Cell Phone" redirects here. For the film, see
Cell Phone (film).
Evolution of mobile phones, through early
smartphone
A
mobile phone (also known as a
cellular phone,
cell phone,
hand phone, or simply a
phone) is a
phone that can make and receive
telephone calls over a
radio link while moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a
cellular network provided by a
mobile phone operator, allowing access to the
public telephone network. By contrast, a
cordless telephone is used only within the short range of a single, private base station.
In addition to telephony, modern mobile phones also support a wide variety of other
services such as
text messaging,
MMS,
email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (
infrared,
Bluetooth),
business applications, gaming, and photography. Mobile phones that
offer these and more general computing capabilities are referred to as
smartphones.
The first hand-held cell phone was demonstrated by
John F. Mitchell[1][2] and
Dr. Martin Cooper of
Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing around 4.4 pounds (2 kg).
[3] In 1983, the
DynaTAC 8000x
was the first to be commercially available. From 1983 to 2014,
worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from zero to over 7 billion,
penetrating 100% of the global population and reaching the
bottom of the economic pyramid.
[4] In 2014, the top cell phone manufacturers were
Samsung,
Nokia,
Apple, and
LG.
[5]
History
Martin Cooper
of Motorola made the first publicized handheld mobile phone call on a
prototype DynaTAC model on April 4, 1973. This is a reenactment in 2007.
A hand-held mobile radiotelephone is an old dream of radio
engineering. One of the earliest descriptions can be found in the 1948
science fiction novel
Space Cadet by
Robert Heinlein.
The protagonist, who has just traveled to Colorado from his home in
Iowa, receives a call from his father on a telephone in his pocket.
Before leaving for earth orbit, he decides to ship the telephone home
"since it was limited by its short range to the neighborhood of an
earth-side [i.e. terrestrial] relay office." Ten years later, an essay
by
Arthur C. Clarke
envisioned a "personal transceiver, so small and compact that every man
carries one." Clarke wrote: "the time will come when we will be able to
call a person anywhere on Earth merely by dialing a number." Such a
device would also, in Clarke's vision, include means for global
positioning so that "no one need ever again be lost." In his 1962
Profiles of the Future, he predicted the advent of such a device taking place in the mid-1980s.
[6]
The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. First commercially available, hand-held cellular mobile phone, 1984
Early predecessors of cellular phones included analog radio
communications from ships and trains. The race to create truly portable
telephone devices began after World War II, with developments taking
place in many countries. The advances in mobile telephony have been
traced in successive
generations from the early "0G" (zeroth generation) services like the
Bell System's
Mobile Telephone Service and its successor,
Improved Mobile Telephone Service. These "0G" systems were not cellular, supported few simultaneous calls, and were very expensive.
The first handheld mobile cell phone was demonstrated by
Motorola in 1973. The first commercial automated cellular network was launched in Japan by
NTT in 1979. In 1981, this was followed by the simultaneous launch of the
Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
[7]
Several other countries then followed in the early to mid-1980s. These
first generatiion ("1G") systems could support far more simultaneous
calls, but still used analog technology.
In 1991, the second generation (
2G)
digital cellular technology was launched in Finland by
Radiolinja on the
GSM standard, which sparked competition in the sector, as the new operators challenged the incumbent 1G network operators.
Ten years later, in 2001, the third generation (
3G) was launched in Japan by
NTT DoCoMo on the
WCDMA standard.
[8] This was followed by 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G enhancements based on the
high-speed packet access (HSPA) family, allowing
UMTS networks to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity.
By 2009, it had become clear that, at some point, 3G networks would
be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications like
streaming media.
[9]
Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized
4th-generation technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up
to 10-fold over existing 3G technologies. The first two commercially
available technologies billed as
4G were the
WiMAX standard (offered in the U.S. by
Sprint) and the
LTE standard, first offered in Scandinavia by
TeliaSonera.
Features
All mobile phones have a number of features in common, but
manufacturers also try to differentiate their own products by
implementing additional functions to make them more attractive to
consumers. This has led to great innovation in mobile phone development
over the past 20 years.
The common components found on all phones are:
- A battery, providing the power source for the phone functions.
- An input mechanism to allow the user to interact with the phone. The most common input mechanism is a keypad, but touch screens are also found in most smartphones.
- A screen which echoes the user's typing, displays text messages, contacts and more.
- Basic mobile phone services to allow users to make calls and send text messages.
- All GSM phones use a SIM card to allow an account to be swapped among devices. Some CDMA devices also have a similar card called a R-UIM.
- Individual GSM, WCDMA, iDEN and some satellite phone devices are uniquely identified by an International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number.
Low-end mobile phones are often referred to as
feature phones,
and offer basic telephony. Handsets with more advanced computing
ability through the use of native software applications became known as
smartphones.
Sound quality
In sound quality, smartphones and feature phones vary little. Some audio-quality enhancing features like
Voice over LTE and
HD Voice
have appeared and are often available on newer smartphones. Sound
quality can remain a problem with both, as this depends, not so much on
the phone itself, as on the quality of the network, and in case of
long distance calls, the bottlenecks/choke points met along the way.
[10][11]
As such, on long-distance calls even features such as Voice over LTE,
HD voice may not improve things. In some cases smartphones can improve
audio quality even on long-distance calls, by using
VoIP phone service, with someone else's WiFi/internet connection.
[12]
Several phone series have been introduced to address specific market segments, such as the RIM
BlackBerry focusing on enterprise/corporate customer email needs; the Sony-Ericsson 'Walkman' series of music/phones and '
Cyber-shot' series of camera/phones; the
Nokia Nseries of multimedia phones, the
Palm Pre the
HTC Dream and the Apple
iPhone.
Text messaging
The most commonly used data application on mobile phones is
SMS
text messaging. The first SMS text message was sent from a computer to a
mobile phone in 1992 in the UK, while the first person-to-person SMS
from phone to phone was sent in Finland in 1993.
The first
mobile news
service, delivered via SMS, was launched in Finland in 2000, and
subsequently many organizations provided "on-demand" and "instant" news
services by SMS.
SIM card
GSM feature phones require a small
microchip called a Subscriber Identity Module or
SIM card,
to function. The SIM card is approximately the size of a small postage
stamp and is usually placed underneath the battery in the rear of the
unit. The SIM securely stores the
service-subscriber key (IMSI) and the
Ki
used to identify and authenticate the user of the mobile phone. The SIM
card allows users to change phones by simply removing the SIM card from
one mobile phone and inserting it into another mobile phone or
broadband telephony device, provided that this is not prevented by a
SIM lock.
The first SIM card was made in 1991 by Munich smart card maker
Giesecke & Devrient for the Finnish wireless network operator
Radiolinja.
[citation needed]
Multi-card hybrid phones
A hybrid mobile phone can hold up to four SIM cards. SIM and RUIM cards may be mixed together to allow both
GSM and
CDMA networks to be accessed.
[13][14]
From 2010 onwards they became popular in India and Indonesia and other emerging markets,
[15] attributed to the desire to obtain the lowest on-net calling rate. In Q3 2011,
Nokia
shipped 18 million of its low cost dual SIM phone range in an attempt
to make up lost ground in the higher end smartphone market.
[16]
Kosher phones
There are
Jewish orthodox
religious restrictions which, by some interpretations, standard mobile
telephones do not meet. To solve this issue, some rabbinical
organizations have recommended that phones with text messaging
capability not be used by children.
[17] These
restricted phones are known as
kosher phones and have
rabbinical approval for use in Israel and elsewhere by observant
Orthodox Jews. Although these phones are intended to prevent
immodesty,
some vendors report good sales to adults who prefer the simplicity of
the devices. Some phones are even approved for use by essential workers
(such as health, security and public services) on the
sabbath, even though use of any electrical device is generally prohibited.
[18]
Mobile phone operators
Growth in mobile phone subscribers per country from 1980 to 2009.
The world's largest individual mobile operator by subscribers is
China Mobile with over 500 million mobile phone subscribers.
[19]
Over 50 mobile operators have over 10 million subscribers each, and
over 150 mobile operators had at least one million subscribers by the
end of 2009.
[20] In 2014, there were more than seven billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, a number that is expected to keep growing.
Manufacturers
Quantity Market Shares by Gartner
(New Sales) |
| BRAND |
|
|
Percent |
|
| Samsung 2012 |
|
22.0% |
| Samsung 2013 |
|
24.6% |
| Nokia 2012 |
|
19.1% |
| Nokia 2013 |
|
13.9% |
| Apple 2012 |
|
7.5% |
| Apple 2013 |
|
8.3% |
| LG Electronics 2012 |
|
3.3% |
| LG Electronics 2013 |
|
3.8% |
| ZTE 2012 |
|
3.9% |
| ZTE 2013 |
|
3.3% |
| Others 2012 |
|
34.9% |
| Others 2013 |
|
34.0% |
| Note: Others-1 consist of Sony Ericsson, Motorola, ZTE, HTC and Huawei.(2009-2010) |
Prior to 2010,
Nokia was the market leader. However, since then competition emerged in the Asia Pacific region with brands such as Micromax,
Nexian,
and i-Mobile and chipped away at Nokia's market share. Android powered
smartphones also gained momentum across the region at the expense of
Nokia. In India, their market share also dropped significantly to around
31 percent from 56 percent in the same period. Their share was
displaced by Chinese and Indian vendors of low-end mobile phones.
[21]
In Q1 2012, based on Strategy Analytics, Samsung surpassed Nokia,
selling 93.5 million units and 82.7 million units, respectively.
Standard & Poor's
has also downgraded Nokia to 'junk' status at BB+/B with negative
outlook due to high loss and still declined with growth of Lumia
smartphones was not sufficient to offset a rapid decline in revenue from
Symbian-based smartphones over the next few quarters.
[22]
In Q3 2014, the top 10 manufacturers were Samsung (20.6%), Nokia
(9.5%), Apple Inc. (8.4%), LG (4.2%), Huawei (3.6%), TCL Communication
(3.5), Xiaomi (3.5%), Lenovo (3.3%), ZTE (3.0%) and Micromax (2.2%).
[23]
- Note: Vendor shipments are branded shipments and exclude OEM sales for all vendors
Other manufacturers outside the top five include
TCL Communication,
Lenovo,
Sony Mobile Communications,
Motorola. Smaller current and past players include Karbonn Mobile,
Audiovox (now
UTStarcom),
BenQ-Siemens,
BlackBerry,
Casio,
CECT,
Coolpad,
Fujitsu,
HTC,
Just5,
Kyocera,
Lumigon,
Micromax Mobile,
Mitsubishi Electric,
Modu,
NEC,
Neonode,
Openmoko,
Panasonic,
Palm,
Pantech Wireless Inc.,
Philips,
Qualcomm Inc.,
Sagem,
Sanyo,
Sharp,
Sierra Wireless,
SK Teletech, Soutec,
Trium,
Toshiba, and Vidalco.
Use of mobile phones
In general
Mobile phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants. 2014 figure is estimated.
Mobile phones are used for a variety of purposes, including keeping
in touch with family members, conducting business, and having access to a
telephone in the event of an emergency. Some people carry more than one
cell phone for different purposes, such as for business and personal
use. Multiple SIM cards may also be used to take advantage of the
benefits of different calling plans—a particular plan might provide
cheaper local calls, long-distance calls, international calls, or
roaming. The mobile phone has also been used in a variety of diverse
contexts in society, for example:
- A study by Motorola
found that one in ten cell phone subscribers have a second phone that
often is kept secret from other family members. These phones may be used
to engage in activities including extramarital affairs or clandestine
business dealings.[26]
- Some organizations assist victims of domestic violence by providing
mobile phones for use in emergencies. They are often refurbished phones.[27]
- The advent of widespread text messaging has resulted in the cell phone novel; the first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age via text messaging to a website that collects the novels as a whole.[28]
- Mobile telephony also facilitates activism and public journalism being explored by Reuters and Yahoo![29] and small independent news companies such as Jasmine News in Sri Lanka.
- The United Nations
reported that mobile phones have spread faster than any other
technology and can improve the livelihood of the poorest people in
developing countries by providing access to information in places where landlines or the Internet are not available, especially in the least developed countries.
Use of mobile phones also spawns a wealth of micro-enterprises, by
providing work, such as selling airtime on the streets and repairing or
refurbishing handsets.[30]
- In Mali
and other African countries, people used to travel from village to
village to let friends and relatives know about weddings, births and
other events, which are now avoided within mobile phone coverage areas,
which is usually greater than land line penetration.
- The TV industry has recently started using mobile phones to drive live TV viewing through mobile apps, advertising, social tv, and mobile TV.[31] 86% of Americans use their mobile phone while watching TV.
- In parts of the world, mobile phone sharing is common. It is
prevalent in urban India, as families and groups of friends often share
one or more mobiles among their members. There are obvious economic
benefits, but often familial customs and traditional gender roles play a
part.[32]
It is common for a village to have access to only one mobile phone,
perhaps owned by a teacher or missionary, but available to all members
of the village for necessary calls.[33]
Smartphones
Active mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, from
ITU
Smartphones have a number of distinguishing features but the
ITU measures those with internet connection which it calls
Active Mobile-Broadband subscriptions
(which includes tablets etc.) In the developed world these have now
overtaken the usage of earlier mobile systems but in the developing
world account for only 20%.
For distributing content
In 1998, one of the first examples of
distributing and selling media content through the mobile phone was the sale of
ringtones
by Radiolinja in Finland. Soon afterwards, other media content appeared
such as news, video games, jokes, horoscopes, TV content and
advertising. Most early content for mobile tended to be copies of legacy
media, such as the banner advertisement or the TV news highlight video
clip. Recently, unique content for mobile has been emerging, from the
ringing tones and
ringback tones in music to "mobisodes", video content that has been produced exclusively for mobile phones.
In 2006, the total value of mobile-phone-paid media content exceeded
Internet-paid media content and was worth 31 billion dollars.
[34] The value of music on phones was worth 9.3 billion dollars in 2007 and gaming was worth over 5 billion dollars in 2007.
[35]
While driving
Mobile phone use while driving is common but controversial. Being
distracted while operating a motor vehicle has been shown to increase
the risk of accidents. Because of this, many jurisdictions prohibit the
use of mobile phones while driving. Egypt, Israel, Japan, Portugal and
Singapore ban both handheld and hands-free use of a mobile phone; others
—including the UK, France, and many
U.S. states—ban handheld phone use only, allowing hands-free use.
Due to the increasing complexity of mobile phones, they are often
more like mobile computers in their available uses. This has introduced
additional difficulties for law enforcement officials in distinguishing
one usage from another as drivers use their devices. This is more
apparent in those countries which ban both handheld and hands-free
usage, rather than those who have banned handheld use only, as officials
cannot easily tell which function of the mobile phone is being used
simply by looking at the driver. This can lead to drivers being stopped
for using their device illegally on a phone call when, in fact, they
were using the device for a legal purpose such as the phone's
incorporated controls for car stereo or
satnav.
A recently published study has reviewed the incidence of mobile phone use while cycling and its effects on behaviour and safety.
[36]
Mobile banking and payments
In many countries, mobile phones are used to provide
mobile banking services, which may include the ability to transfer cash payments by secure SMS text message. Kenya's
M-PESA mobile banking service, for example, allows customers of the mobile phone operator
Safaricom
to hold cash balances which are recorded on their SIM cards. Cash may
be deposited or withdrawn from M-PESA accounts at Safaricom retail
outlets located throughout the country, and may be transferred
electronically from person to person as well as used to pay bills to
companies.
Branchless banking has also been successful in South Africa and the Philippines. A pilot project in
Bali was launched in 2011 by the
International Finance Corporation and an
Indonesian bank
Bank Mandiri.
[37]
Another application of mobile banking technology is
Zidisha,
a US-based nonprofit micro-lending platform that allows residents of
developing countries to raise small business loans from Web users
worldwide. Zidisha uses mobile banking for loan disbursements and
repayments, transferring funds from lenders in the United States to the
borrowers in rural Africa using the Internet and mobile phones.
[38]
Mobile payments were first trialled in Finland in 1998 when two Coca-Cola vending machines in
Espoo
were enabled to work with SMS payments. Eventually, the idea spread and
in 1999 the Philippines launched the country's first commercial mobile
payments systems on the mobile operators
Globe and
Smart.
Some mobile phone can make
mobile payments via direct mobile billing schemes or through
contactless payments if the phone and
point of sale support
near field communication (NFC).
[39]
This requires the co-operation of manufacturers, network operators and
retail merchants to enable contactless payments through NFC-equipped
mobile phones.
[40][41][42]
Tracking and privacy
Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data. While
the phone is turned on, the geographical location of a mobile phone can
be determined easily (whether it is being used or not), using a
technique known as
multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several
cell towers near the owner of the phone.
[43][44]
The movements of a mobile phone user can be tracked by their service
provider and, if desired, by law enforcement agencies and their
government. Both the
SIM card and the handset can be tracked.
[43]
China has proposed using this technology to track commuting patterns of Beijing city residents.
[45]
In the UK and US, law enforcement and intelligence services use mobiles
to perform surveillance. They possess technology to activate the
microphones in cell phones remotely in order to listen to conversations
that take place near the phone.
[46][47]
Thefts
According to the
Federal Communications Commission,
one out of three robberies involved the theft of a cellular phone.
Police data in San Francisco showed that one-half of all robberies in
2012 were thefts of cellular phones. An online petition on
Change.org called
Secure our Smartphones urged smartphone manufacturers to install
kill switches in their devices to make them unusable in case of theft. The petition is part of a joint effort by New York Attorney General
Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney
George Gascón and was directed to the
CEOs of the major smartphone manufacturers and telecommunication carriers.
[48]
On Monday, 10 June 2013, Apple announced it would install a kill switch on its
next iPhone operating system, due to debut in October 2013.
[49]
Health effects
The effect mobile phone radiation has on human health is the subject
of recent interest and study, as a result of the enormous increase in
mobile phone usage throughout the world. Mobile phones use
electromagnetic radiation in the
microwave range, which some believe may be harmful to human health. A large body of research exists, both
epidemiological and experimental, in
non-human animals
and in humans, of which the majority shows no definite causative
relationship between exposure to mobile phones and harmful biological
effects in humans. This is often paraphrased simply as the balance of
evidence showing no harm to humans from mobile phones, although a
significant number of individual studies do suggest such a relationship,
or are inconclusive. Other
digital wireless systems, such as data communication networks, produce similar radiation.
On 31 May 2011, the
World Health Organization stated that mobile phone use may possibly represent a long-term health risk,
[50][51]
classifying mobile phone radiation as "possibly carcinogenic to humans"
after a team of scientists reviewed studies on cell phone safety.
[52] Mobile phones are in
category 2B, which ranks it alongside
coffee and other possibly carcinogenic substances.
[53][54]
At least some recent studies have found an association between cell
phone use and certain kinds of brain and salivary gland tumors.
Lennart Hardell
and other authors of a 2009 meta-analysis of 11 studies from
peer-reviewed journals concluded that cell phone usage for at least ten
years "approximately doubles the risk of being diagnosed with a brain
tumor on the same ('ipsilateral') side of the head as that preferred for
cell phone use."
[55]
One study of past cell phone use cited in the report showed a "40% increased risk for
gliomas (brain cancer) in the highest category of heavy users (reported average: 30 minutes per day over a 10‐year period)."
[56]
This is a reversal from their prior position that cancer was unlikely
to be caused by cellular phones or their base stations and that reviews
had found no convincing evidence for other health effects.
[51][57]
Certain countries, including France, have warned against the use of
cell phones especially by minors due to health risk uncertainties.
[58] However, a study published 24 March 2012 in the
British Medical Journal questioned these estimates, because the increase in brain cancers has not paralleled the increase in mobile phone use.
[59]
Future evolution
5G is a technology used in research papers and projects to denote the
next major phase of mobile telecommunication standards beyond the
4G/
IMT-Advanced
standards. 5G is not officially used for any specification or official
document yet made public by telecommunication companies or
standardization bodies such as
3GPP,
WiMAX Forum, or
ITU-R.
New standard releases beyond 4G are in progress by standardization
bodies, but are at this time not considered as new mobile generations
but under the 4G umbrella.
Deloitte is predicting a collapse in wireless performance to come as
soon as 2016, as more devices using more and more services compete for
limited bandwidth.
[60]
Environmental impact
![[icon]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg/20px-Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg.png) |
This section requires expansion. (December 2011) |
Studies have shown that around 40-50% of the environmental impact of a
mobile phone occurs during the manufacturing of the printed wiring
boards and integrated circuits.
[61] The average user replaces their mobile phone every 11 to 18 months.
[62] The discarded phones then contribute to
electronic waste.
Mobile phone manufacturers within
Europe are subject to the
WEEE directive. Australia introduced a mobile phone recycling scheme.
[63]
Conflict minerals
Demand for metals found in mobile phones and other electroncs fuelled the
Second Congo War. The war claimed almost 5.5 million lives.
[64] In a 2012 news story,
The Guardian reported, "In unsafe mines deep underground in eastern Congo,
children are working
to extract minerals essential for the electronics industry. The profits
from the minerals finance the bloodiest conflict since the second world
war; the war has lasted nearly 20 years and has recently flared up
again. ... For the last 15 years, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo has been a major source of natural resources for the mobile phone industry."
[65]
FairPhone is an attempt to develop a mobile phone which does not contain conflict minerals.
See also
![[icon]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small}