved Blackberry Messenger.

Compare new mobile phone deals. It was the lightest and smallest GSM phone available at the time and featured the easy to use Nokia menu system. The was the first to popularise the unmistakable small-candybar shape which was the work of British designer Alastair Curtis.