The next major advancement in telephone communication came in the 1990s with the proliferation of the cellular phone. Though portable and in-vehicle phones had been experimented with since the 1940s, the first true cellular phones (that is, one that pedestrians could carry with them) did not arrive until the 1980s, and even then they were relatively large, clunky objects and were too expensive for the average person. This changed in the 1990s as cell phones got smaller, faster, and cheaper.