Half a century ago, on April 3, 1973, the first call was made from a mobile. Martin Cooper, then Motorola’s vice president and chief innovation officer, called Joel Engel, then a Bell Labs researcher, from a DynaTAC 8000x, the first truly mobile phone in history. Until then, mobile phones were more like portable phones that came with their briefcase, were only used by executives and politicians and were only good for calling. The DynaTAC, developed by Motorola, weighing almost one kilo, could be held with one hand and, although it took 10 hours to fully charge its battery, it only had a talk time of one hour. Fifty years later, the bulky devices of telephone prehistory have been replaced by flat, shiny, sophisticated instruments that fit in your pocket and are rarely used for calling. Now the mobile is a computer, a music player, a GPS, a notebook and a camera. It is the first thing you look at when you wake up (because you probably use it as an alarm) and the last thing you look at when you fall asleep doing scroll infinity on instagram. And he even has a phobia of his own: nomophobia or the irrational fear of being left without a mobile. “As it is something so everyday, we have barely realized how much it has evolved,” says Curro Quevedo Bueno, a collector and expert in mobile telephony. Of course, we fondly remember the brand of our first mobile. Or when they started having a color screen. Or when we go from ringtones to polytones. The evolutionary scale of the mobile is already part of the history of technology, but also a sentimental account of our past.
Nokia Mobira Cityman (1987). The brick
In Finland, the headquarters of the Nokia house, it was known as Gorba because Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, used it to call Moscow from Helsinki in 1989. It was the first Nokia mobile that came without a briefcase. It weighed about 800 grams and had technical innovations such as an illuminated screen and the ability to regulate the volume of the ringer. At the time it was really expensive (according to the current exchange rate, it cost 4,500 euros). It was a mobile for executives that came to appear in movies like Wall Street.
![Nokia 310 (2000).](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/srPgA6p3C0VBS4KgDbm5JOJ4vRk=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/FAGCKNVZTBCXBGQW7W2MNGDFMM.jpg)
Nokia 3310 (2000). The indestructible
Also called “the groundbreaker”, at the beginning of the century there was an urban myth that this phone was completely unbreakable. You could drop it, get wet, hit it and it would still work. It was one of the first Nokia to become a mobile available to the masses. The year it went on sale, the market was disputed by only two brands: Motorola and Nokia. Ericsson, Sony and LG tried to bite the market, but they only put small pieces in their mouths. The 3310 was so popular that it sold 126 million units worldwide. His legacy ended when the Nokia 1100 went on sale, the best-selling mobile in history, with 250 million devices shipped (it has not yet been surpassed by any other phone). The 3310 began to be used for more than just calling: it had a calculator, stopwatch, and four games, including the popular Snake II. It marked a generation and in 2017 a renewed version of the model for nostalgic people came out.
![Motorola V3 (2004).](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/kMy79AHoydNS_OUpuFtXSP70Fo8=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/SI2WP33LBZFOZJP7NSQ6P4J6XQ.jpg)
Motorola v3 (2004). razr the blade
Although it was popularly known as “shell phone” or “clam”, the name under which it was sold was Razr, which means blade in English. Because? In 2004, this Motorola became the thinnest mobile on the market, which was added to the fact that it was made of aluminum with a nickel keyboard. It was so popular that it came to appear in video clips of Beyoncé, the series how I Met Your Mother and The Devil wears Prada (Miranda had one). The pink Barbie was Paris Hilton’s favorite terminal.
![BlackBerry Curve 8520 (2009).](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/eVezhxUR1s0yZyFfWL2TuUM2UwU=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/YACIMK4YVFG3ZHDQAOEPSG2SUM.jpg)
BlackBerry Curve 8520 (2009). made to write
Originally created as a high-end phone available to executives and businessmen and women, the BlackBerry went on to achieve a global market share of 3% in 2011. What made the terminal most attractive was the 35-key QWERTY keyboard. Anyone who tried it knows: no more comfortable mobile phone has been made to write than this. The massive use and veneration that users felt towards their BlackBerry made the term popular in the US crackberry to talk about the addiction that aroused. What started as an idea to carry a phone in your pocket ended up being a pocket computer. Among its most devoted users were Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian and Angela Merkel. Despite its popularity, the brand did not know how to adapt to the new times: it closed permanently on January 4, 2022.
![iPhone 4 (2010).](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/TXfw4urQCu0LfYXaXev3i7JKpow=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/6DAGMCSXOBF2NBT423IKWQOQKM.jpg)
iPhone 4 (2010). The one that changed everything
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs was a complete game changer. The first iPhone came on the market, a phone that was all touch screen and that ended up revolutionizing the industry. However, that first model did not arrive in Spain and we had to wait for the iPhone 3G. The one that sold the most was the one in this photo, the iPhone 4 (1.7 million devices sold in the first three days of launch). The mobile became a GPS, a camera, an mp3 player and man’s best friend.
![Samsung Galaxy III (2012).](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/gEvMRF9UFGhJFa2jh9BGpkxks-8=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/FAXW2WB6CNGCRN7AMYST3Y2VAU.jpg)
Samsung Galaxy SIII (2012). Start the new competition
If in the nineties the market was disputed by Nokia and Motorola, in 2012, with Chinese mobile phones just emerging, the fight was between Apple and Samsung. Either you were Android or you were iOS. A bit like now. The answer to the iPhone came from South Korea. The Galaxy SIII was not the first Galaxy, but it was the only one baptized with the name of “iPhone Killer” (killer of iPhone). It was crowned at the time as the most successful and successful Android, and in nine months it sold 50 million units worldwide. The touch screen was no longer just from the apple.
![Samsung Z Flip3 (2021).](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/8T2iUnXvmy3J39YAqEhVLoPl52E=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/XYB34U5CMFBB7E6IH4UBQIWXSA.jpg)
Samsung Z Flip3 (2021). The mobile that folds
According to Curro Quevedo Bueno, an expert in mobile telephony, since the launch of the iPhone and the rest of the smartphones, the technological revolution that we experienced in the eighties and nineties has come to a standstill. “The folding ones are different from the rest because they have flexible screens, something that we had not seen,” he points out. Cameras and batteries are getting better, but when it comes to innovation we are stuck.
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