What Mobile Phones have Become

I am 16 years old this year and i can still remember clearly what the Motorola my dad owns about twelve years ago look like. It was black, with the conventional 12 buttons keypad under the ridiculously huge flip. The black and white screen could only project 5 x 20 pixels supported by dim yellow LED with a "Pro-XL" plus small battery and signal indicator on top of it. The insanely huge and heavy black plastic case with the addition of a weak 2 hour talk-time li-ion battery made the early model of mobile phone look unproportional, not to mention the shame of having a huge bulge on the pants. Nevertheless, my whole family would boast on how they can make a call from anywhere anytime and the fact that they could send messages ( unlike pagers ) and receive them in one "small" handheld. If I look back at what we had years ago, I can not but be marveled by the advancement of mobile phone technology in the last 10 years.
Compared to the early huge and hulking phones, we can be proud by the drastic evolution of mobile phones in the last decade. Nowadays, 2 phones can be placed in the pocket and still be confidently walking on streets. Screen technology has developed from 2 color into 6 million colors, battery life multiplied its lifetime into 5 hours with the size shrunk into a fraction of its early model. Organizers, calendar, radio, video players, games and even applications such as bible can be inserted into the small hand held gadget. Cameras and video recorder are now an integral part of the phone since the invention of digital cameras and camcorders, and these image capturing phones are not jsut ordinary ones, they can take still images like standard digital cameras. As mobile phones shrink in size and increase in its usage, its price also fluctuate to both low and high end prices. Many giant phone producers such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson have created a lot of very affordable phones and the community seem to respond very well to the decreasing price. Now, more people from more economic backgrounds can afford to buy a phone, unlike what happened a decade ago where phones have the same price as a motorcycle. These money-friendly phones also have all the standard requirement such as messaging, calling, and contacts. While on the other end of the innovation, high end phones that cost a ton of money are also created. The difference is that they have way more features in it. Some of the more expensive phones would have very sharp cameras, large memories, huge display, wireless connection ( bluetooth, infrared, etc ), and music players intergrated in it. These few features have been the most demanded and innovated technology in the phone development and companies are racing to improve on these few areas. These expensive phones could only be bought by fortunate people, but now middle class citizens can also own a phone with music players and cameras in it. While on the extreme, some models are just indulging the consumers with its elegant design and ridiculous materials with nearly unimaginable prices such as Vertu and some Nokia, LG, and Motorola models. Interestingly, some still manage to buy it.
Looking at these facts, we can see that the development of hand phones have been rapid. With the decreasing costs of service providers, hand phone have become a trend rather than communication media. Yes, modern trend is what mobile phones have become.

James A2 SL