History of Mobile Phones

Mobile phones (or cell phones, Smartphone’s, etc.) have become an integral part of our daily
lives, many people finding it very difficult to imagine life without the possibility of making a
quick call from wherever they might be (or, better said, as long as they're within the specific area
covered by their mobile operator). Furthermore, most mobile phones are capable of providing a
whole range of extra-functions, from the capability of taking photos and shooting video clips to
music playback, Internet browsing and a lot more.

However, things were not always like this. In fact, I'm pretty sure that most people using mobile
phones today don't even remember how their first cell phone looked like, let alone just how big
and clunky the first ever mobile phones were. I, for one, do remember my first portable phones,
namely one large Nokia 2110 model, which, without a doubt, could have easily been used as a
self-defense weapon in case of trouble (luckily, that wasn't the case).

The point is that the overall form factor and size of mobile phones have also changed a lot over
the years, and for this reason, we've decided to go back in time to the moment it all began, so
that, eventually, you'll get an idea why you're now able to read this article from your
Smartphone’s browser.

Back to the beginnings: the two-way radio  

As some of you probably know, mobile phones are based on radio technology and, to some
extent, are nothing more than two-way radios (well, the concept is much more evolved, but that's
beside the point). This is the reason why our first stop in the history of mobile phones is this
particular subject.

So, two-way radios became quite popular in the 1930's and 1940's (despite appearing as early as
the 1920's), when they were installed in a wide array of vehicles, including here mostly taxis,
trucks, police cars and so on (just about where you're likely to find them today as well). Not only
did they build around them a very serious user community, but also provided the foundation for a
whole new concept, namely that of radio-telephony.

In fact, the first radio-telephones appeared even before World War II, albeit their use was rather
limited to some special-purpose communications, such as airplanes or ships. Nevertheless,
engineers used these concepts in order to develop the next step in the evolution of mobile
phones.

The mobile radio-telephone

Now, although two-way radios made it possible for users to communicate while being on the go,
it wasn't like people were able to simply pick up the phone and contact the person using a two-
way radio. However, the first service that allowed exactly this type of functionality was
developed by AT&T and Southwestern Bell and introduced on June 17, 1946 in Saint Louis,
Missouri, USA.

The systems used six channels in the 150 MHz band with 60 kHz channel spacing and allowed
users to make calls while being on the go or receive calls from landline phones.

The only problem was that all calls made from landlines were "Long Distance" (the caller
contacted his operator, gave the number of the mobile radio they wanted to contact, and then the
operator dialed the "carrier"), which translated into higher overall costs for the person making the
call.

Another disadvantage was represented by the fact that the equipment required for making and
receiving calls while being on the road was actually pretty bulky, and needed a hefty amount of
power. Plus, since the number of receivers was initially pretty low, the calls would often get
mixed up or the audio would be pretty bad, while the security of the conversation was extremely
bad.

However, in spite of its shortcomings, this Mobile Telephone System (MTS) opened up the door
for more developments in this field, including here the first truly portable phones. Moreover,
towards the end of the 1940's (namely, on March 1, 1948), the first fully automatic
radiotelephone service began operating in Richmond, Indiana, eliminating the need for a human
operator and thus further cutting costs.

The first "mobile" phone from Ericsson - "just" 40 kilos

Although many developments in the field of portable communications were carried out in the
United States, Europe didn't lag behind. Hence, the first fully automatic mobile phone system,
called MTA (Mobile Telephone system A), was developed by Ericsson and commercially
released in Sweden in 1956. The system required no manual control, but the weight of the
equipment used for engaging in communications was absolutely huge, namely somewhere in the
vicinity of 40 kilos.

The successor of the MTA system was called MTB and used transistors, which translated into a
much lower weight (around 9 kilos). It was introduced in 1965, used DTMF signaling and
attained a maximum number of 600 customers.

Evolution of mobile phones throughout the 1960's and early 1970's

While the Americans and Europeans were busy improving on designs and segmenting the mobile
spectrum, Russian and East-European scientists also tackled this particular field. For example, a
3-kg radiophone, called LK-1, was created by Russian scientist Leonid Kupriyanovich in
Moscow in 1957, and featured a rotary dial and antenna, able to communicate with a base station
on a distance of maximum 30 kilometers. The next year, Kupriyanovich came up with an even
smaller version, which weighed only around 500 grams.
Also in 1958, the USSR began to deploy its first mobile phone service, called "Altay," dedicated
to motorists. What's really interesting to mention here is the fact that some upgraded versions of
the "Altay" are still in use in the most remote parts of Russia.

Another interesting evolution was represented by the pocket mobile automatic phone RAT-0,5,
combined with a base station RATZ-10 (RATC-10), a system developed by a team of Bulgarian
researchers. Apparently, this system allowed one station to service up to six customers.

Another important problem solved during this period was that of "call handoff" between
different cells. Initially, users were only able to talk while in the radius of a certain receiver (or
within a "cell"), but this problem was solved in 1970 by Amos E. Joel, Jr., an Bell Labs engineer,
who invented an automatic "call handoff" system to allow mobile phones to move through
several cell areas during a single conversation without loss of conversation.

In December 1971, AT&T submitted a proposal for cellular service to the Federal
Communications Commission; unfortunately, the FCC approved the proposal only in 1982.
By then, Europe had already taken the lead in the field of mobile communications, via the ARP
network, which was launched in 1971 in Finland.

1973 - the first analog mobile phone call in US is made

Despite the fact that mobile communications had been there for quite a long time, the first
"official" mobile phone call was carried out in 1973. The two parties involved were Dr. Martin
Cooper from Motorola and Dr. Joel S. Engel, head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs, who were
actually rivals in this particular field. The handheld used in this operation was in fact a prototype
of the first "true" mobile phone, Motorola's DynaTAC.

The first-generation (1G) mobile phone and networks

The delays by the FCC led to the United States losing the head start in mobile telephone
deployment. Hence, the first commercial launch of cellular telecoms was made by NET in
Tokyo Japan in 1979, followed by the NMT system in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden,
over the course of 1981. Other similar systems deployed around the world were AMPS (United
States), TACS, RTMI, C-Net, and Radiocom 2000.

In spite of the fact that mobile networks began popping out around the world in the 1980's, the
terminals they used could hardly be considered portable, since they were generally pretty large
and occupied a lot of space. However, things changed dramatically with the arrival on the market
of the Motorola Dyna 8000X, which was one of the first phones that could really be carried
around easily, without requiring a briefcase (or worse) in order to do so.

The second-generation (2G) mobile phones and networks

Research and development in the field of mobile communications (as well as the popularity that
mobile communications enjoyed) led to some serious improvements in the field of cellular
telephony over the course of the 1990's, starting with the emergence of "second generation" (2G)
mobile phone systems such as GSM, IS-136 ("TDMA"), iDEN and IS-95 ("CDMA").

These systems provided some serious improvements over their predecessors (digital circuit
switched transmission and the introduction of advanced and fast phone-to-network signaling),
and were rapidly adopted around the world, the first GSM network to start operation being
Finland's Radiolinja, in 1991.

While the quality of the mobile services improved, the size of the handhelds decreased.
Hence, during this period, smaller and slimmer phones became the norm, one of the most
important examples being Motorola's StarTAC, which can be considered the first cell phone one
could actually carry around in his/her pocket. Plus, it was also the first cell phone to feature the
"clamshell" form factor, all previous models falling under the "candybar" category.

Also during the 1990's, the first handheld featuring a built-in antenna (as opposed to an external
one) was developed. That distinction belongs to the TCP-6000 (developed by Toshiba and
released as the Hagenuk GlobalHandy), which arrived on the market in 1996, two full years
ahead of Nokia's much more famous 8810 model (which also featured a built-in antenna).

The leaps forward attained by both cellular operators and handheld manufacturers opened up the
way for all sorts of improvements and new services in the area of cell phones. For example, this
is when the SMS appeared, the first machine-generated SMS message being sent in the UK in
1991 and then the first human-to-human message being sent in 1993 in Finland.

SMS (and its successor, the MMS) ushered in a whole new concept of communication, many
people (mostly young) preferring to send an SMS rather than calling, also because these
messages are much cheaper than actually making a voice call (in fact, the cost of sending an
SMS is almost equal to zero for the operators, so I don't really have a clue just why they're not
making them completely free).

Another innovation brought about by 2G systems was the possibility of adding multimedia
content to one's phone, one of the best examples being that of ringtones, which have created a
whole new market for musicians.

Towards the end of the 2G period, the first mobile phones featuring a built-in camera appeared.
In fact, the first ever such device was developed by Sharp in 2000 and rolled out in Japan under
the name of J-SH04. Since then, camera modules built within mobile phones have evolved a lot,
and now, even low-end handheld devices sport such a module.

Also around that period of time, the concept of Bluetooth in mobile phones was introduced, with
the first handheld to incorporate such a module reportedly being Sony Ericsson's T36. After that,
due to the numerous features it enables, Bluetooth became a must for any serious phone.
The third-generation (3G) mobile phones and networks

Actually, this is where our short history of the mobile phone reaches modern times. Practically,
what 3G networks provide, compared to 2G (as well as the extensions of 2G, like 2.5G and
2.75G) is the seamless transmission of data, as well as voice, via cellular networks. Practically,
by enabling this kind of functionality, cellular networks have opened up a world of possibilities
for handheld manufacturers as well.

Japan is the place where the first 3G networks made their appearance, as Japanese carrier NTT
DoCoMo launched the first commercial 3G network on October 1, 2001, using the WCDMA
technology. The first 3G networks on the rival CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology were launched
by SK Telecom and KTF in South Korea in 2002, and then 3G erupted all over the world.

Now, let's see how the functions enabled by 3G networks have affected the handhelds
themselves. First of all, the possibility of accessing one's e-mail account has become the norm
(with RIM and its BlackBerry handhelds setting the norm in business communications), and the
same can now be said about Internet browsing.

Furthermore, the developments in mobile hardware and processing have led to the appearance of
operating systems for mobile devices, and then to the whole "smartphone" concept, which was
initially a cross between the more industrial-oriented PDAs and cell phones, but now has reached
a whole new level.

Moreover, developments in display technology also led to the appearance of the first mobile
phones equipped with touchscreen displays (Apple's iPhone being the first such product to arrive
on the market), a trend that is main stream now.

Prospects for the future

Recent developments in the industry clearly point out to the fact that mobile phones are here to
stay, although it's still hard to predict what direction they'll eventually take. Thus, the most
plausible scenario is that mobile phones will slowly turn into tiny, ultra-portable computers, able
to carry out a huge array of functions besides voice communication. Plus, since they'll be
eventually equipped either with flexible or even holographic displays, we might witness a
complete overhaul of this concept over the following years, the first signs of things to come
being already here.

CONCLUSION

In this paper we have presented a mobile task reporting system and shown how this system
depends on the mobile device used as the client. We found that the mobile phone can be a
helpful tool for checking the status of tasks because of its portability and connectivity. The
limited user interaction capabilities of WAP is however a problem when writing text. The input
capability of can however be improved by integrating intelligent dictionaries into the application
like done in e.g. the Nokia SMS application and by providing other types of interaction like
selections.
The number of keystrokes needed to write a word might thereby in the best case be reduced to
the number of characters in the word, or just a simple selection from a list. The PDA with bigger
screen and more convenient text input is a very useful device for entering end-task reports. The
lack of connectivity can however be a problem because of possible conflicts with other off-line
devices. To overcome this problem, we have described some solutions in section 3.3.2. This
means that the MTRS system must include some advanced transaction support that can handle
off-line devices and conflicts between these devices between data synchronizations. Because
several policies can be used to solve this problem (from exclusive locks to anarchy), it is
important that a flexible transaction framework is used that can adapt to policies of different
companies.

One example of such a framework is the CAGIS-trans, which is likely to be integrated to the
MTRS system in the future. A portable PC can be too big to be carried around as a mobile
toolbox. However, for getting overview of tasks and for managing tasks (delegation etc.) big
screens are needed. Also if a lot of text should be entered into the system, the portable PC’s
keyboard is very convenient.

The process of designing and finding requirements for a mobile system is not always
straightforward. As an aid to identify requirements for systems to support different mobile
scenarios, we recommend the MOWAHS characterization framework for mobile work [9]. This
framework can be used to characterize mobile work in order to elicit functional and non-
functional requirements for a mobile process support system, and specify and analyze mobile
scenarios in detail. The main advantage with this framework is that it is independent of hardware
and network resources. This means that it is possible to analyze future mobile systems without
the constraints of the existing mobile devices.