Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, allowing people to speak to each other over long distances. Over time, telephones became more portable, moving from landlines to mobile phones carried in cars and eventually handheld mobile phones. Modern smartphones combine telephone calling with other technologies like cameras, internet access, GPS, and powerful processors, running operating systems like Android and iOS and thousands of third-party applications.

1. A Brief History of the Telephone
Mr Watson, come here – I want to see you!
On March 10th
1876, Edinburgh-born inventor Alexander Graham
Bell spoke into the first telephone: “Mr Watson, come here – I
want to see you!”
His assistant, listening at the other end of the line in another
room could hear Bell clearly. Bell had just invented the telephone
and started a revolution in communication that would change the
world.
The ability to speak directly to
someone over a long distance quickly caught on and the land
line phone quickly became the must-have accessory in more
and more homes.
It remained difficult to call someone on the move, however. As
early as 1930 it became possible to place a call to a passenger
cruise ship via a radio link and but it was not until the outbreak
of World War II that portable communications devices that we
might recognise became available: first the backpack-based
“Walkie-talkie” and then the hand-held “Handie-talkie”
(opposite), both developed by Motorola.
In the 1940s and 1950s, radio telephones in cars became available, but these were
expensive, bulky and plagued with poor reception.
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2. Going mobile
The first experimental hand-held mobile telephone was
demonstrated in 1973 by Motorola and weighed around 1kg,
but it was not until 1983 that the first devices went on sale.
These early devices were large and heavy, had a short battery
life and were capable only of making telephone calls.
It was not until 1993 that manufacturers began to add extra
features to mobile phones, such as a calendar, address book,
clock, e-mail and simple games. The first of these was IBM’s
Simon handset.
Around the same time, hand held computers (often called PDAs
– Personal Digital Assistants) began to appear that offered basic
computing tasks in the palm of your hand.
These were commonly used with a stylus (like a pen) to tap a
touch-sensitive screen. The most successful of these was the
Palm range of handhelds (left). These devices couldn’t make
phone calls or send text messages – they were simple hand-
held computers. They were, however, very popular and made
Palm one of the world most successful technology companies of
the late 1990s.
Q1. Investigate the products below. Complete the table by writing down what you
think are the two most important features of each device.
Year Product Important features
1993 IBM Simon
It could load faxes, emails and cellular pages.
Simon featured many applications including an
address book, calendar, appointment scheduler,
calculator, world time clock and an electronic note
pad
1996 Palm Pilot
It lets users print contact information, calendar data,
notes, and e-mails.
It has an ultraviolet beaming system that allows users
to direct their Palms at one another and exchange
contact or other information.
1998 Nokia Communicator
The keyboard which is easy to use.
Its large 8GB memory
2002 RIM Blackberry
It was small and easy to use.
It has a voice transmission application.
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3. 2007 Apple iPhone
The most popular smart phone because of its design
its large rang of apps and its uniqueness at the time
compared to other phones
2008 HTC Dream
It was the first phone with the android operating
system.
It had a few google applications like YouTube, google
search, google maps and google talk.
(12 marks)
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4. When mobile phones became smart phones
These early smartphones were…well, not that smart. They could send and receive emails
and perform a range of basic office functions for business users, but were not particularly
user-friendly.
In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, which was
aimed initially at consumers. The iPhone was a
genuine “game-changer” and was the first
mobile phone to feature a multi-touch interface.
Until then, touch screens had been available on
many devices, (such as the Palm Pilot) but could
sense only one point of touch at a time.
The ability to sense more than one point of touch on a screen may seem like only a small
improvement on single-point touch, but think of all the actions you can perform on a
modern multi-touch device. It brought about the possibility of gesture-based interfaces
where you can swipe, pinch and zoom with your fingers.
In just a few years, multi-touch interfaces have spread to many devices and have become
steadily cheaper. It is difficult to foresee us ever going back to devices with lots of physical
buttons to press.
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An iPhone 3GS showing its large
multi-touch screen.

5. Convergence: Bringing it all together
Modern smartphones bring together technologies such as GPS, Bluetooth and the
accelerometer – and, of course, wireless Internet access.
This is an example of convergence – that is, integrating technologies which were once
separate into a single device.
Q2. Investigate the following technologies. Beside each one, write down its function
(what it does) and an example of a portable device (other than a smartphone) which
uses it.
Microphone Function: A microphone is an example of a transducer, a device that
changes information from one form to another. Sound information exists as patterns of
air pressure; the microphone changes this information into patterns of electric current.
Example device: Game consoles where you can speak to others online
e.g. PlayStation, Xbox
Loudspeaker Function: plays sound louder then when they were transmitted or
changes sound from one form to another and plays the sound aloud
Example device: Television, where we can hear the sound related to
the picture on screen
Touch screen Function: You can hand operate a device by tapping on a certain part
of the screen with your fingers.
Example device: certain laptops where you can use the mouse, the key
board or the touch screen to operate it.
Accelerometer Function: Accelerometers measure proper acceleration or g-force not
the other kind which measures the change of velocity in a certain amount of time.
Example device: Mobile phones
GPS sensor Function: It manages to connect to GPS Satellites which can tell
where you are and give a device knowledge of things that it needs to know.
Example device: Sat Navs have GPS sensor so it can tell the driver of
the car it is in how to get from one place to another
Bluetooth Function: blue tooth is used to quickly share data over short distances
without the need of wifi.
Example device: wireless controllers for game consoles that can
connect without wires via Bluetooth.
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6. CCD Function: A charge-coupled device (CCD) is a device for the
movement of electrical charge
Example device Cameras uses CCD to take still pictures.
(14 marks)
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7. Q3. What do you think will be the next big advances in smartphone technology?
Using either a graphics package or pencil & paper, draw a labelled design for a
smartphone 10 years from now.
(10 marks)
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8. Telephone…or computer?
Whilst we use the term “smartphone” to describe a modern multi-function mobile
telephone, it is probably better to think of it as a pocket computer which also happens to
make phone calls.
A computer is a machine which can follow a program (a list of instructions) to perform a
task. As well as a processing device, it will usually have one or more input, storage and
output devices.
Q4. Write down what each of these could be within a smartphone.
Device Smartphone example(s)
Input
What is put in, taken in, or operated on by any process or
system.
Processing
Perform a series of mechanical or chemical operations on
(something) in order to change or preserve it.
Storage
The retention of retrievable data on a computer or other
electronic system.
"data storage"
Output
The amount of something produced by a person, machine,
or industry.
(4 marks)
Did you know…? For many users, phoning is one of the tasks they perform the least
on their smartphone.
To underline this, the 3 network claimed that by late 2011, 97% of all the traffic
on its network was smartphone data1
. Voice calls and text messaging put together appear
to have made up the remaining 3%.
Another report from network company Cisco stated that mobile data traffic in
2011 was eight times the traffic for the entire Internet in 2000. The same report predicted
that by the end of 2012, there would be more mobile devices on the planet than people2
.
1
Source: http://blog.three.co.uk/2011/10/31/were-built-for-data/
2
Source: www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-
520862.html
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9. Smartphone Software
All of these technologies would be useless without software to bring them together.
Software is the name for computer programs – list of instructions – which tell the
computer hardware how to perform a task. On mobile devices, there are two main
pieces of software:
• the operating system and
• apps
Operating system
An operating system (OS) is a set of programs that a computer runs all the time it is
switched on.
An OS performs many tasks, but we can think of it as the program
that gets the computer “up and running” and makes it work and look
the way it does.
The OS sits between apps and the computer’s hardware, letting apps
access the hardware. This is why it is possible to run software
written for an OS such as Microsoft Windows on a wide variety of
different computers.
Examples of operating systems on desktop computers include
Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOS and Linux. At the time of writing,
the most common operating system on mobile devices is Android from Google.
Q5. Write down the names of some mobile device operating systems. Beside each
one, give the name of an actual device that it runs on.
If you or someone you know has a smartphone, write down what it is and the name
of the operating system it runs.
Mobile OS Actual Device
Android Samsung Galaxy Ace mobile phone
IOS7 Apple iphone
IOS8 Apple iphone
Ubuntu
Mozilla Firefox
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OS
Hardware
Apps

10. (8 marks)
Apps
Once your computer or smartphone has started up, you will want to do some tasks with
it. Don’t worry – no matter what you want to do, there’s almost certainly an app for it!
The word “app” is short for application. An application is a computer program that
enables the computer to do a useful job.
Q6. Write down the name of three desktop applications.
Beside each one write down how much it costs.
Microsoft office £59.99
Norton 360 £69.99
paint £0.00
(6 marks)
Q7. Now investigate a mobile app store such as Apple’s App Store or Google Play.
Write down the names of three mobile apps and their cost.
Q8. Apple App Store
Mine craft £4.99
Angry Birds £0.69
Cut the Rope £1.99
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11. (6 marks)
In most cases, you will see that a mobile device app has fewer features than a desktop
application. This is usually reflected in the price, with many apps being free, or costing
less than a pound.
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12. The mobile app industry
Mobile app creation is still a very new industry, but is already worth billions of pounds
per year. In December 2011, the number of monthly mobile app downloads exceeded
1 billion (1,000 million) for the first time, with 81 million of those in the UK alone.
Whilst many mobile apps are created by professional software development
companies, there are also many “bedroom developers” – people who create mobile
apps in their spare time, either as a hobby or a sideline to their main job. It is also an
industry dominated by young developers.
In February 2012, it was reported that since the iPhone was introduced in 2007, the
“app economy” had created an estimated 466,000 jobs in the USA alone3
.
Maybe you will go on to make a career in this industry!
3
Source: Where The Jobs Are: The App Economy, Dr Michael Mandel, South Mountain Economics
http://www.technet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/TechNet-App-Economy-Jobs-Study.pdf
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