Smartphone race speeds up as handset celebrates 25th birthday

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Smartphone race speeds up as handset celebrates 25th birthday

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 16 October, 2008

READ MORE: Handset

October 13 marked the twenty fifth anniversary of the first commercial cellphone call, when Bob Barnett, president of Ameritech Mobile, called Alexander Graham Bell's nephew from Chicago's Soldier Field using a Motorola DynaTAC handset, nicknamed 'The Brick, which weighed 2.5 pounds and cost $3,995. Cellphone technology has clearly moved on significantly, with ultraslim webphones, boasting the capabilities of a PC, media player and camera rolled into one, going for $300 or less. But for all their innovations, the mobile phone majors are facing the dual challenges of sector consolidation and a consumer recession, and their performance in this pre-holiday season will be under scrutiny as never before.

This is driving them to intensify the battle for whatever smartphone dollars are still going to be spent pre-Christmas. Motorola has even joined in the race at last, with Verizon Wireless launching Moto's first US touchscreen device, the Krave ZN4, as an exclusive. The Krave, which will sell for $149.99 with a two-year contract, is a combination of a flip design and touchscreen. It has a clear flip cover outside and a touchscreen inside, and comes with access to music, videos, Verizon's VCast TV and supports GPS.

The CDMA EV-DO phone comes with an accelerometer to allow for video viewing in landscape mode. Also like the iPhone, a digital Qwerty keyboard appears when the phone is turn horizontally. It features Verizon's OpenWave HTML browser - which does not hold a candle to Apple Safari or Opera - plus digital voicemail service, two megapixel camera, external microSD slot for up to 8Gb of memory and stereo Bluetooth.

Meanwhile Nokia, having been fairly late to the touchscreen party with the launch of its Tube musicphone, is now rumored to be following up soon with a touchscreen version of its N96 flagship. The 'N97' is expected for early 2010 and, like the Tube, will be heavily focused on the higher income populations of developing economies, notably India, not just on traditional smartphone markets in Europe and east Asia.