The Evolution of Wireless Technology

This month, we celebrate the 40th birthday of the cellphone.  It was on April 3rd, 1973, when Motorola Engineer Martin Cooper placed the first call from a cellular telephone. To say that “much has changed in four decades” is an understatement. Then, it was a technological triumph to make a phone call, untethered, from a device that weighed so much that it came with its own suitcase.  Fast forward 40 years, and we now have our choice when it comes to a widerange of seemingly weightless smartphones that not only put power of a super computer into the palm of our hands, but give us a choice of four operating systems – Windows, Apple, Android or BlackBerry.  Outfitted with thousands of apps to help us become more efficient, knowledgeable, and updated on just about whatever interests us most at the time, the cellphone we first came to know back inApril of ’73 seems like a very distant memory.  And, today our choices are no longer limited to cellphones or smartphones, with tablets and other devices that provide us with seamless connectivity to the Internet.  This new category of connected devices, or what some call the“Internet of Things,” is the next wave in mobile technology.  At the end of 2012, Samsung introduced the world’s first connected camera, the Samsung Galaxy Camera, powered by the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network. With a super-fast, embedded 4G LTE connection, you can upload high quality, large MB photos and HD videos you take on the device directly to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.  The genius of this device is that it eliminates the “wait” involved in plugging your camera into your computer or removing its memory card to transfer and send your photos.  You can immediately share, as you shoot, high-quality photos like a pro.  Connected devices, like the Samsung Galaxy Camera, are a new and growing trend, and represent the future of wireless, a future where we’ll have access to a whole host of connected devices and services that can help us track ourfitness goals, manage our home automation, diagnose problems with our cars, measure the intensity of a football player’s hits through a helmet equipped with wireless sensors, and improve factory performance. Having a device that connects to the Internet over a robust 4G LTE network is essential for making life more convenient, safe and efficient. So here’s to innovation and the next 40 years.