Almost 40 years ago, Motorola debuted the DynaTAC 8000X – the world’s first mobile phone. It was expensive and clunky, but it set the ball rolling on the road to portable digital technology.
The world’s first Android smartphone was released, the HTC Dream – also known as the T-Mobile G1. It ran on Google’s Android operating system and had a touchscreen display and QWERTY keyboard that slid out of sight. The HTC Dream was also the first smartphone to feature a downloadable app store, which was later named the Android Market.
3G becomes available, enabling mobile internet access on phones. It’s a big step forward from the 2G technology used by Motorola’s StarTAC, which sold more than 60 million units worldwide.
Emojis are invented by Shigetaka Kurita in Japan. They are graphical representations of emotions, symbols and objects, rather than the all-text emoticons that came before them.
In 1999, the BlackBerry phone was released. The device was popular among business people and helped them stay connected even while away from the office. Many users were caught reading and replying to emails on the toilet, earning them the nickname CrackBerry.
Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Honor Magic V5 foldable smartphones are both set to be launched in July, aiming to make a name for themselves as the slimmest smartphone ever made to fold. But there’s always the possibility that a US-based startup called Trump Mobile might steal that title from them, with its sleek gold model that’s engineered for performance and proudly designed and built in the United States.