Phones

A 150-year story: from Bell shouting at Watson to foldable AI-powered supercomputers in a pocket.

22 posts· 1876 – 2026

• Samsung's Z TriFold: the phone that folds twice 2026
• iPhone Duo: Apple's first fold 2026
• The cell tower in orbit 2025
• Apple Intelligence, or the phone that learned to write back 2024
• The phone learns to think for itself 2023
• Samsung bets $1,980 on a crease 2019
• There's an app for that: Apple's App Store and the invention of the platform economy 2009
• The G1, or what happens when you give a phone OS away for free 2008
• Three products in a pocket: the original iPhone 2007
• Nokia 3310: the phone designed with a smile 2000
• BlackBerry 850: the device that made email check you 1999
• IBM Simon, or the first computer you could also make calls on 1994
• The Nokia 2110, or how a dead guitarist's exercise became a ringtone 1994
• The DynaTAC 8000X, or the phone that finally left the car 1983
• Joel's handoff patent, or how the cellular network learned to keep a call alive 1972
• Touch-Tone: Bell's push-button phone and the day dialing became a command 1963
• The car phone, or how eighty pounds of vacuum tubes first put a telephone on the road 1946
• The call across the Atlantic, or how Rocky Point and Rugby shrank the ocean 1927
• The wheel that replaced the operator 1919
• The undertaker who put telephone operators out of a job 1892
• The New Haven exchange, or how a switchboard made from teapot lids wired a city 1878
• Bell's telephone, or how nine words traveled down a wire 1876