A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable wireless telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones (landline phones). This radio frequency link connects to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, providing access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephony relies on a cellular network architecture, which is why mobile phones are often referred to as 'cell phones' in North America.
Beyond traditional voice communication, digital mobile phones have evolved to support a wide range of additional services. These include text messaging, ad-hoc networking, multimedia messaging, email, and internet access (via LTE, 5G NR, or Wi-Fi), as well as short-range wireless technologies like Bluetooth, infrared, and ultra-wideband (UWB).
Mobile phones also support a variety of multimedia capabilities, such as digital photography, video recording, and gaming. In addition, they enable multimedia playback and streaming, including video content, as well as radio and television streaming. Furthermore, mobile phones offer satellite-based services, such as navigation and messaging, as well as business applications and payment solutions (via scanning QR codes or near-field communication (NFC)). Mobile phones offering only basic features are often referred to as feature phones (slang: dumbphones), while those with advanced computing power are known as smartphones.
The first handheld mobile phone was demonstrated by Martin Cooper of Motorola in New York City on 3 April 1973, using a handset weighing c. 2 kilograms (4.4 lbs). In 1979, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) launched the world's first cellular network in Japan. In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first commercially available handheld mobile phone. From 1993 to 2024, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew to over 9.1 billion; enough to provide one for every person on Earth.Taylor, Petroc. "Mobile Phone Subscriptions Worldwide 2024." Statista, 10 Mar. 2025. In 2024, the top smartphone manufacturers worldwide were Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi; smartphone sales represented about 50 percent of total mobile phone sales.Sherif, Ahmed. "Smartphone Market Shares by Vendor 2009–2024." Statista, 14 Jan. 2025. For feature phones , the top-selling brands were Samsung, Nokia and Alcatel.
Mobile phones are considered an important human invention as they have been one of the most widely used and sold pieces of consumer technology. The growth in popularity has been rapid in some places; for example, in the UK, the total number of mobile phones overtook the number of houses in 1999. Today, mobile phones are globally ubiquitous, and in almost half the world's countries, over 90% of the world population, or approximately 7.2 billion people, owns at least one.
Name "Mobile phone" is the most common English-language term, while the term "cell phone" is in more common use in North America – both are in essence shorter versions of "mobile telephone" and "cellular telephone", respectively. Often in colloquial terms it is referred to as simply phone, mobile or cell. A number of alternative words have also been used to describe a mobile phone, most of which have fallen out of use, including: "mobile handset, "wireless phone", "mobile terminal, "cellular device", "hand phone", and "pocket phone".
History
A handheld mobile radio telephone service was envisioned in the early stages of radio engineering. In 1917, Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt filed a patent for a "pocket-size folding telephone with a very thin carbon microphone". Early predecessors of cellular phones included analog radio communications from ships and trains. The race to create truly portable telephone devices began after World War II, with developments taking place in many countries. The advances in mobile telephony have been traced in successive "generations", starting with the early zeroth-generation (0G) services, such as Bell System's Mobile Telephone Service and its successor, the Improved Mobile Telephone Service. These 0G systems were not cellular, supported a few simultaneous calls, and were very expensive.
Mobile phone technology has progressed significantly since its origins, evolving from large car-mounted systems to compact, handheld devices.Meurling, J., Jeans, R. The Mobile Phone Book Communications Week International, 1994, ISBN 0-9524031-0-2 page 16 Early mobile phones required vehicle installation due to their size and power needs. A major breakthrough came in 1973, when the first handheld cellular mobile phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola, using a handset weighing . Cooper made the first ever call on a cell phone when he called Joel S. Engel, a rival of his who worked for AT&T, saying, "I'm calling you on a cell phone, but a real cell phone, a personal, handheld, portable cell phone."
The first commercial automated cellular network (1G) analog was launched in Japan by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in 1979. This was followed in 1981 by the simultaneous launch of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Several other countries then followed in the early to mid-1980s. These first-generation (1G) systems could support far more simultaneous calls but still used analog cellular technology. In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first commercially available handheld mobile phone.
In 1991, the second-generation (2G) digital cellular technology was launched in Finland by Radiolinja on the GSM standard. This sparked competition in the sector as the new operators challenged the incumbent 1G network operators. The GSM standard is a European initiative expressed at the CEPT ("Conférence Européenne des Postes et Telecommunications", European Postal and Telecommunications conference). The Franco-German R&D cooperation demonstrated the technical feasibility, and in 1987, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between 13 European countries that agreed to launch a commercial service by 1991. The first version of the GSM standard had 6,000 pages. The IEEE and RSE awarded Thomas Haug and Philippe Dupuis the 2018 James Clerk Maxwell medal for their contributions to the first digital mobile telephone standard. In 2018, the GSM was used by over 5 billion people in over 220 countries. The GSM (2G) has evolved into 3G, 4G and 5G. The standardization body for GSM started at the CEPT Working Group GSM (Group Special Mobile) in 1982 under the umbrella of CEPT. In 1988, ETSI was established, and all CEPT standardization activities were transferred to ETSI. Working Group GSM became Technical Committee GSM. In 1991, it became Technical Committee SMG (Special Mobile Group) when ETSI tasked the committee with UMTS (3G). In addition to transmitting voice over digital signals, the 2G network introduced data services for mobile, starting with SMS text messages, then expanding to Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and mobile internet with a theoretical maximum transfer speed of 384 kbit/s (48 kB/s).
In 2001, the third-generation (3G) was launched in Japan by NTT DoCoMo on the WCDMA standard. This was followed by 3.5G or 3G+ enhancements based on the high-speed packet access (HSPA) family, allowing UMTS networks to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. 3G is able to provide mobile broadband access of several Mbit/s to smartphones and mobile modems in laptop computers. This ensures it can be applied to mobile Internet access, VoIP, video calls, and sending large e-mail messages, as well as watching videos, typically in standard-definition quality.
By 2009, it had become clear that, at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications, such as streaming media. Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized fourth-generation (4G) technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up to tenfold over existing 3G technologies. The first publicly available LTE service was launched in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera in 2009. In the 2010s, 4G technology has found diverse applications across various sectors, showcasing its versatility in delivering high-speed wireless communication, such as mobile broadband, the internet of things (IoT), fixed wireless access, and multimedia streaming (including music, video, radio, and television).
Deployment of fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks commenced worldwide in 2019. The term "5G" was originally used in research papers and projects to denote the next major phase in mobile telecommunication standards beyond the 4G/IMT-Advanced standards. The 3GPP defines 5G as any system that adheres to the 5G NR (5G New Radio) standard. 5G can be implemented in low-band, mid-band or high-band millimeter-wave, with download speeds that can achieve gigabit-per-second (Gbit/s) range, aiming for a network latency of 1 ms. This near-real-time responsiveness and improved overall data performance are crucial for applications like online gaming, augmented and virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, IoT, and critical communication services.
Types
Smartphone
Smartphones are defined by their advanced computing capabilities, which include internet connectivity and access to a wide range of applications. The International Telecommunication Union measures those with Internet connection, which it calls Active Mobile-Broadband subscriptions (which includes tablets, etc.). In developed countries, smartphones have largely replaced earlier mobile technologies, while in developing regions, they account for around 50% of all mobile phone usage.
Feature phone
Feature phone is a term typically used as a retronym to describe mobile phones which are limited in capabilities in contrast to a modern smartphone. Feature phones typically provide voice calling and text messaging functionality, in addition to basic multimedia and Internet capabilities, and other services offered by the user's wireless service provider. A feature phone has additional functions over and above a basic mobile phone, which is only capable of voice calling and text messaging.Todd Hixon, Two Weeks With A Dumb Phone , Forbes, 13 November 2012 Feature phones and basic mobile phones tend to use a proprietary, custom-designed software and user interface. By contrast, smartphones generally use a mobile operating system that often shares common traits across devices.
Infrastructure
The critical advantage that modern cellular networks have over predecessor systems is the concept of frequency reuse allowing many simultaneous telephone conversations in a given service area. This allows efficient use of the limited radio spectrum allocated to mobile services, and lets thousands of subscribers converse at the same time within a given geographic area.
Former systems would cover a service area with one or two powerful base stations with a range of up to tens of kilometers' (miles), using only a few sets of radio channels (frequencies). Once these few channels were in use by customers, no further customers could be served until another user vacated a channel. It would be impractical to give every customer a unique channel since there would not be enough bandwidth allocated to the mobile service. As well, technical limitations such as antenna efficiency and receiver design limit the range of frequencies a customer unit could use.