In a few more days we will be in the year 2010.
I thought this would be a good time to review and reflect how the last 10 years have changed for mobile phones.
Now more than 4o million of people have a mobile phone. According to the guardian 99% of teenagers own a mobile phone and these are normally pay as you go as they cannot afford the contract phones.
I remember when I got my first mobile phone, around this time 10 years ago. It was with BT cellnet and a bit of brick even by those standards then. Texting was very popular among me and my friends as calling was way too expensive. It is interesting to see this trend has continued where young people are texting more than calling. Of course now, they are also acessing the internet on their mobile devices, something 10 years ago was unheard of.
1999 –
saw the release of the Nokia 3210 which was very popular.
3 Games came preinstalled, the most famous was Snake. It was also the first mobile phones to feature an internal antenna. A big improvement from the other mobile phones which had a large and unsightly antenna. Picture messages was also on the handset. One of the most recognised was the Happy Birthday message. I remember sending many of them.
Most of my friends (under 25 years old) had the Nokia 3210, it was a good price across the major mobile phone operators.
2000
The Nokia 3310 was the successor of the 3210 and was even more popular. More than 126 million handsets were sold. This mobile phone also had interchangeable casings, allowing people to personalise their own handsets.
2002
The smartphone BlackBerry was released. It supported push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, Internet faxing, Web browsing and other wireless information services.
2004
Motorola RAZR V3
One of the most famous phones of 2004, partly due to the advertisements featuring David Beckham and also because it was the thinnest phone available, 13.9 mm thick.
The keyboard had revolutionary precision-cut design, with the numerals chemically-etched to keep the pad flat. In the dark, the whole keypad lite up with a blue glow.
http://r.phonedog.com/shared/images/items/3035-main-medium-motorola-razr-v3-black.jpg
2007
Nokia N95
This handset was revolutionary for its time. It was truly a mulit media device, had all the latest gadgets on it, including a top camear and music player. There was a waiting list to get the N95 and was available first on T Mobile.
2007
The iPhone
Revolutionised mobile phones as we know today. The iPhone launched June 27th, 2007 was the ultimate phone to have, great internet access, touch screen phone, music player, you just had to have an O2 contract. The iPhone started the mobile internet era as mobile search for Google took off (which was the default search engine on the device) and mobile apps became popular.
2008
Android G1
The first Android phone launched in October in the US and UK. In the UK it was available on just the T mobile network on contracts from 40 pounds a month.
