All the mobile phones that mattered from the first Nokia handset right up to the iPhone 3G

A LOT can happen in 40 years. But when it comes to technology, 40-years is like going back to the days of Moses or the Roman Empire. Case in point: the mobile phone –– and, more recently, the rise of mobile internet communications, social networks and super-fast internet. But what were the phones that made it happen; who were the pioneering brands that made today’s handsets possible; and which phone, out of the thousands launched since the 1980s, was the most important? Answer: quite a few.

But first: a history lesson. 

The world’s first mobile phone call was made on April 3, 1973, when Martin Cooper, a senior engineer at Motorola, called a rival telecommunications company and informed them he was speaking via a mobile phone. The phone Cooper used, if you could call it that, weighed a staggering 1.1kg and measured in at 228.6x127x44.4mm. With this prototype device, you got 30 minutes of talk-time and it took around 10 hours to charge.