Feature Articles

A Call from the Past - 10 Years of Mobile Phone Development

By Seow Tein Hee - 11 May 2009

Timeline: 2004

2004


  • Development on the camera phone front was an ongoing project, and in a year's time, VGA resolution cameras went into the megapixel range with the Siemens S65 as one of the first few devices hitting the 1.3-megapixel mark. An increase in imaging resolution won't be the shocker as the year progressed, but the evolution of the mobile phone as a mobile internet device capable of receiving and sending multimedia files over the air looked to be the next big thing.

The Siemens S65 had more than one trick up its sleeve, with the inclusion of not only the 1.3-megapixel camera, but also stronger support for connectivity with its WAP2.0 protocol.

  • With both GPRS and WAP 2.0 to work on during the 2G and 2.5G era, speeds were still considerably adequate for smaller MMS messages, but new standards were on the rise. Bluetooth connectivity for mobile phones took to the streets and slowly but surely replaced the old-school method of having an infrared connection from your device to your PC to synchronize your data wirelessly and thus bidding farewell to line-of-sight connections. Of course, when it came to wired connectivity, there's also the USB port which was adopted by phone manufacturers soon enough, but not soon enough for Nokia with its Nokia 6220 upgrade, the Nokia 6230 .

  • The PDA phone enthusiasts were also on the rise with a slew of power packed devices from the O2 branding, and back then, the O2 XDA IIi and O2 XDA IIs reigned supreme with its Windows Pocket PC 2003 OS and its myriad of multimedia and productivity features included in their devices. This would be the start of a segmentation between both Windows Mobile, Symbian S60 and the other standard phone interfaces (and ironically, the convergence of phones in the next five years).

For its time, the O2 series of Pocket PC devices garnered strong support and popularity amongst mobile users who were seeking a portable device that delivered functions that are similar to their own PC. And out came the O2 XDA IIs, which was pretty hefty in both size and price.

 

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