Early Cellular Phones

The early mobiles were normally huge, heavy and useless. The most popular mobile was the can phone made by Motorola, as seen in the picture. There was also a type of mobile, called the portable phone, which was cheaper and had a separate battery pack, aerial and handset/receiver. It was made to look like a bag.

I remember having an x-ray once and a Yuppie decided to get off the x-ray table (shared room) to answer his oh so important call.

I remember the Dr's shouting at him "It looks as though your mobile is more precious to you than your life"!!!!

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Author of this article:

Michael Johnson

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Do You Remember Early Cellular Phones?

Roxxy on 2013-02-21 08:36:02

They were only useless because digital 'phone network coverage wasn't very extensive- had it been so, they'dve been fine, don't blame the 'phones themselves. I'd love to have a really early one, just so that people could gork at me using it! Earliest one we've got though is an Ericcson from around '96. It's amazing to see how quickly society has changed to become dependent on the mobile, in so short a space of time- they didn't exist at all when I left school, and even carphones only appeared the following year.

Yellow Watson on 2008-02-18 03:53:46

I remember my dad wanting one of these but we couldn't afford one obviously so I bought dad a fake plastic toy version. He still has it too. It's HUGE!

Chunko on 2007-08-01 15:28:47

In those days, for 'mobile phone', read 'field radio'.