40 Years Later, 11 Game-Changing Phones

Cell Phones & Accessories

vulam.kd

April 6, 2023

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Forty years ago today, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper placed the first call from a “real” cellular telephone, and an industry was born.

It would take until 1977 – four years later – for experimental cellular networks to be launched in Chicago and Baltimore, and until 1983 for actual commercial networks to appear, according to the CTIA. That same year, the Motorola DynaTAC “mobile” phone was launched, costing several times as much as today’s PCs and only offering an hour of talk time before it would need to be recharged.

Today, the personal computer and portable phone have merged, combining to become a pocket computer capable of placing calls, sending short messages, navigating via GPS, listening to FM and streaming and recorded audio, watching movies, taking pictures and video, writing and editing documents, and playing games. Screens have evolved from dot-matrix to high-definition touch screens, some of which have built-in projectors.

But how did we get here? Slowly. Motorola dominated the scene for years, until the Japanese and Korean manufacturers launched products within their own markets and then, eventually, offered U.S. customers their own innovations. Combining a PDA with a phone was revolutionary, and the ability to store a phone book and appointments within the same device helped keep Research in Motion’s BlackBerry on top of the heap for years.

And then: the iPhone. And then: Android. Suddenly, the traditional operating systems of Symbian and BlackBerry looked out of date, as the new ecosystems attracted developers hungry to make a buck (at a time) off of new mobile apps. And those platforms became critical: as a flood of phones hit the market, only the latest and greatest features could assure their success. Today, we live in a world where PCs themselves may be on the outs, replaced by mobile devices. Here are 11 phones that got us here.

1. Motorola DynaTAC

Motorola DynaTAC

The 1984 Motorola DynaTAC was the first commercial cell phone in the United States. It offered 30 minutes of talk time and 8 hours of standby, plus an LED display for dialing or to bring up one of 30 phone numbers stored in the phone. It was priced at $3,995, too!
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2. Motorola MicroTAC

Motorola MicroTAC

Fortunately, by 1989 Motorola had created the MicroTAC, the first mobile phone that you could fit into your pocket. The MicroTAC was also the first “flip” phone, where the phone’s plastic covered the microphone. It cost between $2,495 and $3,495 at the time.
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3. IBM Simon

IBM Simon

IBM’s Simon Personal Communicator phone, from 1994, was arguably the world’s first smartphone, combining a phone and PDA into one device. Simon was able to send and receive emails and faxes, and offered now-standard “apps” like a calendar, calculator, and note pad – even with handwritten or typed annotations. BellSouth Cellular initially offered the Simon throughout its 15 state service area for $899 with a two-year service contract.
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4. RIM BlackBerry 957

RIM BlackBerry 957

It’s hard to leave out the RIM BlackBerry, although RIM (now BlackBerry) seems to be on the wane. Our original review of the BlackBerry 957 praised it for its high-contrast monochrome display, its tiny physical keyboard, the side-mounted jog dial, and the Esc key. For years, BlackBerrys were the smartphone to have, even after the first iPhones became available. People loved the keyboard, and still do.
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5. Motorola StarTAC

Motorola StarTAC

Motorola’s StarTAC was the first “clamshell” phone, where the phone essentially folded up in half, rather than just flipping to cover the mouthpiece, like the MicroTAC. The 1996 phone weighed just 88 grams and sold for about $1,000, making it one of the first popular cell-phone models.
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6. Samsung Uproar M100

Samsung Uproar M100

The Samsung Uproar was the first MP3 phone. The phone included RealNetworks’s RealJukebox for managing MP3 files, and a separate USB cable for downloading MP3 files to its 64MB of RAM for storing music, then about two hours’ worth.
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7. Sanyo 5300

Sanyo 5300

The 2003 Sanyo 5300 was the first to include an integrated camera, launching the craze for camera phones and helping to put an eventual, serious dent in the point-and-shoot digital camera industry. Still, the 5300 only allowed 640-by-480 images.

8. Motorola Razr

Motorola Razr

The 2004 Razr V3 was slim and sexy, and Motorola sold more than 130 million units of the thing, making it the best-selling clamshell phone in the world. It quickly became the “It Phone” to have, but also plunged in popularity after discounts made it less than exclusive.

9. LG VX8000

LG VX8000

The 2005 LG VX8000 may have had an awkward name, but the phone was the first to usher in 3G calling inside the United States, with the Verizon V-Cast service. Ironically, we found everything but V-Cast compelling, as the initial video clips weren’t that impressive. The phone also lacked email and a Web browser, features that would become indispensible on successive high-speed smartphones.

10. Apple iPhone

Apple iPhone

What can we say about the original iPhone? Apple’s flagship phone of 2007 wasn’t much of a phone, but everything else it could do screamed “the future”: an integrated touch screen, an app store (that came later in 2008) that launched an entirely new industry of mobile app development, and MP3s that could be bought online and stored on the phone. The smartphone revolution was here to stay, as well as the enormous market for mobile apps.

11. HTC G1

HTC G1

The HTC G1 from 2008 (as a Google-branded developer model) featured a trackball, tiny screen, and Android 1.6 OS. Android? Yes, Android. Google’s open-source OS might not have been much to look at it when it first launched, but the pricing (free for OEMs), incentives for developers helped make Android the world’s most popular OS, and the G1 started it all.

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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/news/40-years-later-11-game-changing-phones