BRIEF HISTORY OF MOBILE PHONE

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOBILE PHONE

Mobile phones have come a long way in the last seventy years, so be thankful yours fits in your pocket. Maybe one day it will even be able to bend like a piece of thin plastic. Maybe you won't even have to touch it, doing all of your multitasking from cellular implants. But seventy years ago, you'd be lugging a 25-pound 'portable' phone on your back, with very limited 5-mile range.

1938

Not quite what you would consider a mobile phone, the SCR-194 and 195 were the first portable AM radios, produced by the U.S. Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories in Fort Monmouth, NJ. Considered the first "walkie talkie," these devices weighed roughly 25 pounds and had a 5-mile range. They were widely used for infantry battalion and company intercommunication during World War II.

1940

Next came the SCR-300 radio transceiver, developed for the U.S. Military by Motorola. This time a portable FM radio, it weighed anywhere from 32 to 38 pounds with a 3-mile range. It replaced the SCR-194 and 195 with nearly 50,000 units used in World War II by Allied Forces.

1942

Motorola produced the first "handie talkie" for the U.S., labeled SCR-536. 130,000 units were manufactured and used during the war. Back to AM, this handheld version shed the fat off the previous two transceivers, weighing only 5 pounds. But its land range was only 1-mile (3 miles over water). Moving away from military-grade portable radios, we get to the mobile radio telephones

1946

Bell System introduced the first commercial mobile telephone service, called the Mobile Telephone System (MTS). The original equipment was large, weighing 80 pounds (not quite what you'd call mobile) with limited calling bands available from AT&T. The service wasn't cheap either—costing $30 a month (roughly $330 today) with additional per call charges. Not really intended for regular Joe Blows, these devices were used by utilities, truck fleet operators, and reporters.

1956

Ericsson's Mobile System A (MTA) was the first partly automatic mobile system for automobiles. First used by Sweden, the unit weighed a whopping 88 pounds. Again, "mobile" is kind of a misnomer, considering it is equivalent to almost 300 iPhones!

1964

With the adaption of Bell's newer pre-cellular Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS), auto owners saw lighter, more advanced mobile car phones with push buttons. This one by Motorola weighed 40 pounds, half as much of the original units from the '40s. Over the years, they managed to get down into the 20-pound range. But they never managed to get into the hands of Joe Blow, with a still-hefty price and rationed service throughout the nation.

1973

With a prototype of the DynaTAC (DYNamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage) portable phone, former Motorola Vice President Martin Cooper made the first private, practical mobile phone call in a non-vehicle setting. Who would he call? His rival at Bell Labs, Joel S. Engel.

1982

With the impressive size of the DynaTAC prototype, it's disappointing to see Nokia's Mobira Senator weighing in at 22 pounds. It launched during the world's first fully automatic international cellular service—NMT—the first-generation (1G) of mobile communications.

1983

10 years later after the prototype, Motorola's DynaTAC cellular phone was made available to the public, weighing under 2 pounds, but costing nearly $4,000 (almost $9,000 today)—which is why it was strictly for the Gordon Gekkos of the world. It worked on AMPS, North America's first 1G analog service, launched first by Ameritech in Chicago.

1984

Back to larger mobile devices, the Mobira Talkman brought longer talk time at cheaper costs. The DynaTAC could only manage 60 minutes of talk time, but this miniature beast gave hours or voice-to-voice communication

1989

Next up was Motorola's MicroTAC, which introduced the first flip phone design. The hardware was place in a hinged section of the phone, reducing the phone's size when not in use. It was truly the world's first pocket phone.

1992

The Motorola International 3200 became the first hand-sized digital mobile phone that used 2G digitally encrypted technology (unveiled in 1991 as GSM).

1993

Perhaps the world's first smartphone, IBM Simon was a mobile phone, pager, fax machine and PDA, all rolled into one. It included a calendar, address book, clock, calculator, notepad, email, gamers and a touchscreen with QWERTY keyboard. It originally sold for $899, which would be just over $1,300 nowadays. You may remember Simon from Sandra Bullock's The Net.

1994

Car phones remained popular, despite their smaller pocket-sized versions, but Motorola's Bag Phone (2900) was the car phone to have due to its long talk time, great battery life and superior signal range. They first worked with 1G networks, but eventually crossed over into 2G territory.

1996

Still shrinking the line of TACs, Motorola unveiled the first clamshell mobile phone with StarTAC. It improved the folding feature by collapsing in half, which is why it's called "clamshell"—because it resembles a clam opening and closing shut. It ran on 1G networks, but eventually crossed over into the world of 2G. It's said to be inspired by the communicator from the original Star Trek series.

1997

The Simon was good, but the Nokia 9000 Communicator was what really brought on the smartphone era. It was the first cell phone that could also be called a mini-computer (though it had limited web access). When opened, the longways clamshell design revealed an LCD screen and full QWERTY keyboard—the first on a mobile phone.

1998

The Nokia 8810 was the first cell phone without an external antenna whip or stub-antenna, possibly paving the way for iPhones and DROIDs. It also made mobile phones more aesthetically pleasing, with its sliding keypad cover.

1999

One of the most popular mobile phones in history was the Nokia 3210, with over 160 million sold. It was one of the first to allow picture messages, but only preinstalled ones like "Happy Birthda,y" and was one of the first to be marketing toward young people.

1999

Nokia's 7110 was the first cell phone to incorporate Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), which gave mobile users web access for simple devices—a stripped-down, mostly text version, but a revolutionary step for mobile internet.

1999

GeoSentric was responsible for the world's first mobile phone and a GPS navigator integrated in one product—the Benefon Esc! It was splashproof, greyscale, and allowed users to load maps to trace position and movement.

1999

In Japan, Kyocera's Visual Phone (VP-201) was the first to have a built-in camera, but it was designed primarily as a peer-to-peer video phone, as opposed to Sharp's the next year...

2000

Sharp was first to the camera phone market with their J-SH04 (J-Phone), released by J-Mobile in Japan. It offered a mere 0.1 megapixel resolution.

Some like to give credit to Olympus for being the first camera to transmit digital images over a cellular network with their Deltis VC-1100. Others prefer Philippe Kahn's story of rigging up a camera to a cell phone with wires to send images of his newborn baby. But the J-SH04 was the first commercially available cell phone to have an integrated CCD sensor, with the Sha-Mail (Picture-Mail) infrastructure. This was the start of what we know as MMS.

2002

Not too far from the J-Phone, the Sanyo 5300 from Sprint was the first camera phone sold in North America.

2002

RIM's BlackBerry 5810 wasn't the first BlackBerry device, but it was the first to incorporate a mobile phone into their popular brand of data-only devices.

Professionals who needed immediate access to their emails and schedules were the main target for RIM, but the built-in phone made it appealing to everyone. The downside? No speaker or microphone.

2002

One of the first phones to equip a fully functional web experience and integrate an instant messaging client (AIM) was the Danger Hiptop in 2002, later re-branded the T-Mobile Sidekick.

Its messaging features and keyboard made it one of the best selling phones in the deaf community. Also new was an LCD screen that rotated and flipped to reveal a large QWERTY keyboard.

2002

Perhaps surpassing the BlackBerry achievements, Microsoft's Pocket PC Phone Edition started spreading across PDAs like wildfire, including the HP Jornada 928 Wireless Digital Assistant, combining the best of the PDA with integrated wireless voice and data capabilities.

It was a nice addition to the older Windows Mobile Classic devices, which essential ran a mini-version of Windows XP.

2002

Another PDA adding phone support was Palm's Treo 180 by Handspring, running the Palm OS.

2004

The next highly popular device was a camera phone called the Motorola RAZR, which was first marketed as a "fashion" phone in 2004, selling 50 million units by mid-2006.

It helped give cell phones a new look, which were getting stale with the same ol' boring designs. Though nothing revolutionary, its looks did more than impress.

2005

The first Palm smartphone to operate outside of the Palm OS was the Treo 700w, powered by Windows Mobile. It was a great alternative for users who needed access to Microsoft software on the go.

2005

Believe it or not, the iPhone wasn't the first cell phone to have Apple's iTunes music player integrated. It was the Motorola ROKR E1, but it only could manage 100 songs at a time—not quite the same as an iPhone.

2007

In 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the Apple iPhone, a revolutionary touchscreen smartphone. It wasn't the first smartphone, but it was the first to get the user interface right, eventually adapting 3G technology (which was already available since 2001).

2008

The first smartphone to run Google's Android OS was the HTC Dream slider smartphone. It featured a QWERTY keyboard, full HTML web browser, Gmail, YouTube and more, and paved the way for phones like the Nexus One and Motorola DROID.

2010

The HTC EVO 4G from Sprint was the first cellular phone to meet 4G standards, running on the WiMAX network. It was sold powered by Android 2.1 and had one of the largest touchscreen displays, an 8MP camera, HD video capture, HDMI output, Mobile Hotspot capability and HTC Sense.

SELF IMPOSED COMPUTER HAZARDS WHILE WORKING AT HOME

MOBILE PHONES CAN CAUSE SEVER ILLNESS

Mobile phones, no doubt is the biggest and fast moving electronic gadget market in the world today. The International Telecommunication Union had reported in 2011 that about 6 billion mobile phones have been subscribed at the end of that year. This means that 86 out of every 100 people have mobile phones worldwide. It have become a clip of our society, with every Tom Dick and Harry right from school kids to grown-up adults owning at least a mobile phone. Although mobile phones have made life easier but its negative effects are detrimental to users. Medical and ICT experts have shown a lot of concerns about the negative effects associated with the use of mobile phone.

Bacteria on Mobile Phones

Along with important information stored in mobile phones are deadly bacteria which are easily spread ignorantly by the user or owner of the mobile phone. An average mobile phone user puts his or her phone(s) in contact with several places where it can come in contact with germs.

A research carried out in University of London in 2011, shows that one in six mobile phones is contaminated with some sort of fecal matter, probably because their owners did not wash their hands with soap after using the toilet. E. coli, a bacterium from fecal origin was found in some phones. Such bacteria causes diarrhea, vomiting and sever fever when injected into the body.

Another research carried out by health students at South University Columbia, found out that mobile phones were frequently contaminated with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Staph aureus according to Dr. Robert J. Wolff “is always dangerous and MRSA forms are worse because they cannot be stopped easily. Staph skin infections, including MRSA, can quickly turn into deep, painful abscesses. The bacteria might remain confined to the skin, or burrow deeper into the body, causing potentially life-threatening infections in bones, joints, surgical wounds, the bloodstream, heart valves, and lungs.”

If your hands are very dirty, there is every tendency that your mobile phone would be highly contaminated with the same type of bacteria found on your dirty hands at that moment. The public are advised to maintain proper hygiene, keep their hands clean by washing with soap and water. They can also use a hand sanitizer, and importantly, clean their mobile phones often using a fairly dry towel and wipes that are safe to use on devices.

Your Eyes maybe at Risk

Bright screens and tiny text character can strain the eyes of mobile phone users and causes sever damage. It is important for mobile users to constantly refocus and reposition the eyes so as to process the text or graphics on the screen. This is because smartphones, tablets, and other hand-held devices are designed for reading at close range. The higher the use of hand-held devices, the more potential problems associated with vision. Symptoms of digital eye strain include eye redness or irritation, dry eyes, blurred vision, back pain, neck pain, and headaches. 

The public are advised to follow the “20-20-20” Rule. Which means, Take a 20-second break every 20 minutes when using an electronic device and look at something 20 feet away. People should reduce focus on the screen. They should make sure the screen is always clean and clear, the surrounding light that is competing with the screen should be dimmed, and there should be adequate distance between the eyes and the screen and also increase the text character of the device.

Radio Wave Exposure

Radio waves emitted by mobile phones transmit in all directions to find the nearest base station. It means that some of the radio waves are directed at your body when you use a mobile phone. Radio waves are absorbed into your body tissue as energy, which adds to the energy being produced by your body's metabolism. There have been speculations that the radiation from mobile phones can cause cancer and infertility, however the only known effects of this wave in the body is a little increase in temperature (about 0.2^oC according to experts) which is similar to normal rise in body temperature during rigorous exercise.

MOST COMMON WAYS CYBER CRIMINALS ATTACK BUSINESS SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS CUM PREVENTIVE MEASURES

About 95% of business enterprise and large organizations today have a sizable presence on social media, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, among others. While social networks can enhance customer engagement and strengthen the company's brand in the marketplace, opportunistic attackers looking to embarrass an enterprise, tarnish its brand, tap from her resources or make a statement to the world have no better avenue than compromising corporate social media accounts.

Here are the most common ways in which attackers compromise social media accounts, and measures enterprises should take to ensure they don't fall prey.

Secure social media management

Using social engineering in phishing emails means an attacker doesn't have to circumvent network perimeter defenses, rather they only craft a credible and persuasive email that tricks the employee who manages the organization's social media accounts into clicking a malicious link or providing the password to the accounts.

Enterprises and organizations with a large social media following must ensure that those employees responsible for social media accounts receive security awareness training that covers how to recognize and deal with social engineering-based attacks prior to being given access credentials to corporate social media accounts.

This training should explain how social engineers operate and the tactics employees should be on the lookout for. With the proper training, these encounters should become second nature; the employee should know to trash offers that look too good to be true or links requiring login credentials, even if they appear to come from an internal address or partner organization. Simple safeguards such as checking that the sender actually sent an email with an attachment are invaluable. Be sure to keep employees informed of the latest techniques being used in brand hacking attacks such as phishing emails based on breaking news stories, both true and fictitious. Enterprises must also put procedures in place for employees to report unusual emails so that network surveillance can be stepped up and other employees forewarned.

Emerging attacks and security controls

It's important to note that it's not just social media account credentials that need safeguarding. A number of attackers have successfully compromised social media accounts by subverting domain name system (DNS) data. By capturing the login credentials of people authorized to modify DNS records, attackers can redirect tweets, blogs and other traffic to servers they control. Enterprise DNS administrators should take advantage of security features offered by Registrars to control modifications made to their domain.

Twitter itself has also put security controls in place to help prevent hacking across its platform. A recent SEA attack against Twitter was only partially successful as the company had implemented the "Domain Lock" feature which prohibits certain changes to a domain until it is unlocked -- a simple but valuable control.

In addition, two-factor authentication should be introduced for both social media accounts and for those that control important services like DNS. Out-of-band checks such as a security code sent to the user's mobile phone can greatly reduce the chances of a phishing email being enough to gain access to an account. Ideally, dedicated computers should be used to access and update social media content so that additional security checks and controls can be deployed on these systems to monitor for unusual network traffic and keyloggers, which have become another suspected method used by hackers to obtain social media account credentials.

It is critical to draw up an emergency response plan to reduce the impact of a social media account breach, should one occur. It is important that website administrators know which modules or components within a site provide social media content so that they can be quickly disabled should the need arise. This will also help prevent the need for an entire site to be taken offline.

While social media is a great way for enterprises to interact with their customers and strengthen their reputation, companies that want to maintain trust in their brand must put forth the extra effort required to stop them from falling prey to brand hacks and social attacks.

BUSINESS ENTERPRISES AND SOCIAL MEDIA REGULATIONS/COMPLIANCE: THE NITTY-GRITTY

Social media, being one of the fast growing electronic medium in our world today, has become an essential tool for business success. A large number of organizations build strong presence on social media with majority of them having many accounts on Twitter and Facebook, which makes it easier for product branding, communication, information sharing and building strong relationship with people. Social media has come to stay. Those organizations or enterprises that choose not to key into social media could be at a competitive disadvantage and experiencing operational deficiency.

Social media has introduced complexities into the business environment which now stands as a challenge to many organizations. There are vast differences in functionality and cultural expectations on the use of social media sites both personally and professionally. For instance, Germany makes a distinction between private social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and business social media (LinkedIn). Efforts are been made by organizations and regulators to enforce appropriate compliance guidelines for social media activities.

QUESTIONS BOTHERING ON SOCIAL MEDIA

The main issue that arises from using social media in a business setting is that it alters the way we present ourselves, merging our roles as people, professionals and consumers. As we share more of ourselves on a growing number of social media platforms, questions quickly surface around appropriate social media behavior - how often and on what social networks should we post? When should we present ourselves in our professional role and when should we share our personal opinions? Is it right to be social media friends with co-workers, clients or a boss?

No doubt, these are complicated questions for individuals and absolute puzzle for enterprises concerned with how employees behave and interact within and outside workplace. Controlling employee’s social media usage is even more difficult for enterprises. The questions now are, can organizations dictate how their employees use social media? Can they monitor social media conversations or use them to learn more about prospective job applicants? When does the personal connection allowed by social media tools cross the line from business to personal? To this end, regulators and government agencies are revising specific guidelines, regulations and laws relevant to social media management and oversight. Among them are; Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council's (FFIEC) which proposes "Social Media: Consumer Compliance Risk Management Guidance" and the proposed European Union General Data Protection Regulation.  

 

A security and risk analyst (Nick Hayes) has identified five common categories of requirements that organizations must begin to address immediately to ensure social media regulations and compliance.

DATA PROTECTION AND PRIVACY

The rise of social media is in large part to blame for the growing controversy between privacy and appropriate personal boundaries, which has caused heated debates between various regulators, as people are willing to share more and more information about themselves in largely public forums. At the same time, firms are investing in advanced technology to harvest this data and convert it into actionable business intelligence. To avoid potential conflict, organizations should evaluate how they collect social media data and work to clearly address their intentions in a public way, such as through their websites' public privacy policy statements.

EMPLOYEE RIGHTS

Approximately two-thirds of U.S. and EU Web-connected adults are accessing social networking sites regularly. This means that employees in virtually any industry are likely to use social media in some form, which drastically increases a company's exposure to potentially negative branding and reputational events. To address these concerns, organizations can adopt policies to guide employee use of social media in some form. However, they must be careful that these policies don't conflict with country or state privacy laws, or other labor laws. In particular, companies should be wary of how they monitor employees, restrict behavior through their corporate social media policy, and gather information for recruiting and hiring purposes.

DISCLOSURE AND THIRD-PARTY ENDORSEMENT

A difficult issue posed by social media is how to communicate sensitive, often complicated messages with limited words. Twitter restricts messages to just 140 characters, for example, but organizations that need to comply with the FTC, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other disclosure requirements must ensure that all social media messages meet strict specifications. What is considered acceptable practice depends on specific regulations and how they deal with certain aspects of social media usage. For instance, how long can a post remain on an account before it's considered an endorsement? The FTC's guidance is less prescriptive and more about overall intent, leaving it up to them to judge on a more case-by-case basis. The FDA, on the other hand, has provided little guidance specific to social media, often leaving its corporate constituents wary of pursuing an aggressive social media strategy. Any organization that is planning a push into the realm of Twitter, LinkedIn and the like should become familiar with the specific social media regulations and compliance challenges that pertain to its company and industry.

GOVERNANCE AND OVERSIGHT

Employees across organizations are leveraging social media to deepen customer relationships, improve team collaboration and strengthen lead-generation efforts. In fact, Forrester has found that career-driven information workers are almost twice as likely as the rest of the workforce to use social media for business purposes. Considering these statistics, firms are increasingly allowing employees to use social media for business purposes, but regulators in some industries, such as FINRA and FFIEC, now want to see that organizations develop proper internal procedures and controls to ensure they manage associated risks effectively.

INFORMATION ARCHIVING AND RETENTION

Social media also presents new challenges for organizations that are required to retain records of all business communications. Namely, social content doesn't remain static; content creators can edit or delete posts after they are published, and other posters can comment and add to the discussion as well. Further complicating matters is determining what content is considered "business" communication and when that content should be captured and archived. Forrester recommends determining the appropriate context of business communications first, and then deciding which devices and applications employees are permitted to use and under what circumstances.

The reality for most organizations is that social media is not receding. In fact, it continues to grow and evolve at an alarming rate. Consumers increasingly discover and communicate with businesses via social media channels, and just as importantly, workers across many organizations enjoy increased productivity thanks to the likes of Twitter and LinkedIn. Instead of cowering from social media due to compliance fears, enterprises should take the same precautions they've always needed to in the past by focusing on all applicable regulations and putting the right governance processes in place to comply with them. Organizations that are thinking about and acting on such issues now can begin reaping the business benefits today and avoid exposing the company to unnecessary risk later.