A Brief History of
the Portable Phone

Vocabulary

Video

Transcript

If there is one device that most of us can’t imagine our lives without, it’s our mobile phone. They come in different sizes, styles and technologies. We have large screen phones, flip phones, foldable ones, phones with pop-up cameras. with time they have become better and smarter.

Are you wondering why we are talking about smartphones so extensively today? Because on this day, fifty years ago, the journey of mobile phones began. Today we are celebrating 50 years of cell phones.

On the 3rd of April 1973, a Motorola engineer made the first mobile voice call using a brick-size device called Dynatic. Now it was Motorola’s portable cellular phone the phone weighed one kilogram.

Martin Cooper called Joe Ingle; and he was a competitor working for Bell Labs.

Martin Cooper, Cellphone Inventor: “The first phone call was made on the streets of New York on 6th Avenue in New York near the Hilton Hotel. And I really didn’t think about who I was going to call until the last minute . . . and then it occurred to me that I want to call my counterpart at the Bell System.”

 
But it took a further 10 years for the first mobile to be marketed; in 1983 Motorola started selling the Dynatic 8000X in the United States for around four thousand dollars.

What followed next was the text message on the 3rd of December 1992 Vodafone employee Richard Jarvis received the first text message his computer wished him Merry Christmas.

Now a few years later, Finnish brand Nokia began a string of innovations and pushed the boundaries of a mobile. In nostalgia, it’s hard when we think of Nokia’s 1997 model, the Nokia 6110. It introduced mobile games to the masses with the snake game.

In 2003 Nokia launched the affordable and robust 1100 model — it’s known as the best-selling phone in history.

 
And then in 2007, Steve Jobs redefined the mobile experience by introducing a revolutionary product: we are talking about the iPhone. It was an instant hit. The iPhone put the internet in your pocket in a true sense.

Apple’s first phone revolutionized the smartphone landscape so much so that other companies dared to basically copy Apples’ iPhone. Basically it was a breakthrough in consumer electronics.

Eventually people started to ditch their point and shoot cameras for mobile cameras. The social media apps, Emoji fever and instant Messengers further added to the mobile user experience.

And now 5G technology is aiming to take the mobile experience to a whole new level.

 
Just imagine how far mobile phones have come today they play an integral part in making our lives easier we are sure they will continue to revolutionize different sectors worldwide.

Martin Cooper, Cellphone Inventor: “One of the things that’s going to change is that your phone is going to be managed by a personal artificial intelligence — your own personal artificial intelligence it will whenever you need something it will either create an app for you or find the app for you.”

Questions

Smoke Signal. Today, the most utilitarian device is the car. True or false? Do cell phones, mobile phones and smartphones all look and function in the same manner?

Telegraph. Did Apple, Nokia or Samsung invent the cell phone in 1997?

Morse Code. The cell phone was invented in Zurich, Switzerland. Is this right or wrong? Did the developer test it out in a laboratory?

Copper Wire. Immediately after its invention, was the mobile phone available on the market? Did the first commercial mobile phones cost a few hundred dollars?

Land Line Telephone. Which might be easier to transmit, voice or text messaging? Is voice transmission more technical and difficult than text message transmission?

Cell Phone, Mobile Phone. The Apple iPhone was just another cell phone. Is this correct or incorrect? Does the Apple iPhone have the most unit sales of hand-held devices (cell-phones, smartphones) in history?

Personal Computer (PC). Do people still need tape recorders, cameras, radios, television sets, landline phones, calculators, watches, clocks?

Apple, Macintosh. Martin Cooper believes that today’s smartphones have the final, ultimate capabilities and features. Do you agree?

Screen, Keyboard, Mouse. My friends and I have cell phones. Yes or no? How many different mobile phones have you had?
 
 
 
Laptop, Notebook. Do you remember the time before smartphones existed? Do your parents or grandparents remember life before the mobile phone?

iPod, iPad. Do you do everything or most of your tasks on smartphones?

iPhone, Smartphone Are there any disadvantages or drawbacks to telephones?

Cloud Computing. What might happen in the future?

AI (Artificial Intelligence). What could or should people, tech companies and governments do?