Archive: First Handheld Mobile Phone Call


(Originally published April 3, 2015)

On April 3, 1973, the first handheld mobile phone call was made.

Here are some things you might not know about early cellular phones:

First, Martin Cooper of Motorola made that first call to his counterpart at AT&T and said, “Joel, this is Marty. I’m calling you from a cell phone; a real handheld cell phone.”

Second: The prototype phone used to make that call looked virtually identical to the classic “Brick Phone” of the 1980s.

Third: The first commercially available cell phone, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X cost $3,995, which would be about $9,500 today.

Our question: Starting with a full battery, how long could you talk on a DynaTAC 8000X in 1984?

Was it:

A: 15 minutes

B: 30 minutes

C: 45 minutes

D: 60 minutes.


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