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First Wireless Mobile Telephone System
German engineers figured out a way to combine radio and telephone technology on a train. It was the first phone that could be used while moving between towns, so it was the first true "mobile" phone. -
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In less than ten years, the phone service devoloped by German engineers for trains was available for civilian use. Only first class passengers could use the service, however.
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Two-Way Radio
This was the first time two-way radio equipment was introduced. It was produced to help public safety agencies have a cheaper way of communication. It was developed with Motorola. -
The first Handie-Talkie, better known as the Walkie-Talkie was developed by Motorola too. It was the first portable two-way radio. This was before Motorola became the brand name, and it was developed for the U.S. Military.
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First Car Phone
This mobile phone was specifically designed for the cars, much like the telephone on the trains back in Germany. However, it worked through radio frequencies that were few in number. It would only work in the areas close to the service tower. -
Pay Phones
The first train pay phone was installed. Much like the first mobile phone in a train, it allowed passengers to call while the train was moving. The difference was that they had to pay through the machine. -
In Sweden, the first automated mobile phone system was put into vehicles in this year. Calls could be made, recieved and used a rotary phone. It was called MTA or Mobiltelefonisystem A.
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Amos E. Joel, Jr. from Bell Labs invented a way to allow for calls to switch between service areas. However, switching between systems went faster so the circuit was never put into prototype.
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Prototype Mobile Phone
The first mobile phone was created by Martin Cooper, who worked for Motorola. The first successful call was made on this date from the prototype to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs. It was available to the public by 1984. -
First Generation Analog Cellular System1G
Nippon Telephone and Telegraph based in Tokyo, Japan was the first to integrate the automatic analog cellular System. It is now known as 1G. It was first opened to the public on this date. -
2G Networks and HistoryThe first time the second generation network was launched was in Finland. However, this was the Global System for Mobile Communications, originally Groupe Spécial Mobile, or GSM. This was used in Europe, while the U.S. created another system called CDMA.
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SMS or text messaging was created to work starting with 2G networks. The first SMS message was sent by a machine in the UK. It was originally only available on the GSM system.
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Person to person SMS didn't happen long after the machine generated message. However, it happened in Finland and not the United Kingdom.
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The first smartphone was called the IBM Simon, created by the International Business Machines Corporation, now known as IBM. In around seven months, 50,000 phones were sold. It was the first to have phone and PDA capabilities.
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Prepaid Mobile Phones are also known as Pay-as-You-Go phones. The name says it all, since these phones were developed so that people could pay for phone service with smaller amounts of money whenever they needed to rather than having a monthly payment. It also came after the development of 2G networks.
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Findland's Radiolinja, now known as Elisa, was the first to release downloadable content for phones, since mobile phones could access media content. The first downloadable content was ringtones.
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Even though it seems like paying through a cell phone had only developed more recently, it was actually back in 1999 that that capability was available. It allowed people to pay for items in vending machines and car parking.
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3G was developed because of the great demand for more data faster. It was tested in Japan in May, and was available in October for commercial use. The difference between 2G and 3G was that it used packet switching instead of circuits switching.
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The creation of High-Speed Downlink Packet access improved 3G by increasing capacity and speeding up the transfer of data. This was called turbo 3G, 3.5G, or 3G+.
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History of Cell Phone Models
This video visually shows the difference from the first mobile phones to the phones of today. It also shows some ideas of future models that may come into existence after 2008, when this video was made. -
First 4G
The first commercial launch of a 4G network was by TeliaSonera. It opened in Sweeden and Norway, and a year later it was set up in Finland. It increased the speed of use of broadband around ten times greater than 3G.
