Evolution of Smartphone Technology
By: Bradley Rusli
Nowadays, smartphones have become a huge part of our lives by accessing features more easily such as communication, entertainment, education, etc. However, in the past, smartphones weren’t advanced and relevant enough unlike today. Back then, people were using telephones to communicate with others and the way to save people’s contacts had to be manually written.
The first smartphone came out back in 1992 by IBM. It was released for purchase in 1994 and it was named SPC (Simon Personal Communicator) and has the ability to send emails and faxes. The SPC contains touchscreen, address book, calendar, calculator, clock, and notepad. In 1997, there were more smartphones being developed and mobile gaming was made. Around that year, Nokia 6110 can play a mobile game called Snake that is made by a game developer named Taneli Armanto. Around that time, people were hooked and addicted to the game and it is now worth over $152 billion.
In the year 2000, the first camera phone was made. Sharp introduced the world to the first camera phone known as J-SH04. Although it was limited in Japan, it represents the interaction between phone users and photography. The quality of the photo was nowhere near to modern smartphones, it was only 110000 pixels. In 2001, cell phones started accessing the internet. For the first time, smartphones can access and connect wirelessly with 3G networks. This has become a big opportunity for smartphone users to send attachments and have video conferences with their mobile devices.
In 2007, it was the year that changed smartphones and it was all because of Steve Jobs from Apple. Steve Jobs announced the world about the first iPhone at January’s Macworld convention and the device itself includes a touchscreen, camera, wide LCD screen for a video, and full internet access. Not only that, it was sleek, lightweight, and the model was available for 4 GB and 8 GB at a reasonable price. After that, in 2008, the first Android smartphone was made. The name of the device was the HTC Dream known as the T-Mobile G1. The HTC Dream featured a 3.2 inch touchscreen, slide-out keyboard, and 3.2 megapixel camera. HTC Dream was also the first device featured in the Android Market which later became Google Play Store. Around that time, it was marked as the beginning of the Android era.
Fast forward to 2020, many smartphones have been developed and made from different brands mostly with Android software such as Samsung, Oppo, Google Pixel. And in addition to that, throughout the decade, companies have been upgrading their smartphone brands with new RAM, storage, power, and HD cameras. Besides that, the birth of social media since 2004 such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok, and Twitter have become the main source to watch news, interact with other users online, and watch entertainment.
After looking back to the evolution of smartphones until now, I have learnt and understand the advancement of smartphones throughout the years. And looking beyond the future of smartphones, there will be updated softwares from iOS and Android, better RAM, bigger storage, better battery life, better performance, and maybe introducing wireless connection and charging that is available for all smartphone platforms.There are some demonstrations about what comes next for the future but they aren’t available to the public yet knowing it is still work in progress.