Sharp introduced the first integrated camera phone in Japan in late 2000. Samsung also introduced one at about the same time. Both were very limited in capabilities and implementation. Since then, nearly every vendor of phones has integrated ever-increasing quality cameras in their devices.

Benefon launched the first commercially available GPS phone in 1999, called the Benefon Esc! The GSM phone was sold mainly in Europe, but many other GPS-enabled mobile phones would soon follow. In 2004, Qualcomm introduced “assisted GPS” technology, allowing phones to use cellular signal in combination with GPS signal to locate the user to within a few feet.

Today we take high-speed data over 4G/LTE (and soon 5G) for granted. Indeed, without 4G/LTE, it’s highly unlikely we’d have the smartphone marketplace we currently have. The Samsung SCH-r900 was the first LTE mobile phone (September 2010), while the Samsung Galaxy Indulge was the first LTE smartphone (February 2011).

In the early days of cellar phones, it was difficult to move beyond your given local area, let alone make and receive calls anywhere across the globe. It was not until the European Telecommunication Standard Institute (ETSI) released phase 1 of the GSM specification in 1990 that the early roaming standards emerged.

The IBM Simon (1992) was the first phone with a touchscreen and is often referred to as the first “smartphone.” While groundbreaking for its time, it was extremely primitive by current standards. In the 1990s, most devices with touchscreens were more like PDAs than current phones. Apple’s original iPhone (2007) redefined the notion of what touchscreen interfaces could do. Apple did not invent the touchscreen, but it innovated the interface through advanced gesture recognition with the acquisition of FingerWorks (2005). However, a year before the iPhone was released, the LG PRADA boasted the first capacitive touchscreen. Samsung and Nokia also had touch-based mobile phones in the works, although less compelling than the iPhone user interface.

The ubiquitous SIM card is what gives nearly every phone its unique identity to virtually any network. The first SIM card was developed in 1991 by Munich, Germany, smart-card maker Giesecke & Devrient. Today, SIM cards ubiquitously allow over 7 billion devices to connect to cellular networks worldwide. Apple was key in reducing the size of SIM cards with Micro-SIM cards introduced in the original iPad. The iPhone 4 (2010) was the first smartphone to use a micro-SIM, and the iPhone 5 (2012) was the first device to use a nano-SIM.

The first mobile phones with a fingerprint scanner were the Toshiba G500 and G900 in 2007. In 2012, Apple acquired AuthenTec, a fingerprint reader and identity management company. The iPhone 5S (2011) was the first phone on a major U.S. carrier since the Motorola Atrix to feature the technology. Recently (September 2016), Xaomi showed a phone that incorporated ultrasonic fingerprint scanning using technology that Qualcomm acquired with its purchase of Ultrascan that enables more accurate and potentially “through the screen” recognition.

Despite the current dominance of Apple’s App Store, it wasn’t the first to implement one. In November 2001, South Korea’s KTFreeTel (KTF) became the first wireless network operator in the world to launch Brew-based services after Qualcomm introduced Brew as an open app platform for CDMA-based devices. While Brew never really took off due to the limited capabilities inherent in phones of that era, it did provide a model for future generations of app stores. Once the iPhone launched, Apple virtually took over the app store market for a time, but now it has significant competition from the Android app marketplace.

These have been used in some Samsung Nokia devices since 2012 and even before that for lower resolution/pixel displays on non-smartphone devices. But taking advantage of the new super AMOLED displays makes the most sense when you include fast video compression capabilities in the processor (including recently added 4K video) and fast download speeds over high bandwidth networks like LTE Advanced that came to market in the past couple of years.

Wireless charging efforts are not really new and indeed go way back to Palm when they offered a wireless charging option on their devices. And Samsung offered wireless Fast Charging starting with the Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge+. Nokia offered wireless charging on its Windows 8-powered Lumia 920 in 2014. Wireless charging solutions were mostly proprietary in nature, and it wasn't until the past couple of years that various (and competing) standards emerged. But wireless charging itself was not sufficient as companies developed “fast charging” techniques that reduced charge times by 2X-3X. With a coming together of standards, it’s apparent that much more wireless charging will be available in new devices.

The launch of the T-Mobile G1, manufactured by HTC, in October 2008 was the world's first Android-based mobile device. Although it was not up to par with what Apple had done with the iPhone, it signaled that Android was going to be a fierce competitor. With many hundreds of devices produced since, Android has captured a majority share of worldwide smartphone sales.

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has had a revolutionary impact on communication, including the rise of near-instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls, two-way interactive video calls, discussion forums, blogs, and social networking.
The internet has made communication easier and faster, it’s allowed us to stay in contact with people regardless of time and location. It’s accelerated the pace of business and widened the possibilities within the enterprise space. It’s allowed people to find their voice and express themselves through social media, YouTube and memes. The internet has connected and divided us like nothing before.

As a byproduct of the World Wide Web, email was introduced to the world in 1991 (although it had been operating years before) and it has vastly changed our lives—whether for better or worse depends on your viewpoint. The first users of the messaging platform were educational systems and the military who used email to exchange information. In 2018, there were more than 3.8 billion email users—that’s more than half the planet. By 2022, it’s expected that we will be sending 333 billion personal and business emails each day.

The first instance of wearable technology was a handsfree mobile headset launched in 1999, which became a piece of tech synonymous with city workers. It gave businesspeople the ability to answer calls on the go, most importantly, while driving.
Ten years ago, the idea that you could make a video call from an item other than a phone would have been a sci-fi dream. Now, with smartwatches, audio sunglasses, and other emerging wearable technology, these capabilities are a part of our daily lives.

The next generation of VR has only been around since 2016, but it’s already shaking up communications. The beauty of VR—presence—means you can connect to someone in the same space at the same time, without the time sink and cost of travel, even if participants are on different continents.