The history and evolution of mobile phones & applications....!!!

Mobile communication is so integrated into our lives that most of us feel lifeless without a cell phone. well, if we take a quick look at the olden days, the only function of the mobile were calling and text messaging.

The evolution of technology in mobile applications now made it possible to experience more features on the smartphones that we all are now addicted to.

Manufacturers now compete to integrate more features with the updated technology keeping in mind their customer's demands and choices.

The trend now talks about our innovative mobile app developers who look for the freedom to develop powerful mobile applications the users demand without any restrictions. While on the other hand, the handset manufacturers look for a stable, secure, and affordable platform to power their devices.

Let's talk about the first and most powerful cellphone that hit the market.

Yes.Its about...Motorola DynaTAC 8000X

This was the first commercially available cell phone. This device was first marketed in 1983, which was 13 x 1.75 x 3.5 inches in dimension, weighed about 2.5 pounds, that was used to talk for more than half an hour.

This device was only used to make calls, and there was a simple contacts application included in the operating system.

It was during this period where initially mobile games begin to appear.

Nokia was famous for putting the 1970s video game Snake on the earliest phones. Other brands followed, adding games like Pong, Tetris, and Tic-Tac-Toe.

These early phones changed the way people thought about communication. As mobile phone prices dropped, batteries improved, and more and more people began getting used to these handsets.

Customers started looking for more features and more games while the handset manufacturers didn’t have the motivation or the resources to build every application users wanted. They looked for a possible solution to provide a portal for entertainment without allowing direct access to the handset.

The handset manufacturers started brainstorming on a better way to provide these services than the Internet…It was in the late 90s, the professional Web sites looked colorful, loaded with text, images, and various types of media.

They relied on JavaScript and Flash to enhance the user experience.

EEarly phones had limited storage and processing power. They couldn’t handle the data-intensive operations required by traditional Web browsers. After long sessions of brainstorming, they have concluded WAP is the solution. A Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) was developed to address most of the concerns.

The WAP solution was great for handset manufacturers. They could write one WAP browser to ship with the handset and rely on developers to come up with the content users wanted.

The brainstorm session has restarted as the Developers and content providers didn’t deliver, as excepted in a limited way. Most of the WAP sites were known to be the extensions of popular branded Web sites, such as CNN.com and ESPN.com.

Users accessed the news, stock market quotes, and sports scores on their phones. Some of the most popular commercial WAP applications that emerged during this time were simple wallpaper and ring tone catalogs, allowing users to personalize their phones for the first time.

This resulted in understanding the pain areas that WAP browsers were slow and frustrating for all as they need to type in long URLs with the numeric keypad which was tremendous pain.

The handset manufacturers realized — if they have to sell their products, they need to change their policies regarding handset designs and move along with the implementation of updated technology.

Each platform has benefits and drawbacks at the same time Some platforms are best fit for commercializing games.

Well, then choosing just one platform, manufacturers and operators have decided to sell phones for all the different platforms to compete. Mobile software developers started to work with different programming environments, tools, and programming languages to fulfill customer needs.

Finally, keeping a track of handset configurations and testing requirements, signing for certification programs, maintaining carrier relationships by meeting their expectations, and application marketplaces have resulted in a complex spin-off business of their own.

-Sushma C.