You call it mobile, your wife prefers to call it cell, and your daughter talks about her cell phone. Wait, all are talking about one and the same thing, the ubiquitous had held phone that has become much more than being just a device to make calls these days. Whether a cell phone or a mobile, you are talking about the same device. Let us see how this gadget, used primarily for communicating with others got different names for itself.
Though the use of radio for making calls is as old as World War II, the first mobile hand set that was used to make calls came out in Japan in 1979 by NTT that worked in the metropolitan area of Tokyo. The system of mobile telephony caught the imagination of people and soon the system was launched in many more countries such as Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. 1G finally made its appearance in the US in 1983 through Motorola Company. This cellular network was called 1G.
2nd generation of cellular services, known as 2G was started in Finland in 1991, while the third generation of communication was launched in 2001. Though the technology of mobile telephony has been changing all the time, there are some basic components of a cell phone or a mobile that remain the same no matter how advance the gadget may be. These include a standard Li-ion battery that is used to provide power for all the functions of the handset. The battery is rechargeable and has a life of more than a year. While dialing of numbers has traditionally been through a keypad, its place has been taken by touch screens nowadays. All mobiles or cell phones require services of a cellular operator to make and receive calls. This cellular operator provides mobile phone owners SIM cards that work as accounts of customers. SIM cards are used in all GSM mobile hand sets while in CDMA devices, there are no SIM cards and they are provided by the cellular service provider and not freely available in the market.
Basic mobiles or cell phones are called as feature phones while those with advanced features like internet and complex computing abilities are called as smartphones. As technology is advancing at a rapid rate, what today is a smartphone may just be a basic phone tomorrow? Today mobile phones are much more than a device used for making and receiving calls. Features like Wi-Fi, GPS, EDGE, GPRS, stereo FM, radio, navigation, MP3, MP4, video recording, browsing, downloading and uploading to the internet have become common features in modern high end mobile phones.
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In brief: Difference Between Cell Phone and Mobile • The device that is handheld and used to make and receive calls is variously called as mobile, cell or cell phone in different countries. • While American prefer the word cell phone, Europeans use the word mobile for their devices • It is true that the network is cellular but the phone is not, so the word cell phone is really a misnomer.
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