Mobile phone

For the modern mobile phone, see Smartphone.
"Cell Phone" and "Handphone" redirect here. For the films, see Cell Phone (film) and Handphone (film).

Two decades of evolution of mobile phones, from a 1992 Motorola DynaTAC 8000X to the 2014 iPhone 6 Plus

A mobile phone or cell phone[a] is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area, as opposed to a fixed-location phone (landline phone). The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture, and therefore mobile telephones are called cellphones (or "cell phones") in North America. In addition to telephony, digital mobile phones support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messaging, email, Internet access (via LTE, 5G NR or Wi-Fi), short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), satellite access (navigation, messaging connectivity), business applications, payments (via NFC), multimedia playback and streaming (radio, television), digital photography, and video games. Mobile phones offering only basic capabilities are known as feature phones (slang: "dumbphones"); mobile phones that offer greatly advanced computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.[1]

The first handheld mobile phone was demonstrated by Martin Cooper of Motorola in New York City on 3 April 1973, using a handset weighing c. 2 kilograms (4.4 lbs).[2] In 1979, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) launched the world's first cellular network in Japan.[3] In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first commercially available handheld mobile phone. From 1983 to 2014, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew to over seven billion; enough to provide one for every person on Earth.[4] In the first quarter of 2016, the top smartphone developers worldwide were Samsung, Apple and Huawei; smartphone sales represented 78 percent of total mobile phone sales.[5] For feature phones as of 2016, the top-selling brands were Samsung, Nokia and Alcatel.[6]

Mobile phones are considered an important human invention as they have been one of the most widely used and sold pieces of consumer technology.[7] The growth in popularity has been rapid in some places, for example, in the UK, the total number of mobile phones overtook the number of houses in 1999.[8] Today, mobile phones are globally ubiquitous,[9] and in almost half the world's countries, over 90% of the population owns at least one.[10]


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  1. ^ Srivastava, Viranjay M.; Singh, Ghanshyam (2013). MOSFET Technologies for Double-Pole Four-Throw Radio-Frequency Switch. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 1. ISBN 978-3319011653.
  2. ^ Teixeira, Tania (23 April 2010). "Meet the man who invented the mobile phone". BBC News. Retrieved 2 July 2021.
  3. ^ "Timeline from 1G to 5G: A Brief History on Cell Phones". CENGN. 21 September 2020. Retrieved 18 February 2022.
  4. ^ "Mobile penetration". 9 July 2010. Almost 40 percent of the world's population, 2.7 billion people, are online. The developing world is home to about 826 million female internet users and 980 million male internet users. The developed world is home to about 475 million female Internet users and 483 million male Internet users.
  5. ^ "Gartner Says Worldwide Smartphone Sales Grew 3.9 Percent in First Quarter of 2016". Gartner. Archived from the original on 22 May 2016. Retrieved 21 May 2016.
  6. ^ "Nokia Captured 9% Feature Phone Marketshare Worldwide in 2016". Strategyanalytics.com. 24 February 2017. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
  7. ^ Harris, Arlene; Cooper, Martin (2019). "Mobile phones: Impacts, challenges, and predictions". Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies. 1: 15–17. doi:10.1002/hbe2.112. ISSN 2578-1863. S2CID 187189041.
  8. ^ "BBC News | Business | Mobile phone sales surge".
  9. ^ Gupta, Gireesh K. (2011). "Ubiquitous mobile phones are becoming indispensable". ACM Inroads. 2 (2): 32–33. doi:10.1145/1963533.1963545. S2CID 2942617.
  10. ^ "Mobile phones are becoming ubiquitous". International Telecommunication Union (ITU). 17 February 2022. Archived from the original on 4 September 2022. Retrieved 17 June 2022.