Introduction

Introduction

Welcome to my first ever blog which I am going to discuss the development of Mobile phones hence why I called this blog brick2Slick. Mobile phones have evolved immensely since the first ever handheld mobile device in 1983 developed by Motorola, The device called Motorola DynaTAC 8000X which was invented by Martin Cooper.
The young rich kid who had everything, in 1983, could be seen with a mobile phone, that is if they were able to pay the $3995 for the privilege. One problem was that there was very limited signal coverage to enable you to use it(so mainly used for posing haha!). The phone may have resembled a brick in size but by the end of 1984 there were 300,000 users worldwide(This might seem very little compared to the billions of phone users today but at that price it is an impressive number).

About Motorola

For years Motorola had been at the forefront of portable communications. In 1930 they had produced the first commercially successful car radio, which they developed into the two-way radios which became standard for the allies during the Second World War. After the war they then developed pagers, car radiotelephones and radio transponders. As a result it was Motorola technology that relayed Neil Armstrong's famous words from the Moon in 1969.

Features of the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X.

• The DynaTAC 8000X weighed 785g (28 ounces) and measured a colossal 300x44x89mm (13x1.75x3.5").
• It only boasted one hour of talk time and eight hours of standby time(so that if you wanted it on 24 hours a day you would have to charge up three sets of batteries every day)
• It only had an LED display instead of an LCD(which was only just starting to be used in the digital watches of the time).
•  150mm (6") aerial protruding from the top of it.
• You could also manage to save the princely total of 30 numbers in the memory of the phone
• It took 10 hours to recharge

 

Mobiles have become cheaper, lighter and longer lasting. They have gained more features including phone books, calendars, games, internet access, cameras and now even video. They have become an essential everyday item for most people.

To be continued.....