Cellular reaches half a century with astronomical growth

Half a century after the American engineer Martin Cooper invented the mobile phone, this device became one of the greatest revolutions of mankindeven above the fixed telephone, and is used by more than 68% of the population.

On average, it is used for five hours a day, and assuming that a person sleeps an average of between 7 and 8 hours a day, the figures show that users spend 30% of their waking life using their cell phoneaccording to the 2023 Digital Global Summary Report, produced by Datareportal in collaboration with Meltwater and We Are Social.

This Monday, April 3, marks the 50th anniversary of that Cooper call to competition investigator Joel Engel. Cooper picked up the Motorola DynaTac 8000X to say, “Joel, I’m calling from my cell phone. From the real one”. Silence was the answer he got.

It was a device weighing almost a kilogram, which It took 10 hours to charge and only 30 minutes of autonomy.

That invention led to smartphones or “smartphones” that are used today and that already work with 5G technology, a generation that is already on its way to 6G.

Nothing indicated that that mobile call could produce all the functions that a mobile phone will have today.

Its inventor, Cooper (Chicago, 1928), recently recalled in an interview with EFE that when he made this call to Engel, a Bell Laboratories researcher, he did not imagine that in the future these devices would include digital cameras or the Internet.

However, Cooper does predicted that everyone will have a mobile phone.

Half a century later, that cell phone grew into sophisticated smartphones, devices that have the necessary power to be used as computers. Foldable, non-folding, stretchable, light or heavy, the range of devices is rich. 92.3% of mobile phones have Internet access.

This invention became one of the “the great revolutions of humanity because of the changes it has brought to our lives, even beyond landline telephony”explains to EFE the president of the College of Computer Engineers, Fernando Suárez.

If the conventional telephone took almost 65 years to reach 100 million users, it didn’t take 50 years for the mobile phone to exceed 6000 millionrecalls Suarez.

Its usage is increasing year by year and according to the digital global summary report 2023, in total It is used by 5.440 million people.

Unique mobile users grew just over 3% over the past year, with 168 million new users in the last 12 months.