The history of mobile telephony has been rooted in the desire of human beings to freely communicate over long distances without being tethered to wires and cables. From Alexander Graham Bell’s attempts in 1880 at communicating wirelessly using his Photophone device to the 4G cellular networks of today, it has been one phenomenal advance after another in the field of wireless communications.

 

During this fantastic evolution, mobile telephony has cross-pollinated with three other seemingly unrelated areas.

 

 

The marriage of voice and data

 

It was realized that voice was not the only thing that could or should be transferred wirelessly. It is of tremendous value to be able to transfer data also wirelessly. From this realization were born several wireless data transmission systems such as CSD, HSCSD, GPRS, EDGE, HSPA, HSPA+, WiMAX and LTE, each one at least an order of magnitude faster than the one before it. The mobile data revolution was underway.

 

 

The marriage of phone and PDA

 

Secondly, there was the realization that there was great value in combining all the useful features that PDA devices came with, into a cellular phone. This insight lead to the birth of the ‘feature phone’ and sowed the seeds of the smart phone.

 

 

Third party apps

 

Finally, companies such as Google and Apple realized early on the benefit of throwing open a software development kit so that millions of developers could develop custom applications (mobile apps) for the smart phone in pretty much the same way that developers can create any sort of application for a PC or a Mac. This shrewd move lead to the harnessing of the creative energies of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and software developers, and lead to an exponential increase in the usefulness of the smart phone.

 

 

So are we ‘there’ yet?

 

Over the course of several decades, wireless communication systems have become more and more efficient at transmitting data and voice. The IP based 4G wireless standards resemble internet communication more than they do a telephone system in both their architecture and the phenomenal data transfer speeds that they make possible. In that sense 4G has effectively smudged the line separating the wired and the wireless internet.

 

Smart phones have also become increasingly powerful in terms of raw processing power and memory. It’s not unusual today for the 150 gram cellular phone in your pocket to have more computational power than your laptop.

 

Cellular networks have become blazing fast, making it possible to effortlessly stream High Definition video to your mobile phone. Mobile processors have become fast enough and RAM capacities large enough to run just about any app. Mobile phone screen resolution and display sharpness has reached as high as is practically possible. At 5.5 inches, mobile phone screen sizes have reached the limit of what is realistically possible to hold in one’s hand. In fact the 5+ inch screen ‘Phablet’ phones are already impossible to operate with one hand!

 

In a way it’s amusing to see how things have come full circle after more than four decades of innovation and miniaturization in the phone industry.

 

The first truly handheld cellular phone was the Motorola DynaTAC released in 1973. It weighed more than a kilogram and you needed both hands to operate it – one hand to hold the phone and the other hand to punch in the number. Today’s 5+ inch ‘phablet’ phones are a 10th of the weight of the DynaTAC. However unless you have exceptionally long fingers, you still need two hands to operate them – one hand to hold the phone and the other one to tap in the number on the giant 5+ inch screen!

 

Considering where we are today in our wireless communications capabilities, one may be excused into assuming that the only advances possible henceforth in mobile technology would be ones that are deliberate and incremental.

 

One might think that no giant leaps in capability would be foreseen on the horizon.

 

Indeed one might think that mobile technology has finally hit the glass ceiling in terms of capability.

 

One would be wrong.