177 Fun Facts About Phone

What did Alexander Graham Bell say to his assistant in the first intelligible telephone call, on 10 March 1876?

'Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you' was the line; Bell later refused to keep a telephone in his study, calling his invention an intrusion on his real work.

In which city was Alexander Graham Bell born in 1847?

Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 3 March 1847; the family emigrated to Canada in 1870, and he died in Nova Scotia in 1922.

What happened across North American telephone networks during Bell's funeral in 1922?

Service observed a moment of silence: on 4 August 1922, as Bell was buried, every telephone in North America stopped for one minute in tribute.

Which Italian inventor's telephone work was acknowledged by a US House resolution in 2002?

Antonio Meucci demonstrated a voice-transmitting device in the 1850s; House Resolution 269 of June 2002 acknowledged his work, and Canada's parliament reaffirmed Bell days later.

Which German inventor transmitted voice by electric signals in 1861, fifteen years before Bell?

Johann Philipp Reis demonstrated his 'Telephon' to the Frankfurt Physical Society in October 1861, sending sound electrically fifteen years before Bell's 1876 patent.

Almon Strowger, who patented the automatic telephone exchange in 1891, worked in which trade?

Strowger was an undertaker in Kansas City who suspected switchboard operators of steering his customers to a rival; his 1891 patent led to the first automatic exchange at La Porte, Indiana, in 1892.

Why did old rotary dials carry letters as well as numbers?

The letters represented telephone exchange names: a number was remembered as REgent 7-3456, with the first two letters of the exchange dialled as digits.

Touch-Tone push-button dialling made its public debut at which event?

Touch-Tone dialling was demonstrated to the public at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair; Bell System commercial service began in Carnegie and Greensburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1963.

Which city introduced 999, the world's first emergency telephone number, on 30 June 1937?

London launched 999 on 30 June 1937, prompted by a 1935 Wimpole Street house fire in which callers could not reach the operator quickly enough.

The first 911 call in the United States was made in February 1968 from which small town?

Haleyville, Alabama, placed the first US 911 call on 16 February 1968, made by Alabama House Speaker Rankin Fite; Europe later settled on 112 in 1991.

Which number is the standard emergency number on GSM mobile networks worldwide and across the EU?

112 is the emergency number built into every GSM handset and adopted EU-wide in 1991; Australia uses 000 and Japan 110 for police, 119 for fire.

Which range of 555 numbers is officially reserved for fictional use in North American films and TV?

555-0100 to 555-0199 was set aside for fiction by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator in 1994; Ghostbusters' 555-2368 predates that reservation.

Who is credited with inventing the coin-operated payphone in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1889?

William Gray installed the first coin-operated payphone at a Hartford bank in 1889 and founded the Gray Telephone Pay Station Company; early models collected the coin after the call.

Britain's red telephone kiosks, including the K6 of 1935, were designed by which architect?

Giles Gilbert Scott designed the K2 kiosk in 1924 and the K6 for George V's 1935 Silver Jubilee; he also designed Liverpool's Anglican cathedral and Battersea Power Station.

Which 1960s spy comedy used a phone booth as a secret entrance to headquarters?

Get Smart (1965–70) opened with Maxwell Smart dropping into CONTROL headquarters through the floor of a phone booth; Superman used booths for costume changes.

How much did the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, the first handheld cell phone, cost at its 1984 launch?

The DynaTAC 8000X listed at $3,995 in 1984, roughly $12,000 in 2025 dollars, for a handset weighing close to 790 grams with an LED display.

What nickname did the DynaTAC's bulky shape earn it?

The brick phone, as users called it, received FCC approval on 21 September 1983; it stood 25 cm tall and weighed about 790 grams.

Which country launched the world's first commercial cellular network, in 1979?

The Nordic NMT system followed in 1981; digital GSM went live commercially in Finland in 1991.

What did the world's first SMS text message, sent on 3 December 1992, say?

'Merry Christmas' was typed by engineer Neil Papworth on a computer and sent over Vodafone's network to Richard Jarvis's Orbitel 901 handset on 3 December 1992.

How did German engineer Friedhelm Hillebrand arrive at the 160-character SMS limit?

He typed random sentences on a typewriter and counted: nearly all fitted in 160 characters, which also suited GSM's signalling channel; by 2007 about 2.4 billion subscribers were texting.

Which predictive-text system let people type words on a numeric keypad with one press per letter?

T9 (Text on 9 keys), developed by Tegic in the 1990s, guessed the intended word from one press per letter; a dictionary word could take more presses than 'gr8'.

Roughly how many Nokia 3310 handsets were sold after its launch in September 2000?

Around 126 million Nokia 3310s were sold after the September 2000 launch; the 133-gram handset's reputation for surviving anything became an internet meme.

Which game came pre-loaded on the Nokia 3310 and became an icon of early mobile gaming?

Snake II shipped on the Nokia 3310 alongside Pairs II, Space Impact and Bantumi; steering the growing snake around a monochrome screen became the icon of early mobile gaming.

The Motorola Razr V3, released in 2004, holds which sales record?

The Razr V3 is the best-selling clamshell phone of all time at about 130 million units; its 13 mm aluminium body made it a mid-2000s design icon.

Which Canadian company, based in Waterloo, Ontario, launched the first BlackBerry in 1999?

The first model was a two-way pager; at its 2011-12 peak the brand had about 85 million subscribers.

What addiction-themed nickname for the BlackBerry entered Webster's New World College Dictionary in 2006?

'CrackBerry' was Webster's New World College Dictionary's 2006 Word of the Year; President Obama kept his BlackBerry in office, and the company stopped designing its own phones in 2016.

By early 2016, roughly what share of the smartphone market did BlackBerry hold?

BlackBerry's share had fallen to about 0.2% by early 2016 as iPhone and Android took the market; its own web services were switched off in January 2022.

Which US carrier sold the IBM Simon Personal Communicator when it went on sale in 1994?

BellSouth Cellular sold the IBM Simon from August 1994 at $899 with a two-year contract; about 50,000 units were sold in six months.

Where did Steve Jobs unveil the first iPhone on 9 January 2007?

At Macworld Expo in San Francisco on 9 January 2007, Jobs teased three products – a widescreen iPod, a phone and an internet communicator – before revealing they were one.

How much did the 8 GB first-generation iPhone cost at launch, with a two-year AT&T contract?

The 8 GB iPhone launched at $599 with a two-year AT&T contract and the 4 GB at $499; Apple cut the 8 GB price to $399 that September.

Which magazine named the original iPhone its Invention of the Year for 2007?

Time magazine named the iPhone its Invention of the Year for 2007; about 6.1 million first-generation units sold before the iPhone 3G replaced it in July 2008.

Which start-up did Google buy in July 2005 in what was later called its 'best deal ever'?

Android Inc., a Palo Alto start-up founded in 2003, cost Google a reported $50 million in July 2005; executive David Lawee later called it the company's 'best deal ever'.

Which smartphone, launched on 23 September 2008, was the first to run Google's new OS?

The HTC Dream, sold by T-Mobile as the G1, was announced on 23 September 2008 and reached US shops on 22 October with Android 1.0 and a slide-out keyboard.

Google's mobile OS versions were named after desserts alphabetically until which release dropped the tradition?

Google said the sweet names did not translate well for international users; Cupcake, Donut and Eclair started the run.

Under which name did the DynaTAC's inventor company release the first popular flip phone in 1996?

The MicroTAC of 1989 had already shrunk the brick; the Razr followed the StarTAC's clamshell form in 2004.

Which pseudonym did Alexander Graham Bell use when writing for National Geographic magazine?

H. A. Largelamb is an anagram of A. Graham Bell; he was the National Geographic Society's second president, from 1898 to 1903.

How many patents did Alexander Graham Bell hold in his own name alone?

Bell held 18 patents in his name alone and 12 shared with collaborators, covering the telephone, the photophone, phonograph improvements, aerial vehicles and hydrofoils.

Which company handled the modern BlackBerry brand's phones under licence after 2016?

TCL Communication built and sold BlackBerry-branded Android phones such as the KEYone under licence from 2016 until the deal ended in 2020; BlackBerry's own services closed in January 2022.

Which country was the first to launch commercial GSM digital mobile service, in 1991?

Finland's Radiolinja opened the first commercial GSM network on 1 July 1991, and Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the first call; Nokia's 3310 later became the emblem of the GSM era.

How much did the 2017 relaunched Nokia 3310 cost at its unveiling?

The 2017 Nokia 3310 was unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for 49 euros, adding a 2.4-inch colour screen and a 2-megapixel camera to the classic shape.

The word 'telephone' combines Greek words meaning what?

Distant voice is the literal sense: tēle means far and phōnē means voice.

The tin-can 'lovers' phone' was studied in the 1660s by which British scientist?

Robert Hooke experimented with acoustic string telephones in the 1660s, noting in his 1665 Micrographia that a distended wire carried sound 'to a very considerable distance in an instant'.

Which company, formed in 1885, did Alexander Graham Bell co-found?

AT&T, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was formed on 3 March 1885 as the long-distance arm of American Bell; Bell's original Bell Telephone Company dated from 1877.

Which two women in Bell's family were deaf, profoundly shaping his work?

His mother, Eliza, began losing her hearing when he was about 12, and his wife, Mabel Hubbard, had been deaf since a childhood bout of scarlet fever.

Which famous deaf-blind author broke ground for Bell's Volta Bureau in 1893?

Helen Keller, then 12, turned the first sod for the Volta Bureau in Washington on 8 May 1893; Bell had founded it to gather knowledge relating to the deaf.

Besides the telephone, Bell did ground-breaking later work in hydrofoils and what other field?

His HD-4 hydrofoil set a water speed record in 1919.

Bell's assistant Thomas Watson later founded a company in which industry?

His Fore River yard became a major shipbuilder in World War II.

Elisha Gray built a rival telephone prototype in 1876 in which Illinois town?

Gray lived in Highland Park, north of Chicago, and filed a patent caveat for a liquid-transmitter telephone on 14 February 1876, the same day as Bell's application.

Which nautical greeting did Bell use to answer the telephone?

Bell favoured 'Ahoy, ahoy' as the telephone greeting; 'hello' won out, and The Simpsons' Mr Burns later revived 'ahoy-hoy' as a joke.

Who suggested 'Hello!' as a telephone greeting in an August 1877 letter?

Thomas Edison wrote on 15 August 1877 to T. B. A. David, president of Pittsburgh's Central District and Printing Telegraph Company, proposing 'Hello!' as the call on a telephone line.

Emma Nutt became the world's first female telephone operator in 1878 in which city?

Emma Nutt started at the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company on 1 September 1878; the teenage boys hired before her had been impatient, cursed and played pranks.

The first telephone speaking clock service began in 1933 in association with which institution?

The Paris Observatory's director Ernest Esclangon launched the first speaking clock, l'horloge parlante, on 14 February 1933; Britain's 'At the third stroke' service followed in 1936.

Party lines, shared telephone circuits, date to the first commercial switchboards of which year?

The first commercial switchboard opened in Connecticut on 28 January 1878 with 21 subscribers; party lines shared one circuit among several households to cut wiring costs.

Candlestick telephones, common from the 1890s to the 1940s, held the receiver where when idle?

The receiver hung in the switch hook fork on the side of the upright stand; lifting it closed the hook switch and connected the line.

The Western Electric model 500 was the Bell System's standard desk phone from 1950 until what event?

The model 500 remained standard until the 1984 divestiture broke up the Bell System; Western Electric built tens of millions, and rented sets then passed into customer ownership.

Which two keys did the model 2500 telephone add in 1968?

The model 2500 added the star and pound keys, completing the 12-button keypad; Touch-Tone had reached homes in 1963 with the ten-button model 1500.

The Princess telephone of 1959 was advertised with which slogan?

'It's little...It's lovely...It lights' sold the Princess phone's compact size and its light-up dial, which doubled as a bedroom night-light.

Which industrial designer's firm created the Trimline telephone, introduced in 1965?

Henry Dreyfuss Associates designed the Trimline of 1965, moving the dial into the handset; the firm had shaped Western Electric's model 302 and model 500 desk phones.

Rotary dials implement which signalling method?

Rotary dials use pulse dialling: as the wheel returns home it breaks the line once per unit of the digit, so dialling 5 sends five pulses.

Yellow pages directories organise businesses how?

Yellow pages list businesses by category, such as plumbers or florists; the first were printed on yellow paper in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1883 when a printer ran out of white stock.

On what date did AT&T and the Justice Department announce the Bell System breakup settlement?

On 8 January 1982 AT&T agreed with the Justice Department to divest its local operating companies, ending the antitrust case; the breakup took effect on 1 January 1984.

How many local Bell Operating Companies provided service under AT&T before the breakup?

Western Electric made almost all the equipment, designed at Bell Labs.

Which Western Electric plant near Chicago, opened in 1905, gave its name to a productivity effect?

Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, opened in 1905 and employed more than 40,000 people at its peak; the 1920s 'Hawthorne effect' studies of worker productivity were run there.

Bell Labs, credited with the transistor and laser, was acquired by which company in 2016?

Nokia took over Bell Labs through its 2016 purchase of Alcatel-Lucent.

Under what ticker symbol does AT&T trade on the New York Stock Exchange?

AT&T trades as 'T', one of the NYSE's single-letter tickers inherited from the original American Telephone and Telegraph listing; its headquarters is Whitacre Tower in Dallas.

The Carterfone connected the telephone system to what?

The Carterfone coupled a two-way radio to a telephone handset acoustically; the FCC's 1968 ruling in its favour let customers attach their own devices to the network.

TAT-1, the first transatlantic telephone cable, ran from Scotland to which Canadian province?

TAT-1 ran from Oban, Scotland, to Clarenville, Newfoundland, and was inaugurated on 25 September 1956; two parallel cables each carried one direction of speech.

How many simultaneous telephone calls could TAT-1 carry when it opened in 1956?

TAT-1 carried 35 simultaneous telephone calls on its 36 channels, the last split into up to 22 telegraph circuits; it opened on 25 September 1956.

Caller ID presentation was defined in a 1993 recommendation from which standards body?

ITU-T Recommendation Q.731.3 of 1993 defined calling line identification presentation for digital networks; US carriers had trialled Caller ID since 1984.

Phreak John Draper's 'Captain Crunch' nickname came from a cereal whistle emitting which tone?

The 2600 Hz tone told AT&T's network a trunk line was free.

Which two Apple founders did phone phreak John Draper befriend before Apple existed?

Draper built blue boxes that generated the network's control tones.

What did a 'blue box' let its illicit users do?

It generated the in-band signalling tones of the North American network.

Which magazine published Ron Rosenbaum's 1971 article 'Secrets of the Little Blue Box' about phreaking?

Esquire ran Ron Rosenbaum's 'Secrets of the Little Blue Box' in October 1971; it made John Draper famous and brought phreaking to the FBI's attention.

The Motorola DynaTAC offered how much talk time on a ten-hour charge?

The DynaTAC 8000X gave about 30 minutes of talk time and eight hours of standby after a ten-hour charge; its LED display could store 30 numbers.

Which much smaller phone largely replaced the DynaTAC after its 1989 introduction?

The MicroTAC of 1989 was the first flip-style pocket phone, about 350 grams against the DynaTAC's 790, and largely replaced it through the early 1990s.

Motorola was founded as Galvin Manufacturing in 1928 and adopted the Motorola name in which year?

Galvin Manufacturing became Motorola, Inc. in 1947, taking the name of its 1930 car radio; brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin had founded the firm in Chicago.

Martin Cooper made the first handheld cell phone call from a sidewalk in which city?

Cooper made the call on 3 April 1973 from Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, outside the New York Hilton, where Motorola was holding a press event.

The first non-employee to make a UK mobile phone call, on 1 January 1985, was which comedian?

Ernie Wise made the call from St Katharine Docks in London to Vodafone's headquarters, dressed in Dickensian costume for the network's launch day.

Vodafone grew out of the radio division of which British electronics company?

Racal-Millicom was 60% owned by Racal and 40% by Millicom.

Vodafone's UK headquarters campus is in which Berkshire town?

Vodafone's UK headquarters campus opened on the edge of Newbury in 2002; the company grew up in the town, where its first 1985 offices sat above a curry house.

Neil Papworth, sender of the first SMS in 1992, was born in which English town?

Neil Papworth was born in Reading, Berkshire, in 1970 and was a 22-year-old Sema Group engineer when he sent the first SMS; he later moved to Canada.

The 'M' in Kenya's M-Pesa stands for mobile; 'pesa' is Swahili for what?

'Pesa' is Swahili for money, so M-Pesa means mobile money; Safaricom and Vodafone launched the service in Kenya in March 2007.

Which Swedish company invented Bluetooth?

Ericsson engineer Jaap Haartsen developed Bluetooth in Lund in 1994; the name honours the 10th-century Danish king Harald Bluetooth, who united Scandinavian tribes.

Bluetooth's most common mode limits range to roughly what distance?

Class 2 Bluetooth, the usual mode in phones, caps output at 2.5 milliwatts for a range of roughly 10 metres; Class 1 at 100 milliwatts reaches about 100 metres.

Sony's mobile joint venture with a Swedish firm used a double-barrelled brand until which year?

Sony bought out Ericsson's half of Sony Ericsson in February 2012 and renamed the business Sony Mobile; handsets became simply 'Sony' Xperia models.

The 5G standard was first specified in which 3GPP document?

3GPP Release 15, frozen in 2018, first specified 5G New Radio; its air interface was designed to meet the ITU's IMT-2020 requirements.

GSM is a family of standards for which generation of cellular networks?

GSM is the dominant 2G standard, launched commercially in 1991 to replace first-generation analogue networks with digital voice and SMS.

What does the 'IMSI' stored on a SIM card identify?

SIM stands for subscriber identity module.

Iridium's satellite phone constellation has how many operational satellites?

Iridium's constellation uses 66 operational satellites in six polar orbital planes of eleven; the second-generation Iridium NEXT fleet launched 75, with nine as in-orbit spares.

Japan's i-mode mobile internet service was run by which operator?

NTT Docomo launched i-mode in February 1999; unlike WAP it offered colour web pages, e-mail and always-on packet data billed per packet.

The first commercial phone with a colour camera, released in Japan in May 1999, was made by whom?

Kyocera's Visual Phone VP-210 of May 1999 carried a 110,000-pixel colour camera and could send still images; Sharp's J-SH04 followed in November 2000.

The first emoji used purely for communication was what shape, on a Japanese pager?

A heart symbol on Japanese Pocket Bell pagers in 1995 was the first pictograph sent purely to communicate feeling; Shigetaka Kurita then designed a 176-emoji set in 1999.

The Japanese word 'emoji' literally combines 'e' (picture) with 'moji', meaning what?

'Moji' means character or letter, so emoji is literally 'picture character'; the resemblance to the English word 'emotion' is coincidence.

Nokia was originally established in 1865 as what kind of business?

Fredrik Idestam founded Nokia in 1865 as a pulp mill on the Tammerkoski rapids at Tampere, opening a second mill by the town of Nokia in 1868; rubber and cables came later.

The Nokia tune comes from Gran Vals, a 1902 guitar piece by which composer?

Francisco Tárrega wrote Gran Vals in 1902; a phrase from it became the Nokia tune on the 2110 in 1994, the first identifiable musical ringtone on a mobile phone.

Roughly how many Nokia 1100 handsets were sold, making it the best-selling phone ever?

Launched in late 2003, it was Nokia's cheapest phone at the time.

The Nokia 3210 was notably the first consumer phone without what?

Alastair Curtis designed it at Nokia's Los Angeles Design Center.

The Nokia 8110's curved shape earned it what nickname?

The Nokia 8110 was nicknamed the banana phone for its curved body; it featured in The Matrix in 1999, and its sliding keypad cover made it an early 'slider'.

The Nokia 8210, unveiled at Paris Fashion Week in 1999, weighed how much?

The Nokia 8210 weighed 79 grams and was launched at Paris Fashion Week in October 1999 as Nokia's smallest and lightest phone to date, with swappable Xpress-on covers.

The Nokia 9000 Communicator of 1996 ran on which processor?

The 9000 Communicator ran a 24 MHz Intel i386 (80386EX) processor with 8 MB of memory under PEN/GEOS 3.0, opening to a full QWERTY keyboard.

Nokia's N-Gage of 2003 was officially nicknamed what?

Nokia marketed the N-Gage as a 'game deck'; critics mocked its sideways-talking 'taco' shape, and games came on MultiMediaCards inserted behind the battery cover.

The Nokia N9 was the only Nokia phone to run which Linux-based operating system?

The N9 of 2011 ran MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan with a buttonless swipe interface; Nokia's Microsoft partnership that February meant no successor followed.

The Lumia name comes from a Finnish word meaning what?

Lumia derives from the Finnish 'lumi', meaning snow; the first models, the Lumia 800 and 710, ran Windows Phone 7.5 in late 2011.

The 2017 Nokia 3310 revival was developed by which company?

HMD Global, the Finnish company that took the Nokia phone licence in 2016, revealed the new 3310 at Mobile World Congress in February 2017.

Luxury phone maker Vertu, founded in 1998, was based in which English county?

Vertu was headquartered at Church Crookham in Hampshire, where its handsets were hand-assembled; founder Frank Nuovo had been Nokia's chief designer.

Symbian OS descended from EPOC, an operating system developed by which British company?

Psion developed EPOC for its Series 5 palmtops; the 1998 Symbian joint venture with Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola turned it into Symbian OS.

The Nokia 7650 of 2002 was Nokia's first device on which software platform?

The 7650 was the first Series 60 (S60) phone, running Symbian 6.1 with a built-in VGA camera and a slide-out keypad.

Which 2013 handset was the first to run the BlackBerry 10 operating system?

The all-touch BlackBerry Z10 launched on 30 January 2013 as the first BlackBerry 10 device; the keyboard-equipped Q10 followed that spring.

Mike Lazaridis founded RIM after answering a 1984 call for proposals from which company?

General Motors' Canadian arm awarded the new company a $600,000 contract for an industrial display system in 1984, and Lazaridis left the University of Waterloo weeks before graduating.

The IBM Simon of 1994 was manufactured by which Japanese company?

Mitsubishi Electric built the IBM Simon Personal Communicator, which went on sale in August 1994 with a touchscreen, fax, e-mail and a calendar.

The IBM Simon ran an operating system compatible with what?

Simon ran Datalight's ROM-DOS, an MS-DOS-compatible system, on a 16 MHz Vadem processor; extra software such as DispatchIt loaded through its PCMCIA slot.

Under what name did T-Mobile sell the Danger Hiptop in the US?

T-Mobile sold the Danger Hiptop as the Sidekick from 2002; its screen swivelled 180 degrees to reveal a QWERTY keyboard.

The Treo smartphone line was originally developed by which company?

Handspring, founded by Palm's creators Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, launched the Treo line in 2002; Palm absorbed Handspring in 2003 and kept the name.

Which device replaced the Treo series in June 2009?

The Palm Pre, launched on Sprint on 6 June 2009, ran the new webOS with card-style multitasking and a slide-out keyboard.

Palm's webOS, first built for smartphones, was later acquired by which company for TVs?

LG bought webOS from HP in 2013 and made it the software of its smart TVs; HP had open-sourced it after buying Palm in 2010.

The Psion Organiser II of 1986 is considered the first usable what?

The Organiser II is regarded as the first practical PDA, a pocket computer with a diary, database and programmable OPL language that rivalled the paper Filofax.

Windows Phone 7 launched in which month and year?

Windows Phone 7 launched in October 2010, reaching Europe and Australia on 21 October and the US on 8 November; its Metro tiles targeted consumers rather than enterprise.

On what date was Apple's first-generation handset released in the United States?

The iPhone went on sale in the US on 29 June 2007 at 6 pm local time, with queues outside Apple and AT&T stores; development had begun in secret in 2005.

Which company made the system-on-chip in Apple's first-generation handset?

Samsung Electronics fabricated the 90 nm S5L8900 system-on-chip, an ARM11 running at 412 MHz, that drove the first iPhone's 3.5-inch multi-touch display.

The App Store opened on July 10, 2008 with how many apps?

The App Store opened on 10 July 2008 with about 500 apps, a day before the iPhone 3G went on sale; Apple counted 10 million downloads in the first weekend.

Which iPhone model number did Apple never use?

Apple never made an iPhone 9: the 2017 line went from iPhone 8 to iPhone X, the Roman ten marking the tenth anniversary, and iPhone 11 followed in 2019.

Face ID debuted in November 2017 on which Apple handset?

The iPhone X, released on 3 November 2017, replaced Touch ID with Face ID's TrueDepth camera and dropped the home button.

Apple's Lightning connector replaced the 30-pin dock connector alongside which handset in 2012?

The iPhone 5 of September 2012 introduced the 8-pin reversible Lightning connector; Apple moved iPhones to USB-C with the iPhone 15 in 2023.

How many pins does the reversible USB-C connector have?

It supersedes all previous USB connectors and Lightning.

The 'Dynamic Island' display cutout debuted on which Apple handsets in September 2022?

The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max of September 2022 introduced the Dynamic Island, a pill-shaped cutout that animates around alerts, replacing the notch used since the iPhone X.

Apple's mobile operating system iOS was originally known by what name?

It was called iPhone OS for its first three versions; Apple renamed it iOS with version 4 in June 2010, after licensing the name from Cisco.

Jony Ive joined Apple in which year, before Steve Jobs's return?

Jony Ive joined Apple in September 1992 from the London consultancy Tangerine; in 1997, as he considered quitting, Jon Rubinstein persuaded him to stay by promising Apple would 'make history'.

Android is based on a modified version of which kernel?

Android runs on a modified Linux kernel beneath Google's own user space and runtime; the first release, Android 1.0, shipped in September 2008.

Google Play was formerly known as what?

Google Play was called Android Market from its 2008 launch until March 2012, when Google merged it with its music and ebook stores under the new name.

Google's Pixel phones replaced which earlier Google phone line in 2016?

The Nexus line of Google-branded phones, from the 2010 Nexus One to the 2015 Nexus 6P, ended when the Pixel and Pixel XL launched in October 2016.

The Essential Phone of 2017 was designed by which Android co-founder?

Andy Rubin, who had left Google in 2014, launched the Essential Phone in 2017 with a titanium and ceramic body and a snap-on 360-degree camera.

Amazon's Fire Phone of 2014 used how many infrared corner cameras for its Dynamic Perspective effect?

Four infrared-assisted cameras at the screen corners tracked the user's head for Dynamic Perspective, while a fifth front camera took selfies; the Fire Phone was dropped in 2015.

The HTC First of 2013 was the only Android phone pre-loaded with what?

The HTC First shipped with Facebook Home, a launcher that put the news feed on the lock screen; AT&T cut its price from $99 to 99 cents within weeks.

Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 of 2016 was the company's first phone with which connector?

The Galaxy Note 7 of August 2016 was Samsung's first phone with a USB-C port and brought back the microSD slot; battery fires forced a full recall that October.

The Samsung Galaxy Fold opens like a book to reveal a display of what size?

It was previewed in 2018 as the Infinity Flex.

From the Galaxy S22 through the S25 line, which Galaxy S model had a built-in S Pen slot?

The Ultra carried a built-in S Pen slot from the Galaxy S22 Ultra of 2022, inheriting the Note line's stylus; the Plus and base models went without.

Huawei was founded in Shenzhen in 1987 by which former PLA officer?

Ren Zhengfei, a former People's Liberation Army engineer, founded Huawei in Shenzhen in 1987 with about 21,000 yuan, initially reselling phone switches.

Xiaomi, sometimes called the 'Apple of China', was founded in 2010 by whom?

Lei Jun, formerly chief executive of software firm Kingsoft, co-founded Xiaomi in Beijing in April 2010; its first phone, the Mi 1, arrived in 2011.

In 2025, where did Xiaomi rank among the world's smartphone sellers?

Xiaomi ranked third in 2025 smartphone shipments behind Samsung and Apple, a position it had held every full year since 2021.

OnePlus's first flagship, the OnePlus One, shipped with which operating system?

The OnePlus One shipped in 2014 with Cyanogen Inc.'s CyanogenMod 11S, soon rebranded Cyanogen OS; OnePlus built its own OxygenOS after the partnership soured in 2015.

Which OnePlus co-founder left in 2020 to start the London-based brand Nothing?

Carl Pei left OnePlus in October 2020 and founded Nothing in London; its first product was the Ear (1) earbuds in 2021, followed by the Phone (1) in 2022.

Ethical smartphone maker Fairphone is based in which country?

Fairphone is based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and began in 2013; its modular phones, such as the Fairphone 4, earned iFixit's 10/10 repairability score.

Motorola's original Razr line was revived in 2019 as what kind of device?

The 2019 Razr revived the V3's clamshell shape as a foldable, with a 6.2-inch plastic OLED screen that closes in half like the original flip phone.

Which Samsung phone of 2011 popularised the 'phablet' category with its 5.3-inch screen?

The original Galaxy Note of October 2011, with a 5.3-inch screen and S Pen stylus, sold more than 10 million units and made 'phablet' a category.

WhatsApp was launched in which month and year?

It is now owned by Meta Platforms and requires a phone number to register.

Skype was created by Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis and four developers from which country?

Skype's software was written by Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, Jaan Tallinn and Toivo Annus and launched in 2003; Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011.

Telegram launched for iOS on 14 August of which year?

The Android version followed that October.

WeChat, China's 'app for everything', is developed by which company?

Tencent launched WeChat (Weixin) in January 2011 as a messaging app; it grew into payments and mini-programs and topped 1 billion monthly users in 2018.

In the early 2020s, KakaoTalk held roughly what share of South Korea's messaging market?

KakaoTalk was used by roughly 90 percent or more of South Korea's smartphone owners in the early 2020s; Kakao launched it in March 2010.

Which South Korean internet company's Japanese arm created the messaging app Line in 2011?

NHN Japan, the Japanese subsidiary of South Korea's Naver, built Line after the March 2011 earthquake disrupted phone networks; it launched that June.

Zoom was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan, a former engineer at which company?

Eric Yuan had led engineering for Cisco's Webex before founding Zoom in 2011; the software launched in January 2013.

Signal is developed by what kind of organisation?

Its software is free and open-source.

Crazy Frog, marketed by ringtone seller Jamba!, had a hit covering which film theme?

'Axel F', Harold Faltermeyer's Beverly Hills Cop theme, became Crazy Frog's 2005 single and reached number one in the UK and across much of Europe.

The Crazy Frog sound was created by Daniel Malmedahl imitating what?

Daniel Malmedahl recorded himself imitating a two-stroke moped engine in 1997; Erik Wernquist animated the character, first called The Annoying Thing, in 2003.

Lady Gaga originally wrote 'Telephone' for which artist, who recorded a demo?

Gaga wrote 'Telephone' for Britney Spears, who recorded a demo for her 2008 album Circus but did not use it; Beyoncé featured on the 2010 single instead.

'Call Me Maybe' by Carly Rae Jepsen was originally written in what genre?

Jepsen and Tavish Crowe wrote 'Call Me Maybe' as a folk song; producer Josh Ramsay of Marianas Trench reworked it into the 2011 pop hit.

Drake's 'Hotline Bling' appeared as a bonus track on which 2016 album?

'Hotline Bling', released in July 2015, was added as a bonus track to Views in 2016; Director X's video spawned countless parodies.

In the 2002 thriller Phone Booth, who plays the publicist trapped by a sniper's call?

Colin Farrell plays publicist Stu Shepard, held in a Manhattan phone booth by Kiefer Sutherland's unseen sniper; Joel Schumacher directed from a Larry Cohen script.

In 2004's Cellular, a kidnapped teacher randomly phones a young man played by whom?

Chris Evans plays Ryan, the slacker whose phone picks up Kim Basinger's kidnapped teacher; the kidnappers turn out to be dirty cops led by Jason Statham's character.

Which Bell Labs scientist shared the 1978 physics Nobel for detecting the cosmic microwave background?

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected the cosmic microwave background with a Bell Labs horn antenna at Holmdel, New Jersey, in 1964 and shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The 'lovers' phone' and other early mechanical telephones transmitted speech through what?

Mechanical acoustic telephones carried speech as vibrations along a taut string or through speaking pipes, centuries before electric telephones.

Answering machines are also known in the UK by which trade-name-derived term?

'Ansaphone' began as a trade name and became the generic British word for an answering machine, a device kept at the user's own premises, unlike network voicemail.

Modern cordless phone standards such as DECT and PHS blur the line with mobiles by supporting what?

DECT and Japan's PHS support cell handoff, passing a call between base stations as the user moves; PHS even offered public service and limited international roaming.

A payphone operator typically pays the property owner what?

Payphone operators typically pay the site owner rent or a share of call revenue in return for the space and power; the phone itself stays the operator's property.

Which 1989 comedy used a phone booth as a time machine?

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) sent its heroes through history in a phone booth supplied by Rufus; Doctor Who's TARDIS, by contrast, is a police box.

The 'phone connector' audio jack was invented in the late 19th century for what use?

The quarter-inch phone connector was designed in 1878 for plugging cords into telephone switchboards; the same form later went onto headphones and electric guitars.

What is 'roaming' in mobile telephony?

Roaming means using a phone outside its native network, typically abroad, where it registers on a partner operator's cells and the home carrier is billed.

Which 2007 Nseries flagship had a two-way slide revealing media keys one way and a keypad the other?

The N95 of 2007 slid up for a keypad and down for media keys, with a 5-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera and GPS, running S60 3rd Edition on Symbian OS 9.2.

Which model did the 3210 succeed in Nokia's consumer line in 1999?

The 5110 had been introduced in April 1998.

Al Gross patented the first telephone pager system in 1949 for use by which profession, which initially resisted being permanently on call?

Physicians were the intended users, though Gross said there was initial resistance to being permanently on call; a New York paging service for doctors launched in 1950 at $12 a month.

Which company made the Pageboy, a tone-only pager popular in the 1960s and 1970s?

Motorola's Pageboy, introduced in the mid-1960s, was a tone-only pager: it beeped and the carrier then phoned an office for the message; Motorola led the pager market for decades.

Which US state received the very first area code, 201, under AT&T's 1947 numbering plan?

New Jersey got 201, and the second code, 202, went to the District of Columbia; the first customer-dialed long-distance call using an area code was made from Englewood, NJ in 1951.

'Nomophobia', the fear of being without a working mobile phone, was coined in a 2008 study commissioned by which organisation?

The UK's Post Office commissioned the study, in which YouGov found about 53% of more than 2,000 mobile users felt anxious when they lost their phone, ran out of battery or had no signal.

In which country did the first known written use of the word 'selfie' appear, in a 2002 forum post?

The poster described a drunken fall at a 21st birthday; Oxford Dictionaries named 'selfie' its 2013 word of the year and credited the Australian origin.

The first telephone directory, a single piece of cardboard listing 50 subscribers, was issued in 1878 in which Connecticut city?

New Haven's 1878 directory had no numbers and no alphabetical order; a Lowell doctor later suggested numbering phones in case operators caught measles.

Which country became the first with an electronic telephone directory in 1981, delivered on the Minitel videotex terminals?

France put its directory on Minitel in 1981, and it was simply called '11' after the access number dialled to reach it.

'Phubbing', snubbing someone for your phone, was coined in 2012 for which Australian reference work?

Ad agency McCann coined 'phubbing' in 2012 for the Macquarie Dictionary, gathering lexicographers and poets at the University of Sydney, then spread it through the Stop Phubbing campaign.