4 ms·

My dad worked on the GSM in the 80s so I doubt that the first SMS is only from 1992...

lb1lf 9y ago
SMS simply wasn't an option on the earlier GSM handsets; I remember in 1996 or so in one of the early GSM adopters -Norway - when shopping for a phone, the salesman showed me two identical-looking Nokia sets, a $100 price difference between them - one could send SMS, the other only receive them. I went with the more expensive one, as the cheapest monthly plans at the time ($6/month fee) priced daytime calls at $.85/minute, making SMS (at $0.15 a pop) a good deal. Edit - the handset I was upgrading from could only receive SMS; I believe my father's handset at the time couldn't even receive them - but that may have been a carrier limitation, not down to the handset capabilities.
- ttoinou 9y ago
  The argicle state that the 'first SMS' engineer sent it from its home computer, so it's not about how it got to the market but who used the technology first. I'm pretty sure thoses who invented SMS did send SMS way before the guy in the article. Looks like advertising for canadian telecom tech, to embelish history.
- Nition 9y ago
  My family had an Alcatel One Touch Max that could receive SMS in upper or lower case but could only send SMS in ALL CAPS. Forced to shout at everyone. And that was released in 2000.
tomalpha 9y ago
I remember visiting a Philips research facility near Maastricht back in 2001 back when they still made mobile phones. They had a prototype oled-display phone they were showing off. It took some 15 more years for that to go mainstream. Interesting how long a lead time there can be from concept to consumer product.
- Nullabillity 9y ago
  Where does that 15 years figure come from? Samsung used AMOLED in the first Galaxy S back in 2010, and every update since then. The only thing that I can find happening around 2016-2017 is that Apple finally caught up. Did Qi also not exist before 2017?
  - tomalpha 9y ago
    Just my limited knowledge and memory. Feel free to mentally substitute 10 years instead of the 15 years I wrote if that helps. And the prototype wasn't new in 2001 - it had been around for a year or maybe two before that, so 10 years feels about right. Roughly. Ish.
- dfox 9y ago
  The problem with Philips' OLED displays around 2000 was that they were monochrome and for several years (97-2001 or so) Philips' marketing promised color ones "next year".
  - tomalpha 9y ago
    They were indeed monochrome. The one I saw was orange-on-black and I was also told that colour ones were coming “soon”.
rusk 9y ago
SMS was there from the very beginning, and likely network engineers were sending around messages for testing purposes, but it only came to light as a commercial feature in the 90s ...

SMS simply wasn't an option on the earlier GSM handsets; I remember in 1996 or so in one of the early GSM adopters -Norway - when shopping for a phone, the salesman showed me two identical-looking Nokia sets, a $100 price difference between them - one could send SMS, the other only receive them. I went with the more expensive one, as the cheapest monthly plans at the time ($6/month fee) priced daytime calls at $.85/minute, making SMS (at $0.15 a pop) a good deal. Edit - the handset I was upgrading from could only receive SMS; I believe my father's handset at the time couldn't even receive them - but that may have been a carrier limitation, not down to the handset capabilities.

ttoinou 9y ago
The argicle state that the 'first SMS' engineer sent it from its home computer, so it's not about how it got to the market but who used the technology first. I'm pretty sure thoses who invented SMS did send SMS way before the guy in the article. Looks like advertising for canadian telecom tech, to embelish history.
Nition 9y ago
My family had an Alcatel One Touch Max that could receive SMS in upper or lower case but could only send SMS in ALL CAPS. Forced to shout at everyone. And that was released in 2000.

tomalpha 9y ago

I remember visiting a Philips research facility near Maastricht back in 2001 back when they still made mobile phones. They had a prototype oled-display phone they were showing off. It took some 15 more years for that to go mainstream. Interesting how long a lead time there can be from concept to consumer product.

Nullabillity 9y ago
Where does that 15 years figure come from? Samsung used AMOLED in the first Galaxy S back in 2010, and every update since then. The only thing that I can find happening around 2016-2017 is that Apple finally caught up. Did Qi also not exist before 2017?
- tomalpha 9y ago
  Just my limited knowledge and memory. Feel free to mentally substitute 10 years instead of the 15 years I wrote if that helps. And the prototype wasn't new in 2001 - it had been around for a year or maybe two before that, so 10 years feels about right. Roughly. Ish.
dfox 9y ago
The problem with Philips' OLED displays around 2000 was that they were monochrome and for several years (97-2001 or so) Philips' marketing promised color ones "next year".
- tomalpha 9y ago
  They were indeed monochrome. The one I saw was orange-on-black and I was also told that colour ones were coming “soon”.

rusk 9y ago

SMS was there from the very beginning, and likely network engineers were sending around messages for testing purposes, but it only came to light as a commercial feature in the 90s ...