Mobile archaeology: from brick to iPhone, the phones that marked our lives

Half a century ago, on April 3, 1973, the first call was made from a mobile phone. Martin Cooper, then Motorola's vice president and chief innovation officer, called Joel Engel, then a Bell Labs researcher, from a DynaTAC 8000x, the first truly mobile phone in history. Until then, mobile phones were more like portable phones that came with their briefcase, only used by executives and politicians and only served to call. The DynaTAC, developed by Motorola, weighing almost a kilo, could be held with one hand and, although it took 10 hours to fully charge its battery, it only had an autonomy of one hour of talk time. Fifty years later, the bulky devices of telephone prehistory have been replaced by flat, bright and sophisticated instruments that fit in your pocket and are barely used to call. Now the mobile is a computer, a music player, a GPS, a notebook and a camera. It's the first thing you look at when you wake up (because, probably, you use it as an alarm) and the last thing you look at when you fall asleep by scrolling infinitely on Instagram. And he even has a phobia of his own: nomophobia or the irrational fear of running out of mobile. "Because it's so everyday, we've barely realized how much it's evolved," says Curro Quevedo Bueno, a collector and mobile phone expert. Of course, we remember with affection the brand of our first mobile. Or when they started to have a color screen. Or when we move from ringtones to polytones. The evolutionary scale of the mobile is already part of the history of technology, but also a sentimental story of our past.

Nokia Mobira Cityman (1987)Mirta Red

Nokia mobira cityman (1987). The brick

In Finland, home to Nokia, it was known as Gorba because Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, used it to call Moscow from Helsinki in 1989. It was the first Nokia mobile that came without a briefcase. It weighed about 800 grams and had technical innovations such as an illuminated screen and the ability to regulate the volume of the doorbell. At the time it was really expensive (according to the current exchange rate, it cost 4,500 euros). It was a mobile for executives that came out in movies like Wall Street.

Nokia 310 (2000). Red Mirta

Nokia 3310 (2000). The Indestructible

Also called "the ground breaker", at the beginning of the century there was an urban myth that this phone was completely unbreakable. It could fall, get wet, hit and it still worked. It was one of the first Nokia to become a mobile available to the masses. The year it went on sale, the market was contested by only two brands: Motorola and Nokia. The Ericsson, Sony and LG tried to give bites to the market, but only took small pieces to the mouth. The 3310 was so popular that it sold 126 million units worldwide. Its legacy ended when the Nokia 1100 went on sale, the best-selling mobile in history with 250 million devices shipped (it has not yet been surpassed by any other phone). The 3310 began to serve for something more than calling: it had a calculator, stopwatch and four games, including the popular Snake II. It marked a generation and in 2017 a renewed version of the model came out for nostalgics.

Motorola V3 (2004). Red Mirta

Motorola v3 (2004). Razr, the blade

Although it was popularly known as "clam phone" or "clam", the name under which it was sold was Razr, which means blade in English. Why? In 2004 this Motorola became the thinnest mobile on the market, which added to the fact that it was made of aluminum with nickel keyboard. It was so popular that it came out in video clips of Beyoncé, the series How I met your mother and The Devil wears Prada (Miranda had one). The pink Barbie was Paris Hilton's favorite terminal.

Blackberry Curve 8520 (2009). Red Mirta

Blackberry curve 8520 (2009). Made for writing

Originally created as a high-end phone available to executives and businessmen and women, the BlackBerry reached a global market share of 3% in 2011. What made the terminal more attractive was the 35-key QWERTY keyboard. Whoever tried it knows: no more comfortable mobile has been manufactured to write than this. The massive use and veneration that users felt towards their BlackBerry made the term CrackBerry popular in the US to talk about the addiction it awakened. What started as an idea to carry a phone in your pocket ended up being a pocket computer. Among its most devoted users were Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian and Angela Merkel. Despite its popularity, the brand did not know how to adapt to the new times: it closed definitively on January 4, 2022.

iPhone 4 (2010). Red Mirta

iPhone 4 (2010). The one who changed everything

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs changed the rules of the game completely. The first iPhone came to market, a phone that was all touch screen and that ended up revolutionizing the industry. However, that first model did not arrive in Spain and we had to wait for the iPhone 3G. The one that sold the most was the one in this photo, the iPhone 4 (1.7 million devices sold in the first three days of launch). The mobile became GPS, camera, mp3 and man's best friend.

Samsung Galaxy III (2012). Red Mirta

Samsung Galaxy SIII (2012). The new competition begins

If in the nineties the market was disputed by Nokia and Motorola, in 2012, with Chinese mobiles barely emerging, the fight was between Apple and Samsung. Either you were Android era or iOS era. A bit like now. The answer to the iPhone came from South Korea. The Galaxy SIII was not the first Galaxy, but it was the only one baptized with the name of "iPhone Killer" (iPhone killer). It was crowned at the time as the most successful and successful Android, and in nine months sold 50 million units worldwide. The touch screen was no longer just from the apple.

Samsung Z Flip3 (2021). Red Mirta

Samsung Z Flip3 (2021). The mobile that bends

According to Curro Quevedo Bueno, an expert in mobile telephony, since the launch of the iPhone and the rest of the smartphones, the technological revolution that we lived in the eighties and nineties has been paralyzed. "The foldables are different from the rest because they have flexible screens, something we had not seen," he says. Cameras and batteries are getting better and better, but in terms of innovation we are stagnant.