Mobile phone

Mobile phone

Several examples of non-flip mobile phones, from the early

2000s.
Inventor Martin Cooper
Launch year 1973
Company Motorola
Available? Worldwide

A mobile phone (also called mobile, cellphone or handphone) is an electronic

device used for mobile telecommunications over a cellular network of base stations
known as cell sites. Mobile phones differ from cordless telephones, which only offer
telephone service within limited range through a single base station attached to a fixed
line, for example within a home or an office. Low-end mobile phones are often referred
to as feature phones, whereas high-end mobile phones that offer more advanced
computing ability are referred to as smartphones.

A mobile phone allows its user to make and receive telephone calls to and from
the public telephone network which includes other mobiles and fixed line phones across
the world. It does this by connecting to a cellular network owned by a mobile network
operator. A key feature of the cellular network is that it enables seamless telephone calls
even when the user is moving around wide areas via a process known as handoff or
handover.

In addition to being a telephone, modern mobile phones also support many

additional services, and accessories, such as SMS (or text) messages, email, Internet
access, gaming, Bluetooth, infrared, camera, MMS messaging, MP3 player, radio and
GPS.
 The first hand held phone was demonstrated by Martin Cooper of Motorola in
1973, using a handset weighing in at two kilos.[2] By the end of 2009, the number of
mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide reached approximately 4.6 billion, penetrating
the developing economies and reaching the bottom of the economic pyramid.

SIMPLE MOBILE PHONE

A Nokia phone with box.

A printed circuit board inside a mobile phone

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 last twenty years.
 The common components found on all phones are:

• a SIM card which allows the phone user access to the particular mobile phone
operator that they have a subscription with
• a rechargeable battery providing the power source for the phone functions
• an input mechanism and display to allow the user to interact with the phone. The
most common input mechanism is a keypad, but touch screens are also found in
some high end smart phones.
• basic mobile phone services to allow users to make calls and send text messages.

Low-end mobile phones are often referred to as feature phones, and offer basic
telephony, as well as functions such as playing music and taking photos, and sometimes
simple applications based on generic managed platforms such as Java ME or BREW.
Handsets with more advanced computing ability through the use of native software
applications became known as smart phones. The first smartphone was the Nokia 9000
Communicator in 1996 which added PDA functionality to the basic mobile phone at the
time. As miniaturisation and increased processing power of microchips has enabled ever
more features to be added to phones, the concept of the smartphone has evolved, and
what was a high-end smartphone five years ago, is a standard phone today.

Several phone series have been introduced to address a given market segment, such as
the RIM BlackBerry focusing on enterprise/corporate customer email needs; the
SonyEricsson Walkman series of musicphones and Cybershot series of cameraphones;
the Nokia Nseries of multimedia phones, the Palm Pre the HTC Dream and the Apple
iPhone.

Other features that may be found on mobile phones include GPS navigation, music
(MP3) and video (MP4) playback, RDS radio receiver, alarms, memo recording, personal
digital assistant functions, ability to watch streaming video, video download, video
calling, built-in cameras (1.0+ Mpx) and camcorders (video recording), with autofocus
and flash, ringtones, games, PTT, memory card reader (SD), USB (2.0), dual line
support, infrared, Bluetooth (2.0) and WiFi connectivity, instant messaging, Internet e-
mail and browsing and serving as a wireless modem. Nokia and the University of
Cambridge demonstrated a bendable cell phone called the Morph.

Software and applications

A phone with touchscreen feature.

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.

Other non-SMS data services used on mobile phones include mobile music,
downloadable logos and pictures, gaming, gambling, adult entertainment and advertising.
The first downloadable mobile content was sold to a mobile phone in Finland in 1998,
when Radiolinja (now Elisa) introduced the downloadable ring tone service. In 1999
Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo introduced its mobile internet service, i-Mode,
which today is the world's largest mobile internet service.

The first mobile news service, delivered via SMS, was launched in Finland in
2000. Mobile news services are expanding with many organisations providing "on-
demand" news services by SMS. Some also provide "instant" news pushed out by SMS.

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 first commercial mobile payments
systems, on the mobile operators Globe and Smart. Today mobile payments ranging from
mobile banking to mobile credit cards to mobile commerce are very widely used in Asia
and Africa, and in selected European markets.

Pager
A pager (sometimes called a page, beeper, bleep[who?] or bleeper[who?]) is a simple
personal telecommunications device for short messages. A one-way numeric pager can
only receive a message consisting of a few digits, typically a phone number that the user
is then expected to call. Alphanumeric pagers are available, as well as two-way pagers
that have the ability to send and receive email, numeric pages, and SMS messages.[1]

Until the popular adoption of mobile phones in the 1990s, pagers filled the role of
common personal and mobile communications. Today, pagers mainly support the
"critical messaging" markets. They are the ideal solution for very quick, very reliable
personal or group messaging. Unlike many other mobile communications networks, they
continue to work in times of emergency or disaster as they do not suffer from network
overload as has been proven many times (September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina). For
this reason, they are still very popular with emergency service personnel, medical
personnel, and information technology support staff.
 The current numeric pager

Paging is a subscription service offered in a variety of plans and options to meet the
needs of a subscriber and the type of device used. In general, all pagers are given unique
phone numbers while alphanumeric pagers are given an email address, usually
consisting of the phone number.

When calling a phone number assigned to a pager, the calling party reaches a
recorded greeting asking the caller to enter a numeric message, and sometimes giving the
caller an option to leave a voice mail message. Generally, the paged person will receive
an alert from the pager with the phone number the call and/or a pager code within a few
minutes. In the case of email paging, the text is displayed.

• Beepers were the first and are the simplest form of paging. They're called beepers
because originally they made a beeping noise, but current pagers in this category
use other forms of alert as well. Some use audio signals, others light up and some
 vibrate, often used in combination. The majority of restaurant pagers fall into this
category.
• Voice/Tone pagers provide the ability to listen to a recorded voice message when
you are alerted that you have a page.[2]
• Numeric pagers are the type of devices offering only a numeric display of the
phone number to be called and pager codes
• Alphanumeric pagers are essentially modified versions of numeric pagers with
sophisticated display to accommodate text. These devices are usually given an
email address to receive text messages.
• Two-way Alphanumeric pagers are alphanumeric pagers capable of both
sending and receiving text messages and email. To do this, the units either have a
small built in keypad that allows the user to input messages, or the message can
be typed from a wireless keyboard and is received by the pager.

Most modern paging systems use simulcast delivery by satellite controlled networks.
This type of distributed system makes them inherently more reliable than terrestrial based
cellular networks for message delivery. Many paging transmitters may overlap a
coverage area, while cellular systems are built to fill holes in existing networks. When
terrestrial networks go down in an emergency, satellite systems continue to perform.
Because of superior building penetration and availability of service in disaster situations,
pagers are often used by first responders in emergencies.
 SMARTPHONE
A smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced computing ability
and connectivity than a basic 'feature phone'.[2] While some feature phones are able to run
simple applications based on generic platforms such as Java ME or BREW,[3] a
smartphone allows the user to install and run much more advanced applications based on
a specific platform. Smartphones run complete operating system software providing a
platform for application developers.

Growth in demand for advanced mobile devices boasting powerful processors,

abundant memory, larger screens and open operating systems has outpaced the rest of the
mobile phone market for several years. According to a study by ComScore, in 2010, over
45.5 million people in the United States owned smartphones and it is the fastest growing
segment of the mobile phone market, which comprised of 234 million subscribers in the
United States.

History

The first smartphone was called Simon; it was designed by IBM in 1992 and
shown as a concept product that year at COMDEX, the computer industry trade show
held in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was released to the public in 1993 and sold by BellSouth.
Besides being a mobile phone, it also contained a calendar, address book, world clock,
calculator, note pad, e-mail, send and receive fax, and games. It had no physical buttons
to dial with. Instead customers used a touch-screen to select phone numbers with a finger
or create facsimiles and memos with an optional stylus. Text was entered with a unique
on-screen "predictive" keyboard. By today's standards, the Simon would be a fairly low-
end product; however, its feature set at the time was incredibly advanced.

The Nokia Communicator line was the first of Nokia's smartphones starting with
the Nokia 9000, released in 1996. This distinctive palmtop computer style smartphone
was the result of a collaborative effort of an early successful and expensive Personal
digital assistant (PDA) by Hewlett Packard combined with Nokia's bestselling phone
around that time and early prototype models had the two devices fixed via a hinge; the
Nokia 9210 as the first color screen Communicator model which was the first true
smartphone with an open operating system; the 9500 Communicator that was also
Nokia's first cameraphone Communicator and Nokia's first WiFi phone; the 9300
Communicator was the third dimensional shift into a smaller form factor; and the latest
E90 Communicator includes GPS. The Nokia Communicator model is remarkable also
having been the most expensive phone model sold by a major brand for almost the full
lifespan of the model series, easily 20% and sometimes 40% more expensive than the
next most expensive smartphone by any major manufacturer.

TELEPHONE
The telephone (from the Greek: τῆλε, tēle, "far" and φωνή, phōnē, "voice"),
commonly referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and
receives sound, most commonly the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point
communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by
large distances to talk to one another. It is one of the most common household appliances
in the developed world, and has long been considered indispensable to business, industry
and government. The word "telephone" has been adapted to many languages and is
widely recognized around the world.

The device uses a microphone in the handset to convert the sound waves to
electrical signals, which are sent through the telephone network to the other phone, where
they are converted back to sound waves by an earphone in the handset. The telephone
network, consisting of a worldwide net of telephone lines, fiberoptic cables, microwave
transmission, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables
connected by switching centers, allows any telephone in the world to communicate with
any other. Each telephone line has an identifying number called its telephone number. In
order to initiate a telephone call, a conversation with another telephone, the user enters
the other telephone's number into a numeric keypad on his phone. Graphic symbols used
to designate telephone service or phone-related information in print, signage, and other
media include ℡(U+2121), ☎(U+260E), ☏(U+260F), and ✆(U+2706).

HISTORY

Bell's Prototype Telephone

Centennial Issue of 1976

Credit for the invention of the electric telephone is frequently disputed, and new
controversies over the issue have arisen from time-to-time. As with other great inventions
such as radio, television, light bulb, and computer, there were several inventors who did
pioneering experimental work on voice transmission over a wire and improved on each
other's ideas. Innocenzo Manzetti, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Elisha Gray,
Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison, among others, have all been credited with
pioneering work on the telephone. An undisputed fact is that Alexander Graham Bell was
the first to be awarded a patent for the electric telephone by the United States Patent and
Trademark Office (USPTO) in March 1876.[1] That first patent by Bell was the master
patent of the telephone, from which all other patents for electric telephone devices and
features flowed.
 The early history of the telephone became and still remains a confusing morass of
claims and counterclaims, which were not clarified by the huge mass of lawsuits that
hoped to resolve the patent claims of many individuals and commercial competitors. The
Bell and Edison patents, however, were forensically victorious and commercially
decisive.

A Hungarian engineer, Tivadar Puskás quickly invented the telephone

switchboard in 1876, which allowed for the formation of telephone exchanges, and
eventually networks.

Basic principles

1896 Telephone from Sweden.

A traditional landline telephone system, also known as "plain old telephone

service" (POTS), commonly handles both signaling and audio information on the same
twisted pair of insulated wires: the telephone line. Although originally designed for voice
communication, the system has been adapted for data communication such as Telex, Fax
and dial-up Internet communication. The signaling equipment consists of a bell, beeper,
light or other device to alert the user to incoming calls, and number buttons or a rotary
dial to enter a telephone number for outgoing calls. A twisted pair line is preferred as it is
more effective at rejecting electromagnetic interference (EMI) and crosstalk than an
untwisted pair.
 The telephone consists of an alerting device, usually a ringer, that remains
connected to the phone line whenever the phone is "on hook", and other components
which are connected when the phone is "off hook". These include a transmitter
(microphone), a receiver (speaker) and other circuits for dialing, filtering, and
amplification. A calling party wishing to speak to another party will pick up the
telephone's handset, thus operating a button switch or "switchhook", which puts the
telephone into an active (off hook) state by connecting the transmitter (microphone),
receiver (speaker) and related audio components to the line. This circuitry has a low
resistance (less than 300 Ohms) which causes DC current (48 volts, nominal) from the
telephone exchange to flow through the line. The exchange detects this DC current,
attaches a digit receiver circuit to the line, and sends a dial tone to indicate readiness. On
a modern push-button telephone, the calling party then presses the number buttons in a
sequence corresponding to the telephone number of the called party. The buttons are
connected to a tone generator circuit that produces DTMF tones which end up at a circuit
at the exchange. A rotary dial telephone employs pulse dialing, sending electrical pulses
corresponding to the telephone number to the exchange. (Most exchanges are still
equipped to handle pulse dialing.) Provided the called party's line is not already active or
"busy", the exchange sends an intermittent ringing signal (about 90 volts AC in North
America and UK and 60 volts in Germany) to alert the called party to an incoming call. If
the called party's line is active, the exchange sends a busy signal to the calling party.
However, if the called party's line is active but has call waiting installed, the exchange
sends an intermittent audible tone to the called party to indicate an incoming call.

The phone's ringer is connected to the line through a capacitor, a device which
blocks the flow of DC current but permits AC current. This constitutes a mechanism
whereby the phone draws no current when it is on hook, but exchange circuitry can send
an AC voltage down the line to activate the ringer for an incoming call. When a landline
phone is inactive or "on hook", the circuitry at the telephone exchange detects the
absence of DC current flow and therefore "knows" that the phone is on hook with only
the alerting device electrically connected to the line. When a party initiates a call to this
line, and the ringing signal is transmitted. When the called party picks up the handset,
they actuate a double-circuit switchhook which simultaneously disconnects the alerting
device and connects the audio circuitry to the line. This, in turn, draws DC current
through the line, confirming that the called phone is now active. The exchange circuitry
turns off the ring signal, and both phones are now active and connected through the
exchange. The parties may now converse as long as both phones remain off hook. When
a party "hangs up", placing the handset back on the cradle or hook, DC current ceases to
flow in that line, signaling the exchange to disconnect the call.

Calls to parties beyond the local exchange are carried over "trunk" lines which
establish connections between exchanges. In modern telephone networks, fiber-optic
cable and digital technology are often employed in such connections. Satellite technology
may be used for communication over very long distances.

Further information: Telephone call

In most telephones, the transmitter and receiver (microphone and speaker) are
located in the handset, although in a speakerphone these components may be located in
the base or in a separate enclosure. Powered by the line, the transmitter produces an
electric current whose voltage varies in response to the sound waves arriving at its
diaphragm. The resulting current is transmitted along the telephone line to the local
exchange then on to the other phone (via the local exchange or a larger network), where it
passes through the coil of the receiver. The varying voltage in the coil produces a
corresponding movement of the receiver's diaphragm, reproducing the sound waves
present at the transmitter.

A Lineman's handset is a telephone designed for testing the telephone network,

and may be attached directly to aerial lines and other infrastructure components.