The mobile phone is possibly one of the greatest inventions of our time, maybe not greater than ‘Sliced Bread’ but definitely one of the top five on the list. It’s literally brought people closer than ever before. Sure Mr. Alexander G Bell made it all possible, but the technology has certainly come a long way since then. The basic technology may remain the same, but the forms they come in with the kind of features provided in that form is a whole other story. The mobile handset has been toned down, built up, reduced considerably in size and built to be an office and a playground. I don’t want to give you a history lesson, but this is just a reminiscence of the good old days of the mobile handset and as cheesy as it may sound, the ones we left behind. So here are some of those mobile handsets that really turned things around for the industry.
First Mobile Handset
The world’s first cellular call was made from this handset. Even waaay back in the 1970’s, even though the technology was brand new and exciting and the Vietnam War was reaching its conclusion, Motorola was inventing the first portable cellular phone – the Motorola DynaTAC. This behemoth of a handset was not something that could be stuck into a pocket like the modern mobile, unless you wanted a crony person you meet asking you – Is that your phone or are you just happy to see me?Color Screens
These days it seems like the tiniest possible percent of mobile users are using handsets that don’t have a color display. The resolution seems insignificant as long as it‘s colored. Most of us have started off with handsets like the once very popular Sony Ericsson T68i that also came with a camera accessory. Too bad we didn’t see that around here too much. But the resolution of the handset was just 101 x 80 pixels and 256 colors but hey, it was the biggest thing ever.
Color screen handsets have been around for almost a decade now, but it’s not very clear which was the very first handset to incorporate the technology. Almost all manufacturers seem to be claiming that their first colored screen handset was the world's first. The time line is a bit lost... in time.
The first camera phones
One of the best things about a mobile handset is the ability to take pictures anytime anywhere. Of course most are not absolutely quick enough to capture those ‘Kodak moments’ but they are nevertheless faster than running back home to get your digicam. But this technology too has come a long way. The very first camera phones were developed by a Japanese company and marketed by J-Phone in Japan. These didn’t use CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) sensors like the modern day camera phones. The first camera phone used a CCD (charge coupled device) sensors. The very first wireless picture phone was called ‘Intellect’. It was a prototype. The ‘handset’ was a large square device that looked more like an iPod Classic with an antenna than a phone of any kind.The very first marketed handset, the J-SH04 that was released by Japan’s J-Phone and was manufactured by Sharp. It was equipped with an integrated 110,000-pixel CMOS image sensor, and a 256-color display. One of the most memorable camera phones that hit the Indian market was Nokia’s 7650 slider that featured a color screen and a VGA camera. It was also Nokia’s Claim to Fame as one of the first color screen mobile handsets to sport a digital camera. For us it’ll just be one of the first handsets we bought after the more popular and still used today, 3310 or 3210 handsets which were absolutely brilliant at the time.
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