With all the new technological breakthroughs and all that is happening we have kind of neglected the road that brought us here the, experiences that made us who we are, the challenges that brought out the best in us, in them - Yes in them, the early developers - and all those who have contributed to the world we live in; this technological era.
And then it hit me - "Why not bring back those memories, that history, most especially for mobile devices" - you know, in a scientific way. So what do I mean by mobile devices - any hand-held computer -usually designed to be portable. This include our phones, smart phones, tablets and any other similar portable device.
Mobile devices have advanced and they originated from the use of wired telephone. Some great guys while sitting down and having coffee decided it was high time we had handheld devices. And one of this notable person was Martin Cooper an employee of Motorola who invented the first handheld device on April 3rd, 1973.
The phone he developed was 23cm in lenght, 13cm in breadth and 4.5cm in width, and weighed about 1.1kg - "Oh the horrow" - thats about the weight of an average rabbit. It offered a talk time of 30 minutes and took 10 hours to charge and it used the first generation 1G network service to make calls.
The first mobile phones as we can see were huge and further studies and research were made to reduce the size of phones. Within 3 years phones became smaller and now came in all sorts of shapes and sizes
Within a short period of time of their invention, mobile phones were in high demand and by 1990 the network service used by different countries were overloaded. This need gave rise to the development of word wide telephone network so that anybody could call anyone at any time and in any place. This major feat was achieved through the launching of communication satellites into space. This single act gave birth to the future, GSM, and it was now possible to make calls worldwide.
With the development of GSM (2G) came SMS or as we know it - text messaging - and this gave man the ability to send messages in form of text to others both far and near. There was now no need for calls for those who hated discussing over the phone and no need to tolerate poor reception.
By 2001 the GSM network proved to be slow and we needed something better. This led to the development of UMTS (3G) and with it came the use of internet on mobile devices. Surfing the net was, watching videos was now possible. It was totally better than its predecessor GSM because it offered faster data transmission. With the introduction of 4G better and faster data transmission has been achieved.
The mobile phone market with all its rise and demand was indeed promising and so many companies ventured into its business. Some of them to mention but a few include Nokia, Apple, Samsung etc. The competition within this market was enormous, and the different companies trying to get ahead of each other developed new and better mobile devices with their own softwares or Operating System. Some of them include Symbian OS, Java, Windows, IOS, Android Os etc.
With all this advancement in the world of mobile devices, where are we now? Right now we are in the smart phone era, the era where with a touch of a finger you could be any where from connecting with friends through social media, to taking pictures of loved ones, to playing games, to listening to music to..... virtually anything.
All functionality now packed in one device. The ability to manage businesses and cooperation online, to navigate the world, the ability to change the world is now at our finger tips. What more can we imagine, what more can we dream of, what more can we ask for - but the future.
Yes the future is now. The future of virtual reality, smart sensing and gesture control, holography is here. Expect more about the future in subsequent posts.
There is no limitation to the future and whenever that journey feels daunting let us take a step backwards to the past and see how far we have come. And by doing so we can make readjustments for the future.
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