Something about Cellphone

Cellphone is ubiquitous. Without Cellphone, it's hard to keep in touch with your family and friends. I discussed about mobile technology before. Lets discuss about the cellphone itself and it's jargons.

1. Bell Labs conceived the idea fo the cellular phone in 1947.

2. Citizens of Norway can submit their tax forms by SMS.

3. Catholics in the Philipines are not allowed to confess their sins via text messaging because the Bishps feel that e-mail and fax confessions are not secure enough.

4. The Nokia 5160 series included an edition with Disney charaters Mickey,Minnie,Goofy, and Donald.

5. CDMA technology uses multiple channels simultaneously. It does this by assigning each user a code that is used in the multiplexing of data.

6. Michael Faraday's exhaustive research into whether space could conduct electricity had an incalculable effect on cellular phone development.

7. Cell phones went public in 1997, when Chicago began public cell phone trials with 2000 customers. Japan began testing cellular phone services in 1979.

8. Dr. Mahlon Loomis of Virginia, a dentist, may have been the first person to communicate thorugh wireless via the atmosphere.

9. Nearly 45 countires, including India, have banned the use of cell phones while driving. In Ireland, you can be fined $380 and/or face imprisonment for three months. Starting from Next year, California government is restricting use of cellphones in Car.

10. Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology was developed for miltary use in the late 1960s.

11. Dr. Martin Cooper is considered the inventor of the first portable handset. As the former GM for the Systems divsion at Motorola, he was the first person to make a call on a portable cellular phones.

12. Studies conducted by NASA show that the use of cell phones and other personal electronic devices inside and in the vicinity of aircraft is potentially dangerous.

13. Japanese telecom carrier NTT DoCoMo launched the world's first 3G mobile phone services in Japan in October 2001.

14. A large amount of the the radiation emitted by cell phone, gets absorbed by the user's head. A similar amount of radiation comes from the keypad and the mouth piece as well.

15. The WHO says there is still no evidence to prove that cellular phones pose any health risks, but further research is needed.

16. Mobile phone ringtone was the most searched-for-technology term in Yahoo!'s annual survey, followed by digital cameras and mobile phones.

17. When Cordless phones and the first analogue cellphones hit the market, anybody with a scanner that operated at the right frequency could easily listen in on calls not intended for them.

18. Multiple independent tests have confirmed that the radiation from the earpiece of cellphone is up to four times that from the antenna.

19. The Chameleon Card is a programmable card in development at Chameleonm Network that can represent each of the owner's credit, debit and customer cards as required, so that one doesn't carry all of the aforementioned.

20. Cellphones are more popular in European and Asian countries than they are in the United States-more than 90 percent of Europeans own a cell phone, compared to about 50 percent of Americans.

21. On December 3, 1992, an engineer named Neil Papworth sent the first SMS-"MERRY CHRISTMAS"- to his colleagues at Vodfone in Britain.

22. Cellphones operate in 900 MHz, 1800MHz and 1900 MHz bands; Bluetooth uses the 2.4GHz band; and Wi-Fi and WiMax operate on the 2.4GHz and 5.8 GHz frequency bands.

23. The 2.4GHz band is generally a delicensed band, which means that you do not have to apply for a license for using devices on this band.

24. The 2.4GHz band comes under the so-called ISM band, which stands for Instrumentation, Scientific and Medical (Usage), specified as the 902-928 MHz band and the 5725-5780 MHz band.