Ever wondered how fast cellular technology has developed? Remember those huge basic hand-held devices with vulgar designs which were in the market ages ago with unaffordable prices? Yes, it was all there from where the present smartphones come from. As I was reading some latest specs of the latest model of smartphone suddenly I realized about my first used handset which was Motorola a basic, standard featured phone and I was amazed that is making me to write on this article.
Though the first ever phone was built in 1973 in NewYork that weighed around 1kg and took 10 hours to charge, it was in 1983 and before I was born, the first ever portable handset was released by Motorola company into the market. It was priced around 4000$ and was symbolizing a status in the society in those days. These phones, in general, were confined to the business category of people only until 1990's Nokia 1011 model was the first to be released into public in 1992 and from there the market has begun. However, the screen with very limited customizable colors by 1997. In 1999 Nokia was the first to offer wap services while in Japan the first camera phone was introduced to the market by Sharp company. Later color came into life in the field of cellular technology.
Camera phones made their way into the markets since 2002. Video calling became possible in 2003, with the introduction of 3g on camera phones, which was first known to be adopted by the UK in collaboration with Blackberry. Later by 2007, the technology moved further with developing more smarter phones with touch screen LG was the brand to make first touchscreen mobile phone with superior built quality with a set of features like swiping and scrolling. However, Apple proved to have stronger built and superior quality in touch screen by 2007 and the competition was getting tough and tougher in manufacturing smartphones with improvised and fine hardware and software
Voice recognition, 4g, by Samsung introduced in 2011-2014 became very popular before iPhone which came up with Siri. By 2015-2018 size of the phone was what mattering the markets. Larger screen size to stream videos came into the competition were attracting the crowds. Mobile payments, usage of Google maps, Skype have also begun in this era only. I remember using expensive international phone cards priced around 10-20$ that last for only 5-10 minutes Skype, hangout, Nimbuzz, Rynga and few other apps that came later were saviors and precious in those times especially for students who were studying abroad.
Fingerprint sensors developed gradually since 2013 and are now common specs in the current generation smartphones. Cameras improved, fast charging and charge holding capacities, single slot to multiple slot sim cards, from memory storage to huge in-built memory capacities, hotspots and even wireless mobile charging, split screens and many advanced key features is what we witness in the present generation smartphones. I remember that long time ago where people used to sit with a newspaper on roadside especially in villages and suburbs, but now we see many are engaged with their heads down focussed on to the mobile screens occupied with some sort of useful and useless activities. Sometimes using mobiles phones while driving even caused fatal accidents. The technology has leap jumped from huge boring handsets to interesting and time killing smartphones without which the human race is totally depending on, like a parasite.