The Evolution of Cell Phones

Cell phones have come a long way in the past 15 years, I remember back in the day my mom used to work for Telus. We had a cordless phone and because she worked for them we had caller ID and call waiting for free! This was a big deal back then because we could actually see who was calling! I decided at a young age, just when Telus did a huge upgrade on their towers back in 1999 that I needed a cell phone. An Audiovox 9990 came free with a 3 year term and I had my sister cosign for me as my mom didn’t want me to have one. Thought it was dangerous to talk on the phone while driving and at the time there was no law against it. I felt like I was instantly cool walking into McDonalds (where I worked) talking to my friends with my new phone.

I had an interest in technology as it was fast changing, I saw the potential in the industry. My first job that took part in that was Wal-Mart electronics department. Shortly after I found myself in sales at the now closed Future Shop in the cell phone department I worked here for 4 years. When I started there the film camera section was still bigger than the digital camera one, a digital camera cost an average of $500 with 2 or 3 Megapixels being good, a memory card for these cameras started at 16MB not GB and if you wanted a 128MB you were going to pay between $150 to $200, home phones were a bigger section than cell phones, black and white palm pilots were all the rage, GPS didn’t even exist (the military owned WWAS and wasn’t ready to let it go to the public, this is the satellite system that allows GPS to be accurate within 3 feet) and cell phones companies were just starting to come out with flip phones.

This whole section of things that we sold would soon become one…. Smartphones. Motorola, LG, Samsung, Adiovox, Sanyo, and Nokia were the players in the phone market and the goal back then was to come out with the smallest phone (we sure went the other way with that). We were still mostly on the old analog network and digital now known as CDMA of GSM we just being developed. Phones were changing every 6 months, always getting smaller and developingnew things like calendars, contact lists that could hold more than 50 people, note pads, games (push, push was one of my favorites).

When we finally got our first color flip phone I had to have it. It was a Sanyo and I bought the first one we had. Only problem was it was only digital, the phones to that point were all tri mode (could do analog or either type of digital). It worked fine and soon after the other companies followed. The phones started getting digital cameras added to them, having memory card slots and texting was just starting to get popular. Most of us will remember T9 word entry, amazing that we could type reasonably fast with that system. Then came slider phones that had keyboards that would slide out.

BlackBerry was one of the firsts to come out with a phone that was user friendly for the business man. Although not a touch screen this bad boy sported a built in key pad, color screen, internet accessibility, camera, and their biggest seller, easy email access. They sold a ton of them. HTC was one of the first truly smartphones as we know them today. I was the only one of my friends that had this, the EVO shift. Touch screen, keyboard, Pocket PC software (this was a software the adapted from palm pilots), 1.2Megapixle rear camera. This phone had it all and the race was on.

Apple soon got in the game with their iPhone 2 (didn’t see this in Canada due to it only working on networks we didn’t support). We saw the iPhone 3. Samsung, LG, BlackBerry, HTC, Sony. They were not going to be left behind. The smartphone boom was on. Now a days if your phone doesn’t have a 13 Megapixel camera, quad core processor, GPS, and at least 16GB of memory your phone is considered old. The new revolution is here, we are in the technology age and the sky is the limit, however the real question is, is there an end to this ever evolving age? One thing I know for sure is that phones on the hardware side are slowing. Yes the new model is a bit faster and has a larger screen, but is it necessary at this point? We will find out in the near future but for now, fixing my iPhone 5 for a couple years will work just fine for me.