From a brick to a hand-held supercomputer

Long distance communication has come a long way since the very first man stood outside his cave and shouted as loudly as he could to the next cave. We cannot imagine our day with the device we use to talk, share and show-off our lives with. Some players capitalized on trends and became leaders only to be overtaken by others. Here's the most iconic mobile phone innovations and design trends that significantly changed how we communicated.

1973

First-ever mobile phone call made by Motorola's Martin Cooper

1983 - Motorola DynaTAC 8000X

A massive brick, you could use it to call people for a short duration and for the rest of the time you could throw it at people during wars. Featured an LED screen and 30 whole minutes of talk time with eight hours of standby. Priced at 80's $3,995

1992 - Nokia 101

First commercially available GSM phone. Set standard for the candy bar shape. Featured monochrome display, extendable antenna, and phonebook capable of storing 99 phone numbers.

1993 - Apple releases its first personal digital assistant device. Doesn't sell.

1994 - IBM Simon Personal Communicator

First phone with PDA features. Included calculator, pager, address book, and even a fax machine. Crazy times.

1996 - Motorola StarTAC i

Popularised the clamshell design selling more than 60 million.

1996 - The Nokia Communicator

Like a mini laptop: Smartphones that flip open to reveal qwerty keyboard and LCD screen nearly as big as device itself.

1997 - Palm Pilot

Virtual keyboard, handwriting recognition and Internet connectivity. Company becomes the PDA leader. Disappears later.

1997 - Siemens S10

First-ever commercially sold color-screen device displaying six lines of info in four colors (white, red, green, and blue).

1998 - Nokia 8110

Super slick slider action made even cooler by the hot Carrie Ann Moss in the mega hit 1999 movie Matrix.

1999 - Ericsson T28

A true thin design classic featuring an addictive flip action. Thinnest and lightest available then. Also first phone that used lithium polymer batteries.

2000 – First camera phones

Someone thought 'Let's attach a camera to a phone so we can take blurry pictures of our friends'. Samsung SCH-V200 was first commercial camera phone with a 1.5-inch TFT-LCD and 0.35MP camera that could take 20 pictures.

Sharp_J-SH04 in the same year offered a 0.11MP camera where you could send your photos electronically.

2000 - Nokia 3310 Series

The Thor's hammer of phones and the star of countless memes. Features removable casings, very long battery power and the time killing Snake II. Sold more than 126 million units.

2002 - Motorola v70

Unique swivel action that guaranteed women would look.

2005 - Casio Canu 502S / GZ'One w

First waterproof phone with 1.3MP camera and 256MB RAM.

2005 - Motorola ROKR

Motorola's non-iPhone. First phone to sync with iTunes and held 100 songs

2006 - BlackBerry Pearl

Choice of business hotshots for its slim design and iconic pearly trackball.

2006 - Motorola RAZR v3

The coolest phone on the planet. Probably. First laser cut keypad and ultra sharp metal construction made it a favorite. More than 130 million handsets sold. Killed by iPhone.

2007 - Apple iPhone

Forced every other phone to become…smarter. Minimalist design and a touchscreen only. Later Apple's iPhone 4s with Siri sold more than 60 million units.

2011 - Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Stock android stripped to bare minimum so you can build it up via Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS. Start of stunningly optimized performance and value for money via a beautiful 4.6-inch HD Super AMOLED display.

2011 - Samsung Galaxy Note

Introduced supersizing to phones. Before this the thought of a 5.5 inch display was a joke.

2013 - Xperia Z

First smartphone to be waterproof

2016 - Huawei P9

Partners with Leica to create a double lens camera. One lens captures colours images and the other captures only in black and white for increased dynamic range. Creates bokeh effect for the first time in a camera phone. Also contains real time depth of field adjustment as well as during post processing for beautifully shot portraits. Game changer in smartphone photography besting and at times beating the best from Apple and Samsung. 

You can find the full image at epaper, http://epaper.thedailystar.net/index.php?opt=view&page=20&date=2016-09-05