This was when owning a cellular phone really meant something! I remember seeing the Motorola Dynatac in the early 90s and thought it was an incredible device! they were making some mind blowing leaps in technology with this early generation of portable telephones! they are so common place now but its worth remembering what a pyridine shift in communication technology was going on there! none of the smart phones today can claim to have been as big a game changer as the Dynatac
'paradigm shift'... I remember when working on electronics, like tv's and stereo's and vcr's back in the 90's. I really missed the days of forwarded innovative technologies. Things were so different back then. VCR and Tv restorations, stereo refurbs, and such. I loved working with tube equipment as well. I could say that i had the best of all the worlds back then... Analog and digital, valve technology and solid state. What a time to be a tech/ hobby electronics tech. The good ole days.
you cannot hold these phones up to the technological standards of today! the alternative to these phones at the time were massive! it was like science fiction becoming reality! the very idea of reaching in your pocket and answering a phone call anywhere was a mind blowing concept! most of these people probably grew up watching captain kirk with his communicator thinking they'd never see that in their life time!
The old cell phones may have been simple but they were built to last! unlike the flimsy phones that come out these days and are broken after a slight knock!
In 2009 I bought a Droid 1. It cost me $2500 over two years, before I disconnected Verizon and use it on wifi. You can't buy a smartphone today and use it just for phone service. Even if you buy it outright, which is about 800 for Android phones and over $1000 for Iphones. If you activate it on any carrier, you have to get data plan with it. Which is at least 70+ a month. $3300 included the phone and the service back then.
$3300 in '86 is equal to $7,000 in 2013 dollars. I'll bet the access and service charges weren't cheap, either. I didn't have a cell until the middle '90s and even then the usage charges were nuts compared to today. Everything was per minute with no "free" or unlimited talk time, and you had a very small "home" service area. If in the middle of a convo you accidentally roamed out of your home area, it would go up to a dollar a minute or more without you knowing it until you got your bill.
Yes, lots of surprises on the bill in those days. If you were lucky you could keep a convo going for at least 4 or 5 minutes before the call would drop. Very unreliable service back then.
Most phones from a few years ago didn't have the Internet and the ones that did had that really rubbish limited version of the net called WAP! internet enabled phones have only been common for a few years! Internet is a very recent feature in the cell phone arsenal!
0:47 I still have the 2 pound brick sized cellphone and charger he is referring to. It doubled as a self defense tool to bludgeon attackers with. I wish I could get a provider for analog.
Its stupid that in Mexico nowadays companies can still sell phones at asking prices over $1100 dollars.... that's right, what corruption can do...and do not forget its country next to USA (comment posted in 2012 so you do not think 1912)
compared to modern digital handsets of today! maybe but that's like saying a modern car would easily beat a Model T in a speed test! if you compare them to their car phone/suitcase phone predecessors they were tiny!
