This is a Phone… Until Now!

The cell phone has gone through many transformations since the first of its kind, the DynaTAC 800x, hit the shelves in 1983. The 35 years of development since has brought us to the sleek and sophisticated smartphones of today and Samsung has taken the next step in the evolution with its latest S-Series smartphone.
 
Though the first cell phone call was made on 3 April 1973, it took a further 10 years of improvements before it could be released to the public. This phone was as large as a brick and almost as heavy, offering a meagre 30 minutes of talk time.
 
Over the years a considerable amount of time and money has been invested into research and development (R&D) to transform the cell phone into what we see today – a small, light, powerful and smart handset. It is a device that has become such an integrated part of our lives that few of us can do without one.
 
“There have been many updates to these devices of which the various form factors were most visible. We saw the ‘candybar’, the ‘flip or clamshell’, the ‘slider’, those with *‘QWERTY’ keypads and the current full touch-screen phones of today,” says Craige Fleisher, Director Integrated Mobility at Samsung South Africa.
 
The development of the cell phone also brought with it numerous innovations. From liquid crystal displays (LCDs) to brighter active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) colour touch-screens that were at first resistive (stylus or pen driven) and then capacitive (operated by fingertip).
 
We saw digital cameras and video cameras be incorporated, as well as media players being introduced. More memory, faster processors and longer lasting batteries enabled features such as Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation, easy Internet access and the ability to run the great variety of third-party software components or applications over the years. There were many more improvements that brought us to the smartphone era.
 
The term “smartphone” was coined in 2000 and with this term came the next level of mobile phone technology. With all of the above mentioned breakthrough innovations being adopted by all smartphone manufacturers we’ve started seeing one smartphone becoming relatively indistinguishable from another; similar to all the rest and with little change.
 
“We have become so used to having a smartphone in our pockets that can do what any other smartphone can do, too… until now!” says Fleischer. “On 29 March 2017, we will unbox our latest Galaxy S-Series smartphone and introduce the phone of the future to the world.”
 
The long awaited unboxing will be streamed live over the Internet and South Africans can watch as the smartphone of the future is revealed. Tune in to the event at 17:00 Central Africa Time (CAT) on Wednesday 29 March by visiting www.samsung.com/galaxy to share in the experience as Samsung takes the next step in the evolution of the smartphone.
 
*QWERTY: Keyboard layout for Latin script