My Personal Cell Phone Journey to the iPhone

By R. Look.

Most of us here have been lucky enough to see how cell phones have evolved from the first portable cellular telephone (Motorola DynaTAC 80000X) in 1982 to Apple's groundbreaking "Internet Communicator" the iPhone (2007). The industry has come a long way for sure, back in 1983, I remember the DynaTAC was more than a foot long, weighed almost 2 lbs. and had a hefty price tag of approx. $4,000. If I recall correctly, it had a talk time of about 1 hour and could hold up to 30 numbers, an impressive feat for the to say the least.



Cell phones during this time were out of the reach of the common consumer and most people carried pagers. If you had a cell phone, you probably had the DynaTAC or had one installed in your car. Then, in 1993, BellSouth/IBM introduced the Simon. Billed as personal communicator, I actually was lucky enough to be involved in market testing for this device. Interestingly enough, I feel that this device paved the way for future phones such as the Treos, Blackberries, Windows Mobile Devices and of course our iPhone. In addition to being a phone, the Simon was also: a pager, calculator, address book, fax machine (yes that's right, it could send and receive faxes) and e-mail device. The one feature I feel that is worth mentioning is that it was a pen-enabled device (no handwriting recognition) that had a touch-screen interface. Sound good? It was considering it's feature set. The downside, it was huge, weighed 20 ounces and would set consumers back about $900.




Shortly after I gave up the Simon, the Motorola StarTAC hit the market (1996) and sold like hotcakes. It seemed as though everyone and their brother had one of these and I'm quite sure it still gives modern cell phones a run for their money in terms of size.



During this next phase of my cell phone history, I owned various Nokias and Motorolas, none of which struck me as being memorable. To give you an idea of what was in the market at the time, there was the Handspring Treo 180 (2001), the first edition of the SideKick (2002), the very first Blackberry (Blackberry 5810 in 2002) and the Nokia N-Gage (2003). I would have to say that from my standpoint, during these years, the cell phone industry seemed to be "lost" and needed some direction.

Then, in 2004, that much needed direction came from Motorola in the form of the Razr V3. Similar to the StarTAC, it sold like hotcakes and was available through almost every major wireless carrier.


Motorola tried to follow up the Razr V3 by introducing the Rokr (2005) which promised to be a music player and a cell phone. Unfortunately, the Rokr was a flop, but I feel that it still paved the way for other music enabled phones.

During this time (2006ish), I owned a Windows Mobile device from T-mobile called the MDA. It was an OK product, mediocre at best, but it did what it was supposed, albeit a bit unintuitively. It had a slide out keyboard, had all the office translators, could surf the web, receive email and play music and videos. I hated it but it was the only thing the cell industry could offer me at the time.





Finally, we arrive at the iPhone (June 2007). The iPhone threw out all expectations of what it meant be a "smart phone." It replaced the keyboard with a huge touchscreen display and was able to surf the Internet, get mail and of course play multimedia content from iTunes.

For me, the iPhone has changed how I am connected, how I interact with pictures, data and email. It makes my life easier and makes things I've never expected possible. Stay tuned for part 2 of my article in which I explain how the iPhone has changed my life.