99 Fun Facts About Smartphones

Which device, released in 1994, is retrospectively described as the first true smartphone?

The IBM Simon could send faxes and email, but a battery lasting about an hour and a steep price held sales to about 50,000.

Which wireless technology found in smartphones is named after a 10th-century Danish king?

Bluetooth began as a placeholder: Intel's Jim Kardach borrowed the name of King Harald Bluetooth, who united Denmark, because the tech would unite PCs and phones.

Which Motorola engineer made the first public call from a handheld cellphone, on a Manhattan street?

Martin Cooper dialed his chief rival, Joel Engel at AT&T's Bell Labs, to tell him he was calling from a real handheld cellphone.

Which 'brick' phone of the early 1980s was the first handheld cellphone sold to the public?

The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X needed ten more years after the 1973 prototype call to clear technical and regulatory hurdles before it went on sale.

Which iPhone's 'antennagate' reception problem led Apple to hand out free cases?

The iPhone 4's steel rim doubled as its antenna, so gripping the lower-left corner could weaken the signal and drop calls.

What does 'SIM' stand for in the SIM card used by mobile phones?

Subscriber Identity Module: the card holds the identity the network uses to recognise you, so moving it moves your subscription to another phone.

Who unveiled the first iPhone at Macworld on 9 January 2007?

Steve Jobs announced three products, a widescreen iPod, a phone and an internet communicator, then revealed they were one device.

Which Microsoft CEO laughed in 2007 that the iPhone was 'the most expensive phone in the world'?

Steve Ballmer said business customers wouldn't want it because it had no keyboard, which made it a poor email machine.

With which US carrier did Apple secretly develop the original iPhone at an estimated cost of $150 million?

Cingular, later AT&T Mobility, gave Apple free rein after the disappointing Motorola ROKR collaboration.

After scratches appeared on a plastic prototype screen, which company did Apple ask for the first iPhone's glass?

Corning revived a toughened glass left on its R&D shelf, and it shipped on the first iPhone before being branded Gorilla Glass.

After cutting the 8 GB iPhone from $599 to $399 in 2007, what did Apple give angry early buyers?

Store credit: after 'hundreds of emails' about the $200 price cut, Apple gave early iPhone buyers $100 to spend at its stores.

What reason did Apple give for leaving the charger out of iPhone 12 boxes?

To cut waste and emissions: Apple said the slimmer box let 70% more iPhones fit on each shipping pallet.

Android is based on a modified version of which kernel?

Linux: in 2017 Google got long-term Linux kernels supported for six years, not two, because the old window almost ran out before Android phones shipped.

Which Android co-founder had earlier created the T-Mobile Sidekick?

Andy Rubin's startup first built an operating system for digital cameras, then switched to phones as camera growth slowed.

What made Google's Android team scrap its BlackBerry-like prototype phone in 2007?

Apple unveiling the iPhone made one Android engineer think 'We're going to have to start over', and the team switched its focus to a touchscreen prototype.

For years, major Android versions were named alphabetically after what?

Desserts and sweets: from Cupcake to Pie, until Google dropped the names because English dessert words weren't 'inclusive' for users worldwide.

The Play Store, launched in March 2012, replaced which earlier app store name?

Android Market was folded into Google Play with Google Music and the Google eBookstore, so one store now sold apps, songs and ebooks.

Which 2016 smartphone game did the US Holocaust Memorial Museum ask visitors to stop playing inside?

Pokémon Go put capture spots at real landmarks, memorials included, so players hunted creatures inside the museum until Niantic removed such sites.

Which photo app, launched only for iPhone in 2010, did Facebook buy for about $1 billion in 2012?

Instagram began as Burbn, a location check-in app, until its founders cut it back to the photo sharing its users liked most.

Which Samsung phone was recalled worldwide in 2016 because its batteries could catch fire?

The Galaxy Note 7's replacement units, fitted with batteries from a different supplier, caught fire too, so Samsung stopped making it.

In the 2011 Apple-Samsung patent fight, which Samsung phone did Apple set beside an iPhone 3GS in court images?

The original Galaxy S picture had been shortened and narrowed to match the iPhone 3GS, and Samsung accused Apple of misleading the court.

Which Canadian company, founded in Waterloo, Ontario, created the BlackBerry?

Research In Motion renamed itself BlackBerry in 2013, as the brand it had made famous lost ground to the iPhone and Android.

Why was the BlackBerry pager given its name?

Its keys resembled the fruit: the tiny buttons looked like a blackberry's drupelets, and thumb-typing on them became a corporate email habit.

Which US president kept using a specially secured BlackBerry while in office?

Barack Obama insisted on keeping his BlackBerry after his inauguration despite security objections, so he used a model specially enhanced by the NSA.

Which operating system, descended from Psion's EPOC and used mainly by Nokia, led smartphones until the end of 2010?

Symbian led until the end of 2010, the year Samsung and Sony Ericsson abandoned it as iOS and Android took over.

In February 2011, Nokia announced it would adopt which company's operating system as its primary smartphone platform?

Microsoft's Windows Phone won out because CEO Stephen Elop said Android gave Nokia too little room to stand out from rivals.

Which Microsoft music-player brand launched in 2006 to take on Apple's iPod?

Zune never made much impact, trailing even SanDisk's Sansa in US share, and Microsoft stopped making the players in 2011.

In 2017 Apple admitted slowing some older iPhones with worn batteries in order to prevent what?

Sudden shutdowns: Apple quietly throttled iPhones with worn batteries to stop them switching off, and US states later said it had hidden the problem.

Which hugely popular game came pre-loaded on the Nokia 3310?

Snake II belonged to a Snake series whose success on Nokia phones revived snake games and signalled a new era of mobile gaming.

The world's first automatic analogue cellular network was launched in 1979 for car phones in which city?

Tokyo's car-phone service, run by NTT, later spread across Japan and was the world's first full-scale cellular system.

What did the first SMS text message say when it reached a Vodafone boss at a 1992 party?

Merry Christmas: engineer Neil Papworth sent it from a computer, and the recipient, Richard Jarvis, never replied.

Which country launched the first GSM network, Radiolinja, in 1991?

Finland's former prime minister Harri Holkeri made the network's first official call, and Nokia later admitted part of that day's show ran over an analogue backup line.

What does the 'G' stand for in mobile network names like 4G and 5G?

Generation: first-generation networks were analogue, and the second generation's switch to digital brought encrypted calls and text messages.

Who is credited with the well-known late-1990s DoCoMo emoji set for i-mode?

Shigetaka Kurita designed 176 icons influenced by manga and emoticons, and New York's Museum of Modern Art later added the set to its collection.

Which emoji did Oxford Dictionaries name its 2015 Word of the Year?

Face with Tears of Joy was the most used emoji of 2015, and Oxford said it embodied the 'playfulness and intimacy' of emoji culture.

What nickname did smartphones with unusually large screens earn in the early 2010s?

Phablets blended 'phone' and 'tablet', but the word faded as nearly every flagship phone grew that big.

Which 2016 phone was the first iPhone without a headphone jack?

The Apple iPhone 7's jackless design was mocked by Samsung and Google, and both later dropped the jack from their own phones.

Which iPhone introduced Touch ID, a fingerprint sensor built into its home button?

The iPhone 5s had barely gone on sale when Germany's Chaos Computer Club fooled its Touch ID sensor with a fake fingerprint copied from a photo.

Which hit game did Apple pull from the App Store in 2020 after its maker added its own payment option?

Fortnite's maker, Epic Games, had added direct payments to dodge Apple's 30% cut, and it answered the ban by suing Apple.

Which sensor, fitted to Samsung flagships from 2012 and iPhones from 2014, helps a phone estimate altitude?

A barometer tracks changes in air pressure, so the iPhone 6's Health app could show how many flights of stairs you had climbed.

Which sensor lets a smartphone act as a digital compass?

Accelerometers and gyroscopes handle screen rotation, and an RGB sensor tunes screen colour.

Which phone line did Google launch in 2016 to replace its Nexus phones?

Pixel phones went after the iPhone at premium prices, and critics said Nexus fans hoping for a cheaper Google phone would be disappointed.

Why did the iPhone 15 swap Apple's Lightning port for USB-C?

To meet an EU law: Apple had warned that forcing one type of connector on phones would stifle innovation, but the bloc made USB-C mandatory.

At its 2007 iPhone keynote, which accessory did Apple say nobody wants?

The stylus had come with Apple's own Newton handheld, which Apple scrapped in 1998, and the iPhone was built for fingers instead.

Which 2003 Nokia device tried to be both a mobile phone and a handheld game console?

The N-Gage had its speaker and microphone on its edge, so callers held it side-on against the cheek, mocked as talking into a taco.

Which fashion house teamed up with LG on the first phone with a capacitive touchscreen?

The LG Prada reached shops before the iPhone, and an LG executive later claimed Apple had stolen the idea from it.

Which Chinese phone maker lost the right to preinstall Google's Play Store after US sanctions?

Huawei, then the world's second-largest phone maker, also sold its budget Honor brand in 2020 to help it survive the sanctions.

What was the first Android phone, a horizontal slider released in October 2008?

HTC Dream kept a slide-out keyboard because Android's team doubted people would take to typing on a screen without physical keys.

What replaced the home button when Apple dropped it with the iPhone X?

Swipe gestures took over, since dropping the button let the iPhone X's screen stretch nearly edge to edge, without the old chin below it.

Which hit mobile game did Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen pull from app stores in 2014 at the height of its fame?

Flappy Bird was earning around $50,000 a day from adverts when Nguyen took it down, saying he felt guilty about how addictive it had become.

Which Keanu Reeves film made a star of the Nokia 8110, the curved slider nicknamed the 'banana phone'?

The Matrix used a modified handset whose cover sprang open at the press of a button, a trick the real 8110 could not do; the spring only arrived on a later Nokia model.

Which smartphone-era word, first recorded on an Australian web forum in 2002, was Oxford's Word of the Year for 2013?

Selfie was traced back to a forum post in which an Australian man apologised for the poor focus of a photo he had taken of himself.

Which online retailer took a $170 million write-down after its 3D-screened Fire Phone flopped in 2014?

Amazon cut the contract price from $199 to 99 cents just six weeks after launch, and stopped making the Fire Phone the following summer.

Which square barcode, now scanned by phone cameras, was invented at Denso Wave in 1994 to label car parts?

QR code is short for quick-response code. Engineer Masahiro Hara devised it for a Japanese car-parts maker, long before any phone could scan one.

Which everyday text-editing feature did the iPhone lack for two years, until a 2009 software update added it?

Copy and paste arrived with iPhone OS 3, as a bubble that pops up when a user presses and holds on text; picture messaging was missing at launch too.

Which animated ringtone character topped charts across Europe in 2005 with a cover of the Beverly Hills Cop theme?

Crazy Frog began with a 17-year-old Swedish student recording his impression of a two-stroke engine; an animator later gave the noise a face and a ringtone seller did the rest.

What name, coined for a 2008 UK Post Office study, describes the fear of being without a working mobile phone?

Nomophobia is short for 'no mobile phone phobia'. The survey behind it found about 53% of users felt anxious when they lost their phone, ran out of battery or had no signal.

Which messaging app, founded by former Yahoo employees Jan Koum and Brian Acton, did Facebook buy for about $19 billion?

WhatsApp was only five years old when the deal was struck in 2014: Koum had incorporated the company in California in February 2009.

Which voice assistant started life as a spin-off from a California research institute's artificial intelligence project?

Siri began as a standalone download in the App Store; Apple bought the start-up behind it, built the assistant into the system and then removed the original app.

Which app, launched in 2011 by Stanford students under the name Picaboo, made disappearing photo messages popular?

Snapchat grew out of a classmate's idea for pictures that delete themselves; Reggie Brown, who suggested it, was pushed out of the company within months of launch.

Which crowd-sourced navigation app, developed in Israel as FreeMap, did Google buy for about $1.3 billion in 2013?

Waze began in 2006 as a community project to build a free digital map of Israel in Hebrew, with ordinary drivers supplying the data.

Which ultra-thin Motorola flip phone, unveiled in 2004, was America's most popular cell phone for three years running?

Razr V3 had an aluminium body and a keypad cut from a single wafer of metal, and it led US sales in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Which type of sensor stops a smartphone's touchscreen reacting to accidental taps when the handset is held to the ear?

Proximity sensors often work by sending out a beam of infrared light and watching for the reflection, so a cheek cannot hang up or mute a call.

Which screen technology in many flagship phones needs no backlight because every dot of the image glows by itself?

OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode: a thin film of organic compounds glows when a current passes through it, so black areas of the picture can simply stay dark.

What brand name did Apple trademark for screens too sharp for the eye to pick out the individual dots?

Retina display was pitched in 2010 at about 300 dots per inch for a phone held 10 to 12 inches away, though one display expert argued the eye really needs 477.

Which Swedish company ran a mobile phone joint venture with Sony from 2001 until 2012?

Ericsson sold its half to Sony in 2012, ending an alliance formed to help its struggling handset business recover against rivals.

Which voice assistant, unveiled in 2014, was named after an artificial-intelligence character from the Halo video games?

Cortana was voiced in the United States by Jen Taylor, the same actress who plays the character in the games.

Which element, the least dense of all metals, gives the rechargeable batteries in modern smartphones their name?

Lithium is one of only three metals light enough to float on water, and the batteries built around it earned their developers the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Which property of a fingertip do capacitive smartphone touchscreens detect, explaining why ordinary gloves block them?

Electrical conductivity lets a finger distort the screen's electrostatic field, which the phone reads as a change in capacitance; insulating glove fabric leaves the field untouched.

Which wireless networking name did consultancy Interbrand coin in 1999 as a catchier label for IEEE 802.11b?

Wi-Fi was picked from a list of ten proposed names, partly because it sounded like hi-fi; whether it was ever short for 'wireless fidelity' is still disputed.

Which short-range wireless technology, working over about 4 cm, lets a smartphone pay by tapping a card reader?

NFC stands for near-field communication, and the two devices must be within about 4 cm of each other, which is why a tap is needed.

What does GPS, the satellite navigation network owned by the United States Space Force, stand for?

Global Positioning System signals are free for anyone with a receiver to use, even though the US government created, controls and maintains the satellites.

What did the name of T9, the word-guessing typing aid on keypad mobile phones, stand for?

Text on 9 keys needed only a single press per letter: a built-in dictionary matched each run of keys to the likeliest word, sparing users the old multi-tap method.

Which Chinese phone maker was founded in Beijing in 2010 by Lei Jun and six associates?

Xiaomi began with software, not hardware: its Android-based MIUI system came out in August 2010, a full year before its first phone, the Mi 1.

Which Taiwanese firm, founded by Terry Gou, is the world's largest contract maker of electronics such as the iPhone?

Foxconn, formally Hon Hai Precision Industry, also builds games consoles for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, and earns most of its revenue from its sites in China.

Which chip designer in Cambridge, England, licenses the processor designs found in virtually all modern smartphones?

Arm Holdings takes its name from the Acorn RISC Machine, a chip that first appeared in a British desktop computer, the Acorn Archimedes.

Which San Diego chipmaker, founded in 1985 by Irwin Jacobs, sells the Snapdragon processors used in many smartphones?

Qualcomm paid for its early research into CDMA wireless technology with the income from Omnitracs, its satellite communications system.

Which 15-digit code, shown on most handsets by dialling *#06#, identifies an individual mobile phone?

IMEI numbers are 14 digits plus a check digit, and if a handset is stolen its owner can ask the network to blocklist that number.

Which British-born designer, later knighted, led the Apple team behind the look of the iMac, iPod and iPhone?

Jony Ive's first job as Apple's design chief was the 1998 iMac, whose translucent plastic case he is credited with designing.

Which networking company owned the 'iPhone' trademark, used on Linksys internet phones, when Apple's handset appeared?

Cisco had inherited the name by buying a firm called InfoGear in 2000, and its dispute with Apple was resolved within weeks, in February 2007.

Which handheld pioneer launched webOS on its Pre smartphone in 2009 before being bought by Hewlett-Packard?

Palm was bought in July 2010, but after poor sales HP scrapped its webOS devices just over a year later, ending the brand after 19 years.

Which Chinese company bought Motorola's phone business from Google for $2.91 billion in 2014?

Lenovo got the handsets but not the real prize: Google, which had paid $12.5 billion in 2012, held on to most of the patents.

Which mobile-money service, launched in Kenya by Safaricom in 2007, lets people send cash using a basic phone?

M-Pesa joins M for mobile to the Swahili word for money, and customers pay in or withdraw cash through a network of agents such as airtime sellers and shops.

Which Tencent app, first released in 2011, has been described as China's 'app for everything'?

WeChat became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018, when it passed a billion monthly users who chat, pay and much else inside it.

Which California non-profit, set up in 1991 to standardise text across computers, selects the emoji smartphones use?

Unicode Consortium members weigh submissions from the public, who must present evidence for why each new symbol is needed.

Which music-recognition app, created by a London company, did Apple buy in 2018 for a reported $400 million?

Shazam listens for about ten seconds, turns the sound into an audio fingerprint and looks for a match in its database of songs.

Which inductive charging standard, published in 2009 by an industry alliance, lets phones top up without a cable?

Qi, pronounced 'chee', takes its name from the Mandarin word for life force or vital energy.

Which metal, mined mostly in the DR Congo, is a key ingredient of rechargeable phone batteries?

Cobalt takes its name from 'kobold', the German miners' word for a goblin, and its compounds have been tinting glass a deep blue since antiquity.

What event in 1997 prompted Philippe Kahn to wire a mobile phone to a digital camera, creating the first camera phone?

His daughter's birth was under way at the hospital when Kahn jury-rigged the link and sent photos in real time to a picture-messaging set-up running at his home.

Which Spanish composer's 1902 guitar piece Gran Vals supplied the phrase used as the famous Nokia ringtone?

Francisco Tárrega's waltz reached Nokia through a 1992 television advert for one of its handsets, which used a recording by Czech guitarist Lubomír Brabec.

Which Dutch social enterprise, founded in 2013, sells modular smartphones designed for owners to repair themselves?

Fairphone grew out of a campaign begun in 2010 before it became a company, and its handsets have scored 10 out of 10 for repairability from iFixit.

Which colour gave its name to the secret Apple project that produced the first iPhone?

Purple was the codename for work that stayed secret until the finished phone was shown on stage at Macworld in January 2007.

Which operating system, forked from the former Firefox OS project, brings web apps to low-cost keypad phones?

KaiOS is developed in Hong Kong by a company whose largest shareholder is the Chinese electronics group TCL.

What term describes sharing a phone's cellular data connection with a laptop, often branded as a personal hotspot?

Tethering can run over a cable as well as through the air, and the US carrier Sprint once sold it under the blunter name 'phone-as-modem'.

What name do security experts give to phishing scams that arrive as text messages rather than emails?

Smishing lures often pose as a trusted sender and carry a malicious link; the spoken version, carried out by phone call, is known as vishing.

Which Spanish city has hosted the Mobile World Congress, the mobile industry's annual trade show, since 2006?

Barcelona took the show over from Cannes on the French Riviera, which had hosted it for ten consecutive years.

What term describes removing Apple's software restrictions from an iPhone so that unapproved apps can be installed?

Jailbreaking relies on exploiting a flaw in the system software, and Apple treats it as a breach of the licence agreement that owners accept.

Which no-frills 2003 handset, sold with a built-in flashlight, went on to pass 250 million sales worldwide?

Nokia 1100 was designed for developing countries, with a keypad made as dustproof as possible and non-slip sides for humid weather.

Which puzzle game from King was reportedly earning almost $1 million a day at its peak?

Candy Crush Saga began life on Facebook in April 2012 before it reached phones, and around 2014 more than 93 million people were playing it.