Episode 34: First Handheld Mobile Phone Call


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?

Listen to the show for the answer.

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