Mobile Design and Development

Chapter 1. A Brief History of Mobile

I like to compare the history of the mobile industry to the work of Umberto Eco: you get what is going on, but it makes your head hurt in the process. The evolution of mobile networks, the devices that run on them, and the services we use every day have evolved at an amazing rate, from the early phones that looked more like World War II field radios to the ultra-sleek fashion statements of today.

If there is one basic principle about mobile, it is that everything is the way it is for a reason. It might not be a good reason, but a reason exists nonetheless. It is the history, or the context, of the medium that gives mobile designers and developers the patience and passion needed to deal with the frequent issues they face in the mobile ecosystem. The mobile industry is a difficult one to jump into without patience and passion.

This chapter briefly discusses the evolution of the mobile medium from the perspective of the device, the most universally identifiable facet of the mobile ecosystem.

In the Beginning

For those of us who are older—that is, over the age of 30—when we think of what a telephone is and try to picture it, we might think of the phone illustrated in Figure 1-1.

The telephone is undoubtedly one of the greatest inventions of mankind. It revolutionized communications, enabling us to reach across great distances and share thoughts, ideas, and dreams with our fellow man, making the world a much smaller place in the process. In fact, the telephone ...