When Were Mobile Phones Invented

When were mobile phones invented?
Mobile phones, particularly the smartphones that have become our

inseparable companions today, are relatively new.
However, the history of mobile phones goes back to 1908 when a US

Patent was issued in Kentucky for a wireless telephone.
Mobile phones were invented as early as the 1940s when engineers

working at AT&T developed cells for mobile phone base stations.
The very first mobile phones were not really mobile phones at all.

They were two-way radios that allowed people like taxi drivers and the
emergency services to communicate.
Instead of relying on base stations with separate cells (and the signal
being passed from one cell to another), the first mobile phone
networks involved one very powerful base station covering a much
wider area.
Motorola, on 3 April 1973 were first company to mass produce the the
first handheld mobile phone.
These early mobile phones are often referred to as 0G mobile phones,

or Zero Generation mobile phones. Most phones today rely
on 3G or 4G mobile technology.
Compare the latest mobile phones deals at Uswitch now.
Landmarks in mobile history

Mobile telephony has a long history that started off with experiments
of communications from and to moving vehicle rather then handheld
devices.
In later years, the main challenges have laid in the development of
interoperable standard and coping with the explosive success and ever
increasing demand for bandwidth and reliability.
1926: The first successful mobile telephony service was offered to first

class passengers on the Deutsche Reichsbahn on the route between
Berlin and Hamburg.
1946: The first calls were made on a car radiotelephone in Chicago.

Due to the small number of radio frequencies available, the service
quickly reached capacity.
1956: The first automated mobile phone system for private vehicles

launched in Sweden. The device to install in the car used vacuum tube
technology with rotary dial and weighed 40Kg.
It had a total of 125 subscribers between Stockholm and Gothenburg.
Photo: Ericsson
1969: The Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) Group was established. It
included engineers representing Sweden, Denmark, Norway and
Finland. Its purpose was to develop a mobile phone system that,
unlike the systems being introduced in the US, focused on
accessibility.
1973: Dr Martin Cooper general manager at Motorola

communications system division made the first public mobile phone
call on a device that weighed 1.1Kg.
1982: Engineers and administrators from eleven European countries

gathered in Stockholm to consider whether a Europe wide digital
cellular phone system was technically and politically possible. The
group adopted the nordic model of cooperation and laid the
foundation of an international standard.
1985: Comedian Ernie Wise made the first “public” mobile phone call
in the UK from outside the Dicken’s Pub in St Catherine’s dock to
Vodafone’s HQ. He made the call in full Dickensian coachman’s garb.
1987: The Technical specifications for the GSM standard are approved.

Based on digital technology, it focused on interoperability across
national boundaries and consequent different frequency bands, call
quality and low costs.
1992: The world’s first ever SMS message was sent in the UK. Neil
Papworth, aged 22 at the time was a developer for a telecom
contractor tasked with developing a messaging service for Vodafone.
The text message read “Merry Christmas” and was sent to Richard
Jarvis, a director at Vodafone, who was enjoying his office Christmas
party.
1996/97: UK phone ownership stood at 16% of households. A decade

later the figure was 80%. The explosion in growth was in part driven
the launch of the first pay as you go, non-contract phone service,
Vodafone Prepaid, in 1996.
1998: The first downloadable content sold to mobile phones was the

ringtone, launched by Finland's Radiolinja, laying the groundwork for
an industry that would eventually see the Crazy Frog ringtone rack up
total earnings of half a billion dollars and beat stadium-filling sob-
rockers Coldplay to the number one spot in the UK charts.
1999: Emojis were invented by Shigetaka Kurita in Japan. Unlike their

all-text predecessors emoticons, emojis are pictures. The same year in
the UK sees the first shots fired in a supermarket price war, with Tesco,
Sainsbury’s and Asda selling Pay and Go phones at discounted prices.
For the first time, you could pick up a mobile phone for just under £40.
The first BlackBerry phone was also unveiled in 1999. Famous for its
super-easy email service, BlackBerry handsets were seen as the
ultimate business tool, allowing users to read and respond to emails
from anywhere. This led to 83% of users reading and responding to
work emails while on holiday, and over half admitted to sending
emails on the toilet, winning the manufacturer the nickname
CrackBerry.
2000: The all-conquering Nokia 3310 crash landed on shop shelves.

Naturally it was unscathed and went on to sell 126 million units. Over
in Japan, the first commercially available camera phone The Sharp J-
SH04, launched in November 2000 in Japan. The only snag? you could
only use it in Japan. Europe wouldn’t get its first camera phone until
the arrival of the Nokia 6750 in 2002.
2003: The 3G standard started to be adopted worldwide, kicking off

the age of mobile internet and paving the way for the rise of
smartphones. Honk Kong-based Hutchinson Wampoa owned Three
brand offered the first 3G network connection in the UK among other
countries. Staying very much on-brand, Three ranged a trio of 3G
handsets, namely: the Motorola A830, the NEC e606 and NEC e808.
CC BY-SA 2.0
Nepal was one of the first countries in southern Asia to launch 3G

services. One of Nepal’s first companies to offer the service, Ncell, also
covered Mount Everest with 3G.
2007: The iPhone debuted. Solely available on O2 at launch in the UK

and priced at a then eye-watering $499, Nokia CEO confidently
dismissed it as little more than a ‘cool phone’ that wouldn’t translate
column inches into market share.
2008: The first Android phone turned up, in the form of the T-Mobile
G1. Now dubbed the O.G of Android phones, it was a long way from
the high-end Android smartphones we use today. Not least because it
retained a physical keyboard and a BlackBerry-style trackball for
navigation. This year also saw the advent of both Apple’s App Store
and Android Market, later renamed Google Play Store, paving the way
for our modern-day app culture and creating a $77 billion industry.
2009: O2 publicly announced that it had successfully demonstrated a
4G connection using six LTE masts in Slough, UK. The technology,
which was supplied by Huawei, achieved a peak downlink rate of
150Mbps.
WhatsApp also launched that year, letting customers send and receive
calls and messages via the internet. The messaging system now has
1.2 billion users sending more than 10 billion messages a day. Which
makes it 50% more popular than traditional texting.
2010: Samsung launched its first Galaxy S smartphone. Usurping

former Android giants, HTC, the Samsung Galaxy S range is still the
most popular Android brand.
2012: When text messages first arrived, most people didn’t think

they’d catch on. Ten years later, Britons were sending a billion
messages per month. In 2012, British text volume reached its highest
point, with 151 billion sent in the UK alone.
2016: The Pokemon Go app launched worldwide. The free augmented
reality game uses the smartphone camera and location to show
Pokemon characters in the real world. The aim of the game is to travel
to different locations to collect as many Pokemon as possible, leading
countless gamers to walk into lamp-posts in their quest to catch ‘em
all.
2017: The Nokia 3310 had a revival, sporting a fresh version equipped

with basic web browsing, a colourful screen and even a camera.
Despite this, it still retained our favourite features from the original
3310, including the iconic design, super-long battery life and even an
updated version of Snake. Needless to say, it stole the show at the
Mobile World Congress (MWC) tech expo and was one of the biggest
hits of the year.
Apple marked ten years in the smartphone game with the all-screen
iPhone X and ditched a physical home button for the first time.
Landmark phones: the handsets that made
history
From ‘80s menhir-like “brickphones” to the iconic Nokia handsets,
these are some of the phones that pushed the boundaries of what was
possible and paved the way for today’s smartphones.
1985: Motorola Dynatac 8000X

Known in the industry as “the brick” and visible in many scenes of the
1987 movie Wall Street, the Motorola Dynatac 800X was the first
handheld mobile phone and loudly announced the beginning of a new
era.
The price? An eye-watering £3,000.
1992: Nokia 1011

The world’s first mass produced phone that used the new GSM digital
standard, the Nokia 1011 was ‘available in any colour, as long as it’s
black’.
Specs included a monochrome LCD screen, extendable antenna and a

memory capable of storing 99 phone numbers.
1996: Motorola StarTAC

Motorola Star Tac By Nkp911m500 GFDL via Wikimedia Commons
The most expensive and desirable phone on the market at the time of
its release, the StarTac debuted the clamshell design and was the
lightest and smallest phone on the market.
It was also the first phone to be openly marketed as a luxury item.
1997: The Hagenuk GlobalHandy

This little known German-made and impractically minimal handset was
the first phone that had no visible external antenna.
1998: Siemens S10

The first phone with a colour screen, Siemens’ S10 was a landmark
device by any yardstick.
Although its uninspiring design and tiny 97 x 54-pixel display failed to

set the world on fire, it more than merits a place in the annals of
mobile phone history.
1998: Nokia 5110
Nokia 5110 by CSIRO CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sponsor of London Fashion Week in 1999, it was an instant success

and kickstarted the vogue for customising your handset.
1999: Nokia 7110

Nokia 7110
Another first for the Finnish phone-maker, the 7110 was the first
handset to feature a WAP browser.
That meant it was capable of browsing the internet. Or at least a

stripped down and incredibly slow version of it that was of little use to
most people.
But for all that, it was a big step towards the multi-functionality that’s
at the core of today’s smartphones.
1999: Motorola Timeport

Motorola Timeport
This was the first tri-band GSM phone, meaning it worked everywhere
around the world.
A must-have for self-proclaimed citizens of the world. And the hordes

of Gen X-ers heading to Asia on the backpacker trail. As was the
fashion of the time.
2000: Nokia 9210 Communicator

Nokia 9210
The first serious attempt at an internet-enabled mobile phone, the

Communicator was ahead of its time.
It weighed around 400g, so was no-one’s idea of pocket-sized. But on

the plus side, it had 8MB of storage and a full keyboard, you could use
it as a personal organiser, as well as a web browser and email support.
2000: Sharp J-SH04

Sharp J-SH04 By Morio GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia
Commons
Billed as the first commercially available camera phone, Sharp's effort

was only sold in Japan and had a camera resolution of 0.11MP.
‘Blurrycam’ didn’t begin to cover it.
2000: Nokia 3310

Nokia 3310 by Multicherry CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Legendarily sturdy, the 3310 was the phone that launched a thousand
memes. And with 126 million units shifted, stands as one of the
biggest-selling phone of all time.
The battery lasted for days and it was light and truly pocketable at
only 133g.
It also introduced the Snake game, customisable ringtones and a silent

'vibrate' mode.
2003: Nokia 1100

The Nokia 1100 was launched as a basic phone for developing-world
countries back in 2003.
The best part of a decade and a half and one smartphone boom later,
it remains the best selling mobile phone of all time.
2004: Motorola Razr V3
Motorola Razr V3 By OptoScalpel via Wikimedia Commons
The last great flip phone, the Razr was impossibly thin at only 14mm.
Unusually for the time, it also had an aluminium casing that looked
achingly slick.
Ironically, the overwhelming success of the Razr was probably the

main cause of the downfall of Motorola.
In hindsight, it’s apparent that the US phone-maker’s over-reliance on

this successful and iconic series caused the company to fall behind,
failing to innovate and compete with the soon-to-arrive large-screen
phones from LG and Samsung.
2003: Blackberry 6210

The first true Blackberry phone, which integrated a phone with fully
functioning email, web browsing and the much loved Blackberry
Messenger.
The Nokia years

Tracing its heritage to paper production, Nokia entered the
telecommunications industry first as a supplier of telecommunications
equipment to the military and entered the mobile market in the late
‘80s.
Released in 1987, the Mobira Cityman brickphone was Nokia’s answer

to the Motorola Dynatac and was an early hit for the nascent
company.
But as Nokia’s first GSM phone, the 1011 in 1992, and 1994’s 2100
model that precipitated the Finnish giant’s rise to the top.
Marketed to the business market, the 2110 featured the design that
came to be known as the “candybar” format.
It was the lightest and smallest GSM phone available at the time and
featured the easy to use Nokia menu system.
It was also the first phone to offer a choice of ringtones and marked
the debut of the melody that came to be known as “the Nokia
ringtone”, based on the Grand Valse composition for classical guitar.
In the ‘90s, Nokia released more handsets than any of its rivals and in
1998 overtook Motorola to become the best-selling mobile phone
brand in the world.
By the middle of 1999, Nokia’s Expression series, comes to dominate

the market with the release of the 3210.

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When were mobile phones invented?

Mobile phones, particularly the smartphones that have become our

However, the history of mobile phones goes back to 1908 when a US

Mobile phones were invented as early as the 1940s when engineers

The very first mobile phones were not really mobile phones at all.

These early mobile phones are often referred to as 0G mobile phones,

Compare the latest mobile phones deals at Uswitch now.

Landmarks in mobile history

1926: The first successful mobile telephony service was offered to first

1946: The first calls were made on a car radiotelephone in Chicago.

1956: The first automated mobile phone system for private vehicles

It had a total of 125 subscribers between Stockholm and Gothenburg.

1973: Dr Martin Cooper general manager at Motorola

1982: Engineers and administrators from eleven European countries

1987: The Technical specifications for the GSM standard are approved.

1996/97: UK phone ownership stood at 16% of households. A decade

1998: The first downloadable content sold to mobile phones was the

1999: Emojis were invented by Shigetaka Kurita in Japan. Unlike their

2000: The all-conquering Nokia 3310 crash landed on shop shelves.

2003: The 3G standard started to be adopted worldwide, kicking off

Nepal was one of the first countries in southern Asia to launch 3G

2007: The iPhone debuted. Solely available on O2 at launch in the UK

2010: Samsung launched its first Galaxy S smartphone. Usurping

2012: When text messages first arrived, most people didn’t think

2017: The Nokia 3310 had a revival, sporting a fresh version equipped

1985: Motorola Dynatac 8000X

The price? An eye-watering £3,000.

1992: Nokia 1011

Specs included a monochrome LCD screen, extendable antenna and a

1996: Motorola StarTAC

It was also the first phone to be openly marketed as a luxury item.

1997: The Hagenuk GlobalHandy

1998: Siemens S10

Although its uninspiring design and tiny 97 x 54-pixel display failed to

Nokia 5110 by CSIRO CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sponsor of London Fashion Week in 1999, it was an instant success

1999: Nokia 7110

That meant it was capable of browsing the internet. Or at least a

1999: Motorola Timeport

A must-have for self-proclaimed citizens of the world. And the hordes

2000: Nokia 9210 Communicator

The first serious attempt at an internet-enabled mobile phone, the

It weighed around 400g, so was no-one’s idea of pocket-sized. But on

2000: Sharp J-SH04

Billed as the first commercially available camera phone, Sharp's effort

2000: Nokia 3310

It also introduced the Snake game, customisable ringtones and a silent

2003: Nokia 1100

Motorola Razr V3 By OptoScalpel via Wikimedia Commons

Ironically, the overwhelming success of the Razr was probably the

In hindsight, it’s apparent that the US phone-maker’s over-reliance on

2003: Blackberry 6210

The Nokia years

Released in 1987, the Mobira Cityman brickphone was Nokia’s answer

By the middle of 1999, Nokia’s Expression series, comes to dominate

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