13 thoughts on “Cell Phones”

  1. Doesn’t seem likely. Transistors weren’t even invented until 1947, and the ICs that would have allowed low power draw didn’t really come along until the 1970’s.

  2. If a genie gave me one wish it would be… “please deposit all the world’s lost opportunity cost into my bank account.” They’d have to invent a new number to go that high.

  3. I haven’t had a cell phone with good call quality since my first flip phone but smart phones are very empowering in a number of ways. They are really just portable computers where making phone calls is just a secondary benefit. Phone reviews always talk about everything but call quality.

  4. I donno, Rand. Three months ago I would have agreed with your assessment completely. Then I traded in my iPhone 5 for an SE (same network) and the difference is… Dramatic. Previously I avoided using the 5 if I had a land-line available. Now, the SE is the best voice quality I’ve ever heard. *Including* any land line. Clear as a bell at all times, including noisy conditions. Not sure if it’s just the handset or the “HD voice” e.g. voice over LTE that makes the difference, but I do know that “celluar voice must be crap” isn’t a given. Maybe time to think about a new handset?

    1. It’s HD voice. I had an iPhone 5 that could deliver incredible audio, as long as the call was via Skype wifi at both ends.

        1. We suspect the problem may be too much VoIP between the two endpoints. Modems are extremely sensitive to timing issues, and we found that some calls would work fine while others wouldn’t even manage to set up a connection between the modems. So some routes seemed to be just as good as they used to be, while others simply weren’t capable of transferring a viable modem signal any more.

          We ended up putting in our own modems for the customers to connect to through our network, then forwarding the data over the Internet.

  5. Four decades earlier? No. One decade earlier maybe. But the phones would have been as big and clunky as the early 80’s Model 1 depicted in the article photo. I had the privilege of seeing one of those in use back in the day. OTOH having it offer TT dialing is kinda doubtful. More like a set of preset dial outs had it been early 70s. And mobile hand off not too good. It was several years even back in the 80s before base station roll outs made the service ubiquitous. One of the biggest innovations was the invention of the fractal antenna in use in all cell phones today. Even the mathematics had not yet been published by Mandelbrot in 1970!

  6. There is always the lost Jules Verne account of the Steam Punk version of this as Le Telephon-Photographique:

    “Bernard fails to predict that his invention, a portable telephone that can take photographs and send short script messages, will contribute to the breakdown of traditional manners among Parisians.”

    “At first, use of the phone is prevalent only among the bourgeois, but it soon spreads throughout social strata. As use of the device becomes commonplace, McGraw said, normal societal relations between citizens break down.”

    “Rudeness becomes ubiquitous, as the device’s infuriating notification-chimes invade every corner of public life,” McGraw said. “When the ethically bereft begin transmitting images obtained under questionable circumstances, espionage becomes so prevalent as to threaten the integrity of the French populace.”

  7. Rand, I barely use the land line now. Not looking for HD sound and the convenience of the directory on the phone is terrific.

    Ok, plus I actually do find several of the apps to be very useful.

    OTOH, I would trade the present level of phone and other computer tech in an instant for having the kind of spaceflight capabilities, outposts, and colonies we used to dream of for the 21st century…

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