Mobile Phones

                                          Mobile

 Cellular telephone systems are a way of providing portable telephone services. Each phone is connected by a radio link to a base station. In turn, this is linked to the telephone network, which is the largest machine on the planet.

There is nothing special about radio links - they've been used for scores of years. What is clever is that with a cellular system, each base station covers a limited area, and if a phone moves away, the connection is passed across to an adjacent base. This is called a hand-off, and allows mobility of phones, whilst permitting re-use of frequencies by base stations in nearby, but not adjacent, 'cells'.

The size of cells varies from system to system and place to place. They can be from over 50 miles across on the analogue 'TACS' systems from Vodafone and Cell net, to less than 500 meters in busy areas on the 'GSM 1800' networks, One2one and Orange. The smaller the cell size, the more users that can be fitted onto the network, and the less power the mobile handset needs to reach the base, so it and its batteries can be smaller and lighter. Unfortunately, small cell sizes means more cells, so more expense to install, and more problems covering remote, low-population areas.

A cellular network is an expensive thing to build, and it costs well over £1,000,000,000 to get into this in a serious way. The four UK players in this game are all big, multinational companies, who have big money to invest, or access to it from other sources.

History

The mobile phone was launched in the UK in 1985 and now, there are statistically more mobile phones in the country than people. There is no question that the mobile phone has had a tremendous and lasting impact on our lives. In many ways, more so than any other form of telecommunications technology. Can you imagine life without your smart phone that allows you to browse the web, download apps, send text messages, check your email, take photographs, play music, find out where you are using the built-in GPS receiver and, by the way, also make telephone calls? But how did it all begin and how has the mobile phone evolved from those early days of 1985 when a mobile phone was exactly that, a device for making telephone calls whilst outside? This section will trace that evolution from the walkie talkie to high performance smart phones.

   

Walkie talkies, car telephones and pagers

The mobile phone owes its existence to the pioneering work of companies such as Motorola who created the walkie talkie which was one of the first portable communication devices. The success of the walkie talkie led on to the development of the car radio telephone and from there, the radiopager which was a very early form of one-way text messaging. In this section we review those technologies that were precursors to the mobile phone.

Collection of Analogue mobile phones   

Analogue mobiles  1G

The mobile phone was the next logical development of both the car radio telephone service and personal mobile radios. For the UK, the first mobile phone networks were provided by Vodafone and Cell net, both of which launched in January 1985. These first networks used analogue technology and the mobile handsets were very large, fairly heavy, had limited battery life and could only make telephone calls. Nevertheless, the mobile phone quickly established itself as an essential business tool and recognized part of everyday society. Today we look back on these early days and refer to the first generation of mobiles as the bricks!

 Telepoint services  

Analogue mobile phones were targeted at the business user and were very expensive to own for the average member of the public. Telepoint services therefore offered a more affordable solution for people who wanted some of the convenience of a mobile phone. However, Telepoint was a different technology to mobile phones. You could still make telephone calls whilst outside, but only if you were in range of a Telepoint access point. These access points were located in public spaces, on the high street, in railway stations and were indicated by easy to see signs. A significant problem, though, was that you couldn't receive calls when away from home. The UK introduced four Telepoint services but only one of these, Rabbit, achieved any real success. They were all short lived, having failed to compete with the second generation of digital mobile phones based on GSM.

Collection of second generation GSM Mobiles   

GSM mobiles  2G

The mobile phone truly came of age with the launch of the second generation that used digital technology based on the new Groupe Special Mobile (GSM) standards. Within the UK, the first GSM mobile phone network went live in 1992 and thanks to the release of new frequencies for mobile phones in the 1800MHz band, two new operators launched their networks, Mercury One2One and Orange. A move to digital technology also introduced new services such as SMS text messaging and the ability to access the Internet. Consequently, the mobile phone started to move away from being a device that could only make telephone calls and began to take on more and more computer style functions quickly leading to the emergence of the smart phone. New charging models based on pay as you go opened up mobile phone ownership to a greater cross-section of the population and manufacturers soon released that the mobile had enormous potential as a fashion item. You could now personalize your phone by changing the covers and choosing different ring tones. For the UK, a tipping point was reach in 1999 when mobile phone ownership doubled to 46% of the population and reached 76% the year after. The mobile phone had very much established itself in society!

3G mobiles

3G mobile is 3rd generation phone. It's used face to face video call. 

Sample of 3G mobile:

4G mobiles

4G mobile is 21st century of 4th generation phone. It's very most impotant in modern life.

 Sample of 4G mobile: 

Top ten most iconic mobile phone designs?

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the mobile phone in the UK we carried out an online survey in January 2010 to compile a top ten list of the most iconic mobile phone designs. A total of 560 people cast 2,000 votes from which we were able to determine the most iconic design from the first 25 years of the mobile phone's history.