Mobile Phone History

Digital wireless and cellular roots go back to the1940s when commercial mobile telephony began. Compared to today's furious pace of development, it may seem odd that wireless didn't come along sooner. There are many reasons for that. Technology, disinterest, and to some extent regulation limited early United States radio-telephone development. As the vacuum tube and the transistor made possible the early telephone network, the wireless revolution began only after low cost microprocessors and digital switching became available. And while the Bell System built the finest landline telephone system in the world, they never seemed truly committed to mobile telephony. Their wireless engineers were brilliant and keen but the System itself held them back. Federal regulations also hindered many projects but in Europe, where state run telephone companies controlled their own telecom development, although, admittedly, without competition, wireless came no sooner, and in most cases, later. Starting in 1921 in the United States mobile radios began operating at 2 MHz, just above the present A.M. radio broadcast band. [Young] These were chiefly experimental police department radios, with practical systems not implemented until the 1940s. [FCC] Police and emergency services drove mobile radio pioneering, with little thought given to private telephone use.

In 1934 the United States Congress created the Federal Communications Commission. In addition to regulating landline interstate telephone business, they also began managing the radio spectrum. It decided who would get what frequencies. It gave priority to emergency services, government agencies, utility companies, and services it thought helped the most people. Radio users like a taxi service or a tow truck dispatch company required little spectrum to conduct their business. Radio telephone used large frequency allocations to serve a few people. The FCC designated no radio-telephone channels until after World War II.

On June 17, 1946 in Saint Louis, Missouri, AT&T and Southwestern Bell introduced the first American commercial mobile radio-telephone service. Mobiles used newly issued vehicle radio-telephone licenses granted to Southwestern Bell by the FCC. They operated on six channels in the 150 MHz band with a 60 kHz channel spacing. [Peterson] Bad cross channel interference, something like cross talk in a landline phone, soon forced Bell to use only three channels. In a rare exception to Bell System practice, subscribers could buy their own radio sets and not AT&T's equipment. Installed high above Southwestern Bell's headquarters at 1010 Pine Street, a centrally located antenna transmitting 250 watts paged mobiles and provided radio-telephone traffic on the downlink.

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Introduction

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 is one of the hottest names in the industry and it's not even released yet. Santa won't be able to get us one for Christmas but next year holds a serious promise for us geeks. The Sony Ericsson's first Snapdragon device and first Android smartphone is one seriously capable handset that promises great user experience.
We first met the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 a month ago at its official announcement event in London. The device that might end up deciding the company's fate left us feeling quite positive about its market prospects so we are really pleased to finally welcome it to our office.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 official photos
The software of the XPERIA X10 is far from settled but since Sony Ericsson dared to show it to the audience, you can bet that the hardware won't see any dramatic changes. The realistic expectations are for the bugs to be solved and maybe a couple of minor features added but what we are going to show is what you should expect to see when the device hits the shelves in Q1 of next year.
For starters let's take a look at the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 key characteristics.
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 at a glance:
General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/1900/2100 MHz, HSDPA, HSUPA
Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
Dimensions: 119 x 63 x 13 mm, 135 g
Display: 4" 65K-color TFT capacitive touchscreen, 854 x 480 pixels
Platform: Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon 1 GHz processor
OS: Android 1.6 (Donut)
Memory: 1GB storage, 256MB RAM, microSD card slot, 8GB card included in the retail box
Camera: 8 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash and face detection; touch focus, WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) video recording at 30fps
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack
Misc: Sony Ericsson Timescape and Mediascape UI, built-in accelerometer
That Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 certainly looks pretty powerful among its Android peers. It's only major sin is that it will be too late for the Christmas shopping spree and will have to achieve success in a much more challenging market conditions.

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 views
An unspectacular handset can do wonders in the last moths of the year, given the right marketing, but things get much tougher once New Year's Eve passes. People have already spent most of their surplus cash and need more persuasion to shell out the serious amount that this baby calls for.

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 next to the Apple iPhone 3GS and HTC HD2
But than again, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 looks well prepared to handle any challenge. The device is supposed to launch in the middle February - most probably around the MWC 2010.
We'll start with a brief hardware inspection of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 following the break.