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.
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]