History of Mobile Phones Raul Fernandez

Motorola DynaTAC 8000X Wasn't commercially available until 1983, but its beginnings can be tracked back to 1973 when the company showed off a prototype of what would become the world's first mobile phone. The DynaTAC weighed almost a kilogram, provided one hour of battery life and stored 30 phone numbers in its phonebook.

Nokia Mobira Senator (1982) In the early 1980's, the mobile phone was best known for its in-car use. Nokia's Mobira Senator, released in 1982, was the first of its kind. A car phone that weighed almost 10 kilograms, the Nokia Mobira Senator resembled a large radio rather than a conventional mobile phone.

Nokia Mobira Cityman 900 (1987) Nokia launched the Mobira Cityman 900 — the first handheld mobile phone for NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) networks. The Mobira Cityman 900 weighed 800 grams and had a whopping price tag of $6,635 (in today's currency).

Nokia 101 (1992) was the world's first commercially available GSM mobile phone. Paving the way for future "candy-bar" designs, the 101 had a monochrome display, an extendable antenna and a phonebook that could store 99 phone numbers.

IBM Simon Personal Communicator (1993) Was one of the first attempts at a commercially viable smartphone. A joint venture between IBM and Bellsouth, the Simon was only sold into the US and was best known for having no physical keys. It used a touch screen and optional stylus to perform the majority of its functions, which included dialing phone numbers, sending faxes and writing memos. It was priced at $899 when it launched.

Motorola StarTAC (1996) The world's first flip phone, the StarTAC was one of the first fashion phones, combining a lightweight and compact frame with its basic phone features.

Nokia 9000 Communicator (1996) Nokia's 9000 Communicator may have weighed a hefty 397g, had just 8MB of memory and a monochrome display, but this beast was the first smartphone. A far cry from today's units, the 9000 Communicator looked like a regular mobile phone from the front, until it flipped open to reveal a second screen and a QWERTY keyboard.

Nokia 5110 (1998) In the late 1990s, Nokia's candy bar style mobile phones were all the rage. Undoubtedly the most popular of these was the 5110, one of the first phones to introduce snap-on, coloured covers. The 5110 was well known for its excellent build quality and good battery life and was one of the first phones to feature the wildly popular Snake game.

Sharp J-SH04 (2000) Sharp's J-SH04 was the world's first camera phone and was launched in Japan in 2000. Available on the J-Phone network in Japan, this long device featured an integrated 110,000-pixel CMOS image sensor and a 256-color display.

RIM BlackBerry 5810 (2002) RIM's first BlackBerry mobile phone was the 5810 — previously RIM had produced data based organizers that handled email and organizer features, but lacked phone capabilities. The 5810 simply added a mobile phone to RIM's existing feature set, though it lacked a speaker and a microphone and therefore needed the use of a headset to operate.

Palm Treo 600 (2003) Widely acclaimed due to its combination of PDA features with a mobile phone, the Treo 600 featured a full QWERTY keyboard, a color display, a five-way navigational pad and ran the Palm OS 5 operating system.

Motorola RAZR V3 (2004) Lauded as a "stunning piece of industrial design" upon its released, was one of the most iconic mobile phones to ever be released. Clearly gaining inspiration from Motorola's StarTAC eight years earlier, the RAZR boasted a stylish anodized aluminum cover, a VGA camera, quad-band compatibility and Bluetooth support.

Apple iPhone (2007) The original iPhone was a 2G device that had a similar frame and dimensions to newer models, but lacked basic features such as MMS messaging and video recording. The iPhone enjoys immense popularity due to its user friendly touch screen interface and the wide range of apps available for download on the App Store.