History of Mobile Phones

Teemu Arina provides a link to a video on the history of mobile phones. Scary thing is I remember each stage of development. The first mobile phone I ever held had a value of $2500 (I believe) and weighed just shy of ten pounds. Ah, but then came the days of Star Tac. I thought we had the hit pinnacle of technological advancement. At the time, I simply could not conceive how we could innovate beyond that stage. But that’s because I was thinking that the main purpose of a mobile phone was to make calls. In early 2000, the mobile phone became less about calling others and more about sharing images, media, and music. Today, I look at the iPhone and have a similar sense of “well, that’s that. We can’t innovate past this”. But, as Teemu states, “The future of mobile phones is perhaps… not a mobile phone at all, but rather a contextually aware and active mobile magic wand. It’s not about skins anymore. Not even about features, open source, multi-touch or iPhoney. It’s about who is going to make the device interact with your environment as well as capturing it in context.”