I thought it would be fun to think back and list all of the smartphones I had in the past. Well… my first mobile phones can rather be categorised as ‘dumb’ phones (officially, they are called feature phones). Smartphones are part of everyday life now for most of us now and that’s largely due to the price-performance improvements of these devices. We are connected all the time and it’s the smartphone that is the enabler.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, in their report “The PwC Mobile Innovations Forecast Making sense of the rapid change in mobile innovation” clearly show how smartphone components have progressed in the past ~10 years. Too bad the battery capacity was not part of the comparison, as I feel like this part has been lacking in terms of progress in recent years.
The seven components together, on average, will improve 41 percent a year, each year, for the next few years. So the kind of dramatic change from phones we had in 2006 to the iPhone in 2007 is going to continue. – Steven Mather, Subject Matter Expert, IHS Technology
I think it’s interesting to compare this data with my own experience. Overall, did I also experience these rapid technological advances? How do these phones compare in terms of storage capacity, processor speed or device connectivity? What operating system did they run; what version?
 | Nokia 3310 (released 2010) |
| Technical Details: Battery: 900 mAh | |
| Trivia: Nokia 3310 had the awesome game “Tetris”on it! It had no storage, so the text message were stored on the SIM card, which could hold about 10 text messages maximum. Obviously, this phone had no camera, no Wi-Fi and was just a device to sent text messages with or make a phone call. It had crazy long battery life, though. |
 | RIM Blackberry Curve 8350 (released 2011) |
| Technical Details: Battery: 1,000 mAh | |
| Trivia: Half as thick as the Nokia 3310. Pretty decent battery life. A 512MB internal storage means a MicroSD card was a necessity. While BlackBerry OS 7 was limited, it had actually quite some decent apps that worked fine on it, such as Dropbox and Whatsapp. Furthermore, it was a beast to handle e-mail.
|
 | Apple iPhone 3GS (released 2009) |
| Technical Details: Battery: 1,220 mAh | |
| Trivia:
My first touch-screen smartphone. I choose the 16GB model. When it was released, it has iOS 3 on it, but Apple supported this device up to iOS 6.1.6. Great app support, too. |
 | Nokia E6 (released 2011) |
| Technical Details: Battery: 1,500 mAh | |
| Trivia: The Nokia E5 was running the Symbian Anna OS; the default OS at the time for almost all Nokia phones.
|
 | Motorola Moto G (released 2013) |
| Technical Details: Battery: 2,070 mAh | |
| Trivia:
The Motorola Moto G was my first smartphone that had the Android operating system on it. It was running Android 4.4 KitKat. This smartphone was known for its great price in comparison with an above average performance. For me a great choice to discover the Android world. |
 | Google Nexus 5 (released 2013) |
| Technical Details: Battery: 2,300 mAh | |
| Trivia:
After the Motorola Moto G, my second Android device was the Google Nexus 5. It was manufactured by LG and was running Android KitKat 4.4.4, but later received Android 5 Lollipop. A great phone size-wise and received prompt updates for Android OS as this was the flagship Android phone from Google Inc. |
 | OnePlus One (released 2014) |
| Technical Details: Battery: 3,100 mAh | |
| Trivia:
The OnePlus One was known as the flaghshipkiller for 2014. It had high-end specs for its time and was in terms of hardware comparable to the 500-600 euro Samsung high-end smartphones, but for about half the price. |
 | Sony Xperia Z2 (released 2014) |
| Technical Details: Battery: 3,200 mAh | |
| Trivia:
The Sony Xperia Z2 is water-resistant; which means you can actually go swim with it. Disadvantage: to charge the device, you have to first remove a cap that is protecting the USB port. |
