Inventor Of Cell Phone (Marty Cooper) Ditched iPhone For Droid

As the opening of the clip accurately explains, we all know the inventor of the telephone (Alexandar Graham Bell) but what about the cell/mobile phone? The man credited with that feat was Marty Cooper who worked for Motorola and is named on the patent for the first portable telephone. A few days ago this wonderful gentlemen who is responsible for one of my obsessions sat down with C-SPAN and discussed the history and future of cell phones.

The 30-minute video is pretty fascinating in its entirety but one small portion we should be keenly aware of comes at JUST after the 30-minute mark:

Question: What kind of cell phone do you have?

Cooper: “It depends when you ask me. I uh, always have the latest cell phone, and I try every cell phone out, only because people like you keep asking me. Right now I’m using the Droid, because I want to get some experience with the Android operating system, and I, so far, have some favorable results. I’ve had an iPhone, which I gave to my grandson, which he used for three months and then I had to upgrade to a – better version. And I’ve tried many other phones. For my day to day conversations I actually use the Jitterbug. So I carry two phones – one very simple phone that I can flip open that has a very simple phonebook and nothing else. But when I want to twitter… tweet… then, I use my Droid.”

If you’re not familiar with Jitterbug it’s actually a company that Marty Cooper co-founded with his wife in 2006 that is targeted at elderly mobile users who care only about making phone calls – the rest of the stuff just gets in their way.

Another interesting discussion I found was about battery life. We complain when our mobile phones don’t last the entire day but guess how much battery life the first one – the one made by Cooper – got? Twenty minutes. But Cooper explains: “The cell phone weighed 2 and a half pounds. Uh… it was huge. (continues) The battery lasted for twenty minutes, but that was not a problem because you could not hold it up for twenty minutes it was so heavy.”

And you thought the Droid was heavy!

[C-SPAN via AndroidCentral]