CAFL Trivia: In What Year did the First Mobile Phone Debut in the US?

Posted on Oct 11th 2011

Answer: 1983

In 1983 the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X received approval from the FCC and became the world's first commercial handheld cell phone. It was made available for purchase on March 6, 1983 and despite a whopping price tag of $3,995 (more than $8,000 in today’s dollars), waiting lists for the device were in the thousands!

Nicknamed “the Brick,” the DynaTAC 8000X weighed two pounds and measured 13 x 1.75 x 3.5 inches. "The Brick" took 10 hours to charge for 30 minutes of talk time and featured enough memory to store 30 contacts.

It took Motorola 15 years and $100 million dollars to finally release the device – mostly from the need to build cell towers and infrastructure.

Check out Motorola’s DynaTAC promotional video to see the Brick in action. We’ve come so far.

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