Cell Phones: Multitasking Radio

Permalink: Cell Phones: Multitasking Radio by Kathryn Lang

Cell Phones Are Just Sophisticated Radios.

When is a phone not really a phone – when it is actually a cell phone. All those annoying little phones you hear buzzing where ever you go these days are (drum roll please) radios. Just knowing this takes a little bit of the fun out of the devices. Never fear, there is more to these radios than just the transistors of old.

But let’s start at the beginning.

The original mobile communicators were called radio phones. Just like with any radio, there needed to be a transmitter. This meant that each car had to lug around a transmitter large enough to cover the 40 or 50 miles needed to reach a tower. Unlike today, each town or city only had one central antenna tower.

If the bulky equipment wasn’t enough to deter consumers, the lack of channels available for calls would probably do the trick. Each antenna tower could only support around 25 channels. There just wasn’t enough space to go around.

The birth of the cell phone changed everything and opened to world to mobile communications.

One of the first changes that came about was the addition of towers. Cities no longer sport a central tower, but are divided into smaller “cells” with a tower for each cell. This increases the range of the phones that are used. The cell towers eliminate the need for users to carry around large transmitters. The greatest benefit to the multiple towers is that more callers can use the towers simultaneously.

The cell phone has expanded well beyond the original use of just a mobile telecommunications device. The hand held minicomputers serve multiple functions for its users. Depending on the model that you buy and the software that you add on to it, mobile phones can store contact information, keep a yearly calendar and give notice of upcoming events, can be set as an alarm clock, be used to make to-do lists, get information from the internet, check emails, or just play games. Many people are also using their phones for still cameras, video cameras, PDA’s, MP3 players, and even GPS receivers.

The cell phone may just be a radio, but it is definitely a radio that has grown into multi-tasking.