A mobile or cellular telephone is a long-range, portable electronic device for personal telecommunications over long distances. In addition to the standard voice function of a telephone, current mobile phones can support many additional services such as SMS for text messaging, email, packet switching for access to the Internet, and MMS for sending and receiving photos and video. Most current mobile phones connect to a cellular network of base stations (cell sites), which is in turn interconnected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) (the exception are satellite phones).


The Mobile phone is one of the most used pieces of equipment today. The concept of using hexagonal cells for mobile phone base stations was invented in 1947 by Bell Labs engineers at AT&T (see History of mobile phones) and was further developed by Bell Labs during the 1960s. Radiophones have a long and varied history that stretches back to the 1950s, with hand-held cellular radio devices being available since 1983. Due to their low establishment costs and rapid deployment, mobile phone networks have since spread rapidly throughout the world, outstripping the growth of fixed telephony

In 1946, the 0G generation of mobile telephones were introduced. 0G mobile telephones, such as Mobile Telephone Service, were not officially categorized as mobile phones, since they did not support the automatic change of channel frequency in the middle of a call, when the user moved from one cell (base station coverage area) to another cell, a feature called "handover."


Mock-up of the "portable phone of the future," from a mid-1960s Bell System advertisement, shows a device not too different from today's mobile telephones.In 1970 Amos Joel of Bell Labs invented the "call handoff" feature, which allowed a mobile-phone user to travel through several cells during the same conversation. Martin Cooper of Motorola is widely considered to be the inventor of the first practical mobile phone for handheld use in a non-vehicle setting. Using a modern, if somewhat heavy portable handset, Cooper made the first call on a handheld mobile phone on April 3, 1973. At the time he made his call, Cooper was working as Motorola's General Manager of its Communications Division.

Fully automatic cellular networks were first introduced in the early to mid-1980s (the 1G generation). The first fully automatic mobile phone system was the 1981 Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system. Until the late 1980s, most mobile phones were too large to be carried in a jacket pocket, so they were usually permanently installed in vehicles as car phones. With the advance of miniaturization and smaller digital components, mobile phones got smaller and lighter.

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