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From Brick to Slick: A History of Mobile Phones
It has been more than 35 years since Martin Cooper placed the first call on a mobile phone to his rival at Bell Labs while working at Motorola. Heck, it's been nearly 20 years since
Saved by the Bell’s Zack Morris placed a phone call to Kelly Kapowski from his locker. In that time, phones have come a long way.
We now live in a golden age of mobile phones. Or, perhaps more accurately, the end of the age of mobile phones. The iPhone, the G2, the N95, the Bold: These are exceptionally small mobile computers with built-in telephony features.
It has been a long trek from the monstrous, if revolutionary,
Motorola DynaTAC to the elegant and refined modern devices that not only allow us to make calls, but also to send e-mails, surf the web, track our movements, listen to music, watch movies and generally handle our varied communications. Please join Wired on a look back at some of the more notable phones that took us from Zack to Android.
Left: Motorola DynaTAC 8000X Released: 1983 The Model T of mobiles. The device was birthed from a fierce race between Motorola and Bell labs to bring the first portable to market. In 1973, Motorola's Dr. Martin Cooper won that race when he placed the first phone call on an early prototype that paved the way for the DynaTAC. Photo: Motorola Motorola StarTAC
Released: 1996 While the DynaTAC may have been the first portable phone, MOTO's StarTAC, was the first that was actually pocketable. The 3.8 x 2.25 x 1-inch flip phone (at the time the smallest ever built) was considered minuscule, and its revolutionary clamshell form factor has been imitated ever since. Photo: Motorola Toshiba TCP-6000
Released: 1996 You may think Nokia's 8810 was the first GSM phone with an internal antenna. It wasn't. That distinction belongs to the TCP-6000, released as the Hagenuk GlobalHandy. Toshiba and Hagenuk teamed up to develop the phone, but it never came out in the United States where the GSM standard had yet to be adopted. Photo: Hagenuk Nokia 8810
Released: 1998 Although developers and carriers had been skeptical due to reception issues, this dot-com boom-era silver slider proved that a phone with a built-in internal antenna could be a hit with consumers. By bringing the antenna inside, it paved the way for a generation of phones that were not only more portable, but also more durable. Photo: Nokia Sony Ericsson T68i
Released: 2002 With Bluetooth wireless, two-way MMS and simple WAP web browsing, plus e-mail tools, the T68i phone bridged the gap between the Neanderthal phones that ushered in the decade, and the highly evolved smartphones on the market today. Photo: herby_fr/Flickr Danger Hiptop
Released: 2002 Prior to the iPhone and G1, Danger's Hiptop — more commonly known as the T-Mobile Sidekick — was a geek's phone of choice, thanks to always-online connectivity, a massive 240 x 160 LCD screen and a flip-open QWERTY keyboard. Just as the BlackBerry and Treo were synonymous with the MBA set, the Sidekick announced your status as a web jockey. Photo: Danger Treo 600
Released: 2003 The Treo 600 was the chocolate and peanut butter of PDAs and mobile phones. Along with the Hiptop and BlackBerry, it ushered in the age of the smartphone. Designed for the mobile business sector, it also had a bevy of fun-loving features, like a 640 × 480 VGA camera, and integrated MP3 player that let you rock out with your spreadsheet out. Photo: Palm Motorola Razr
Released: 2004 The Razr was the first must-have mobile. Its slender housing, clean lines, subtle keypad and multiple color schemes created a world where industrial design was on par with industrial function. The phone moved more than 100 million units, a feat MOTO has been unable to reproduce. Photo: Motorola RIM BlackBerry 7290
Released: 2005 Though hardly the first BlackBerry, the 7290 was a killer combo of technology, with quadband GSM, a vivid color screen, Bluetooth and of course the full QWERTY keyboard that brought e-mail and the web right into the palm of your hand. Photo: RIM Nokia N95
Released: 2007 Long before the iPhone, the N95 combined stunning design aesthetics with an incredible smorgasbord of features: GPS, built in Wi-Fi, PC tethering, video camera, FM radio and support for more audio formats than a college radio station. Photo: Nokia Apple iPhone 3G
Released: 2008 The second-generation Apple iPhone added GPS and 3G speed to an already-winning formula. But the real hit was the iTunes App Store: a place where developers could extend the platform to become the near-equal of the desktop computing space. Meanwhile the multitouch capabilities, Safari web browser, and a slightly sleeker design helped this phone find its way into millions of pockets. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com HTC Dream
Released: 2008 The HTC Dream, released as the T-Mobile G1, was the first phone to run Google's upstart Android operating system. The integrated GPS, application marketplace, flip-out keyboard and background processing made the phone a favorite with the tech set. Though it hasn't unseated the iPhone OS, the new development platform is still growing rapidly. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
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