Happy Birthday to you…, Happy Birthday to you…, H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y to mobile phones, Happy Birthday to you!
The Brick. 30 minutes' talk time and 8 hours' standby. $4,000.
They are 40 today. Mobile phones that is. And you certainly couldn’t play casino games on the first one launched (you can now though). You could hardly make a call, to be honest.
Motorola launched “The Brick” (not their name), the DynaTAC 8000X, their first commercial cellular phone, which was bought to market in 1983.
Hang on , I hear you say- that’s 10 years ago.
Well, yes, but the first mobile phone call was connected 40 years ago today, on 3 April 1973.
Martin Cooper, from Motorola, dialled up a friend working at another telecoms company and told him he was speaking from “a ‘real’ cellular telephone”.
And now? Well, in 2012 there were approximately six billion mobile phone active around the world. Quite a growth, and a number not that short of the total global population (7,000,000).
And the development just continues at a frantic pace, with phones that you can wear now coming into play (think iWatch and Google Glasses). Who knows? We could be wearing mobile phone underpants in the near future. Or we’ll warp-speed into a Star Trek era where we’ll wear them under our skin. Try disconnecting with that.
In 1983 the first phones cost £2,300- they were a bit out of the range of most consumers. These days, of course, you can get a phone for free ( as long as you sign up with a carrier), or you can buy a “disposable” phone for next to nothing.
Mobile Casinos, Twitter, Instagram and Their Lovers
Of course, these days, phones are so much more than just voice. The rise of smartphones has resulted in a change in the way that most people work, play and communicate. First it was texting, and now we all Whatsapp, we Facebook, we Instagram and we Tweet on our phones. And as far as games go, the mobile phone has had a massive influence. Whole companies like Zynga have emerged on the back of them, and mobile casino games are now the equal, if not the better of their online and landbased cousins.
Ah. Mobile Casino Games. You knew we’d get to that, being a casino site. Have you tried them recently? They are getting GOOOD! Don’t believe? Try Royal Vegas (head there on your phone). Now do you believe me?
The first mobile casino was launched in 2006 by a company called Spin 3 in partnership with Microgaming. Now with HTML5 powering many games, punters can play across iPhones, iPads, android phones and tablets (you name it), and the games are slick.
You could say that the first Spin 3 mobile casino was The Brick of its day. But we’ve come leaps and bounds since then.
