It’s been two decades since Vodacom launched the first GSM (global system for mobile communications) network in South Africa. Since 1994, cellphones have evolved from simply being able to make and receive voice calls, into the smartphones of today, designed for a market in which data is king.
Here’s a retrospective of some of the most popular handsets over the years.
1994: Motorola 7200. The Motorola 7200 had a classic extendable aerial and flip-out talkpiece. Its main rival during these early days was the Ericsson 198.
1995: Nokia 2110. The 2110, with its typical ’90s-style aerial, was the first model that could send and receive SMS messages, which were a huge novelty. It was also the first to come with the iconic Nokia ringtone.
1997: Nokia 5110. Many people remember the 5110 as their first phone. It came pre-loaded with the popular game, Snake.
1998: Siemens S10. The first cellphone with a colour screen had just four colours: red, blue, green and white, and the screen had a resolution of 97×54 pixels.
1999: Nokia 8110. Everyone wanted a slider 8110 ‘banana phone’ after Keanu Reeves used one in blockbuster The Matrix. Its only real competitor at the time was the Philips Savvy.
2000s: Ericsson R310s. The ‘sharkfin’ phone with its unusually shaped antenna was built with rubberised and silicone casing, making it one of the first waterproof cellphones. A popular party trick was to drop it in your drink and ask someone to call you.
2002: Ericsson T65. The original pocket-sized lightweight was only 94g. This was before Sony and Ericsson partnered, and it was recognisable by a ‘joystick’ navigation button in the middle of the handset.
2005: Motorola Razr V3. This ultra-thin beauty pioneered the concept of a mobile phone as a fashion accessory. Anyone who was hip had one. It was one of the last flip-open clamshell phones, revealing the keypad underneath. Even today, the V3 model still holds the distinction of being the world’s best-selling clamshell phone, sellling 130 million units.
2007: Apple iPhone 1. Following the stellar success of the iPod, when the first iPhone launched in July 2007, consumers went wild. As with everything Apple, the beauty was in the simplicity of the design and the iOS mobile operating system. The iPhone’s look and feel had a huge impact on the market, with competitors such as Samsung taking notes, as evident with the Galaxy range.
2008: HTC Dream. The Dream, with its slide-out keyboard, is notable as the first ever phone to be shipped with the Android operating system.
2009: BlackBerry Bold 9700. It was testimony to the popularity of BlackBerry as a business device during the mid-2000s that the word ‘CrackBerry’ was added to the Webster dictionary in 2006. For many local fans, the Bold 9700 was their first serious BlackBerry – it was popular because of its keyboard and, of course, the BBM messaging service.
2011: Samsung Galaxy Note. The Galaxy Note with its S Pen stylus launched in 2011 as the first commercially successful ‘phablet’ – a phone with a screen so large (around six inches and up) that it can be classed as a tablet.
Mid-2013: Nokia Lumia 1020. The amazing 41MP Lumia 1020 will always be remembered for two things: it sent a message to the market that the ultimate camera phone was the new benchmark, and to consumers that after a few quiet years in the smartphone stakes, Nokia was back in the big leagues, with the Windows Phone operating system riding its coat-tails.
Late 2013: Apple iPhone 5s. While the top-of-the-line iPhone 5s looks like its predecessors, what’s inside is a game-changer: the world’s first 64-bit chip in a smartphone. This puts the processing power of an average PC in the palm of your hand, and will likely become the global standard.
2014: Samsung Galaxy S5. Launching this month in South Africa, Samsung’s latest device is fast, powerful and is packed full of great features including a heart rate sensor, fingerprint scanner, 16MP camera and 4K video recording.
