The world’s first mobile phone call was made on April 3, 1973, when Martin Cooper, a senior engineer at Motorola, called a rival telecommunications company and informed them he was speaking via a mobile phone. The phone Cooper used, if you could call it that, weighed a staggering 1.1kg and measured in at 228.6x127x44.4mm. With this prototype device, you got 30 minutes of talk-time and it took around 10 hours to charge.
In 1983, Motorola released its first commercial mobile phone, known as the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. The handset offered 30 minutes of talk-time, six hours standby, and could store 30 phone numbers. It also cost £2639 ($3995).
In the very early days of the mobile space handsets weren’t designed with consumers in mind. You’d need a couple of thousand pounds to get hold of one, and even then performance wasn’t great. Back then, mobile phones were designed with the likes of Gordon Gecko in mind, businessmen-types that drove big Jags and flew Concord. Not your average Joe.
Mobile Phone FACTS
Here is a selection of facts, courtesy of Fact Slides, about mobile phones that show just how much the world has changed since the early days of mobile communication:
In 1983, the first mobile phones went on sale in the U.S. at almost $4,000 each.
Over 250 million Nokia 1100 devices were sold, making it the bestselling electrical gadget in history.