Did you know that 20 years ago it was Motorola who
introduced the world's first available mobile phone? On 6 March, 1983 the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X phone became the first commercial portable cellular telephone; the company had invested fifteen years of research and $100 million in the advancement of cellular technology. The "brick", as it was also called, weighed 28-ounces, had an LED display, memory to store thirty "dialing locations," and enough battery life for 30 minutes of talk time and eight hours of standby. Retail price - a mere trifle: $3,995.
ABC News (via AP) has a
write-up on its lead designer, the now 74 years old Rudy Krolopp.
"Marty [former general manager for the systems division at Motorola] called me to his office one day in December 1972 and said, 'We've got to build a portable cell phone,'" Krolopp recalled. "And I said 'What the hell's a portable cell phone?'"
Even 30 years later, this is an intesting question. What exactly is a cell phone to you? Simply a type of wireless communication device? How does it differ from a WiFi-enabled PDA? We all know that PDAs are not just for list making, but also for sending email, getting stock quotes or checking baseball scores, and even for wireless communication. Do you consider the BlackBerry and the Treo cell phones?