The idea for the mobile – or cell – phone has been around since Alexander Graham Bell devised the first operable telephone system, and portable phones have been used in one form or another for many decades now – think of the field telephones used by the military in the second world war, and earlier than that.

Mobile phones first took on the aura of a must have gadget in the 1970’s, when having a telephone that could be carried around was seen as a sign that one had ’arrived’, no matter that the item was bigger than a briefcase and twice as heavy, with a battery life of a few minutes and a usefulness that bordered on the very poor.

Downsizing

Technology, though, has a way of moving these things ahead at speed, and it was not long before the brick sized and inefficient first phase of cell phones were being replaced with small, light hand held units that had been enabled by breakthroughs in battery design.

By the time we reached the 21s century, the mobile cell phone had become not just the possession of city boys with big bonuses to shout about, but of everybody, and nobody in particular.

Everybody’s talking

It is now – eight years into that century – the absolute norm to carry a mobile phone, and the talk now is not that you have one, but how small it is, what it looks like and, most of all, what other features it carries – for being a phone, an ability for making calls, is simply not enough.

These days cell phones are so small that they can be lost in a handbag, so thin that they may be invisible beside a credit card, and so versatile that they are replacing the landline telephone as the every day method of communication.

The average phone

Not only that, but from a short charge a life of a few days can be had, so advanced are the batteries that power the average phone these days.

And that average phone will come with at least one, if not all, of the following – a good quality camera with the ability to record video, an MP3 capable audio device, an internet surfing feature, and the ability to send and receive emails.

Anything less than those, and what you have is not a talking point, but an embarrassment.