Mobile Phone Blog:

Now, here’s an interesting question that no-one ever asks… When you look at all the different types of phones, cameraphones, 3G phones and what have you, what was the first phone in that category that was ever released?

So, I went on a crusade to find the answer to the question no-one’s asking. It’s educational.

World’s First Mobile Phone – Motorola DynaTAC 8000X

Yep. It’s the Del-Boy. Released in 1983, it was vast, unwieldy, you had to wear the battery pack, it was analogue, so the signal was a load of old cack, and you looked like a yuppie tit using one. But it set the ball rolling on the mobile phone revolution, and without it, we’d have NONE of the mobile phones we have in the world today.

World’s First Mass-Produced GSM Phone – Nokia 1011

In 1992, the mobile phone world went digital (and everyone said hurrah, because frankly, analogue phones were rubbish) with GSM phones. Handsets could shrink, due to smaller technology, call quality got better, everything was just nicer. And the first GSM phone to be mass-produced was the Nokia 1011. It was to be the first of the breed that would take over the world!

The UK’s First Commercially-Available WAP Phone – Nokia 7110

I know it was, because I can remember it! Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd the guitarist in my old band had one. Annnnnnnnd, little known fact, if you took the slide off, then pressed the button on the side of the phone that was supposed to spring open the slide, it made the Nokia 7110 shoot its innards everywhere.

He never forgave me for that…

World’s First Smartphone – Bellsouth-IBM Simon

Ah, smartphones. I’ve used smartphones for the last 5 years (I’m not called Technical Markus for nothing, you know), so this category is close to my heart. Well, the first of that breed came out in 1994. Which, since it was pre-mobile internet, meant it couldn’t be all it could be. But it did its best! Combining phone, pager, and a myriad of other bits, inside a touchscreen powered phone body, it was the first, true smartphone. It had one crucial downside, though.

LOOK AT THE SIZE OF IT!

UK’s First 3G Phone – NEC e606

I’ll be honest, I couldn’t find what the world’s (pronounced: Japan’s) first 3G phone was, but the first one to make it these shores, along with its big (well, vast) brother, was the NEC e606, best described as “revolutionary, but not that good”. Still, it kicked off 3′s tenure as a network, so that’s a cool thing.

World’s First Bluetooth Phone – Ericsson T36

Back before Sony went “We’re having that!” and bought Ericsson, Ericsson weren’t exactly sitting on their hands doing nothing. No, they were the first people to mass-produce Bluetooth, one of the big revolutions in mobiles. And the first phone to have it? The T36.

World’s First MP3 Phone – Samsung Uproar

Bet you were thinking it would be a Walkman phone… ah, well, you’re wrong, you see, because it was the Samsung Uproar. Now, granted, it only had 64Mb of memory, so it wasn’t a very good mp3 player, but it still counts.

World’s First Cameraphone – Kyocera VP-210

Well, here it is, the big category, that’s changed phones more than probably anything else: cameras. Well, the first one was this bad boy, the Kyocera VP-210. Again, it wasn’t very good, but it arguably changed the playing field for every cameraphone that came after it. Hell, it even has a camera on the front, as well, so it was the first one that could theoretically do video calling. And it could. At TWO frames a second.

Still, you can’t say it wasn’t influential.

Which brings us bang up to date. It’s like evolution, really. All these phones died out after a while, but they led on to other refinements, which led to others, and today, we have a world full of W960i’s, and Viewtys, and N82′s, and all the rest of ‘em. All thanks to this lot.

Today’s look better though, I’ll grant you…………….