“Cell phone” or “Mobile phone”
What is correct: “cell phone” or “mobile phone” phone? Same thing. The word cell is short for cellular and has been used since Bell Laboratories set up the first wireless telephony system in 1947. It consisted of a network of low-powered transmitters, each placed to cover a small region or cell.
The first public cell phone call was made on April 3, 1973 by Martin Cooper of Motorola. Commercial cell phones were introduced in Chicago in 1978 and in Europe in 1981. The first portable cell phone available to the public, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, was launched in 1984 and weighed 2 lbs.
If you’re surprised to learn that mobile telephony has been around so long, here’s another surprise: Bell Laboratories invented the videophone in 1927.
Most numbers on a phone keypad have letters assigned to them. For instance, the letters for the number 2 are a, b and c. But there are no letters assigned to the numbers 1 and 0. These numbers remain unassigned because they are so-called flag numbers, kept for special purposes such as emergency or operator services.
Previously, Q and Z were not included on the keypad, meaning that you could not dial a word such as Quincy. Q is now assigned to the number 7, and Z to number 9.
What is a SMS?
Text messaging is a SMS (Short Message Service) that can be made from a mobile phone (cell phone) to another mobile phone or from and to web based services such as IQC [where you don’t need a phone to send an SMS]. SMS generally allows the sending and receiving of a maximum of 160 characters although some providers allow more.
You can also send non-text messages such as ringtones, logos, cards, calendars, clipart and WAP. More than 20 billion text messages are sent per month. In some regions text messaging is referred to simply as TXT and in others as SMS.
Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) is a step up from SMS. MMS use next generation networks to send pictures and video clips between subscribers.