World’s First Mobile Phone

We cannot imagine our life without this gadget called cell phone or mobile phone. Via this device, we not only know about our friends and families or attend our work at the office (like replying to an email) but it helps us to stay connected to this mass world. 

What is going around the world can be updated to us in seconds, now you might say that this is the attribute of the internet, but ‘knowing it in seconds’ is been made handy by our cellular devices only. Because I bet, you would not open your hefty laptop or desktop just to get an update about news happening in another corner of the world. 

Now, all these benefits, and whom to credit for its invention? Thus, we bring up the topic of ‘When did first mobile phone invented?’ not just to know the mere date but also to applaud the man behind it. 

When did the Phone Invent? 

Being in the 21st Century, science has literally awarded us with a unique tool that can connect miles. This phone help can connect us to connect with our relatives who are probably living in other countries or another part of the world. But do you know - When did the phone invent? Who was the inventor of this phone?

The phone was invented by Martin Cooper. Martin Cooper displayed the cell phone in front of the world on 3rd April in the year 1973. Hence, to know more on ‘When did the cell phone invented?’ or ‘When did mobile invent?’ we need to go back to the year 1973 which does not seem too long. 

Going Back to 1973 – The History of when were Phones First Invented

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In order to specifically answer ‘When did the cell phone invent?’ we must trace back to history. In fact, let us go to the year 1917. In the year 1917, This handheld cellular phone was first demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola in the year 1973. This handset weighed about 2 kg which was 4.4 lb. While these cellular phones were first made commercially launched in Japan by the Nippon Telegraph and telephone in the year 1979. Later in the year 1981, it was launched in Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden. All these first generations phones could not support simultaneous calls, it used analogue cellular technology. Finally, in the year 1983, the Dyna TAC 8000x was first made commercially available to the local people. 

World First Mobile Phone

An American engineer Martin Cooper, displayed the world’s first mobile phone in front of the whole world on April 3rd in the year 1973. This phone was made user-friendly to the common man. Earlier, the phones were basically the radio and wireless phones which were available, to the armies.

The man behind the invention – Martin Cooper

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Martin Cooper, the American engineer was called for the first time at the headquarter of Bell Labs, which is located in New Jersey, from his office that located in Manhattan. Martin Cooper, with the company Motorola, which is the leading mobile company of today, built this mobile phone. Martin Cooper later became the Chief Executive Officer of this company. For his invention, Martin Cooper was awarded the Marconi Award for his extraordinary work done in the field of communication in the year 2013.

Mobile Phones in India

The history of mobile phones in our country started in the year 1995, in the month of August. It was the time when the Chief Minister of West Bengal named Jyoti Basu made his first mobile phone call in India to the Union Telecom Minister, named Sukhram. Sixteen years later this event, 4G services were launched in Kolkata in the year 2012. 

In the year 2004 of September, the number of mobile phone connections exceeded the number of fixed-line connections. The Indian mobile subscriber base has grown from 5 million subscribers in the year 2001 to over 1,179.32 million subscribers as recorded in July 2018. 

India majorly follows the mobile system called GSM, which is in the form of a 900 MHz band. The new operators also operate in the 1800 MHz band. 

The dominant players in the phone sector are: (As per 2018)

• Vi

• Airtel

• Jio

• BSNL/MTNL

In the year 2014, Trivandrum became the first and only city in India to cross the mobile growth milestone of 100 mobile connections with 100 people. By the year 2015, four more cities – Kerala, Kollam, Kochi, and Kottayam crossed these 100 marks. Later in the year 2017, cities like Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mysore, and Mangalore have also crossed this marked milestone. 

Second Largest Market of Mobile Phones – India

India is the second-largest subscriber of mobile phones in the world with a subscriber base of approximately 1151.8 million (as per 31 Oct 2020). With this data, it is understood that private companies are in a good position to manufacture mobile sets and incur tons of profit from the Indian market. 

Before CDMA, GSM was preferably maintaining its position as being the dominant mobile technology with over 80% of the mobile subscriber flooded in the market. Later CDMA captured the rest 20% of the market share. 

India is divided into multiple zones. These are called circles (the circles are created roughly along the state boundaries). In the Indian market, various private players tried to establish their foothold, but no one could as compare to that done by Reliance Jio. The competition of capturing the mobile phone market almost became nil with the entry of Reliance Jio, as it caused the prices to drop country-wide, making it the cheapest in the world.

What are the Main Components of a Mobile Phone? 

The main components of Mobile Phone are as follows:

1. CPU, elongated as Central Processing Unit. This CPU is a microprocessor that is fabricated on a metal-oxide-semiconductor that is the integrated circuit (IC) chip.

2. Next, the battery provides the source of power to the phone, which helps the phone can perform its functions.  

3. An input device mechanism that allows interaction with the cell phone. These consist of the keypad, touch screens for the smartphones which come with capacitive sensing.   

4. A display system that shows the user’s typing or displaying the messages etc. 

5. Speakers that provide sound.

6. Subscriber Identity Module (abbreviated as SIM) cards are also installed here. 

7. There is also a hardware notification LED on many phones

Mobile phones are which only provide the basic feature and are used for the basic purpose are called feature phones, while phones which come with advanced technology, software applications, and more are known as smartphones.

Did you Know? 

• These days, we use light and slim phones, but imagine the weight of the first mobile phone to be 1.1kg. Those phones were 13cm thick and 4.5 cm in width. They were compared to the bricks or the black heavy shoes!

• Your phone takes 15 to 20 minutes time to fully charge with a power backup of 1 to 2 days. Previously, the mobile phones took 10 hours to charge with power back up of only 20 minutes.   

• The first mobile handset was launched by the mobile phone leading company - Motorola in the year 1983, its price was around two lakh rupees and the name of that mobile handset launched by Motorola was Dyna TAC 8000x.

• In the year 1979, the First-Generation (1G) technology was introduced in the country of Japan.

• In the year 1991, 2G technology was first ever started in Finland.

• After around ten years of introduction of the 2G technology, the 3G technology flooded the market in 2001, which was started by a Japanese company called NTT DoCoMo.