Forty years of mobile telephony

For ten of the years since the advent of the mobile phone forty years ago I have used the Sony T610 shown above. I bought it in Abu Dhabi in late 2003 and so mine is made slightly more exotic by having also Arabic characters on the tiny alphanumeric keys. It was one of the first widely available mobile phones to include a built-in digital camera, Bluetooth, color screen and joystick navigation. I have always felt that it could almost have been styled by Jonny Ives.

Today the joystick is a bit clunky and it needs charging almost daily, in spite of the fact that I use it much less than the average mobile phone user. I do not regret at all that it is not a 'smartphone'... eight or nine hours per day at my computer at home is quite enough connectivity for an old misogynist like me.

I rather like the comment made by Mark Lawson, concerned by the problem that the phenomenon of the mobile phone poses for storytellers, in particular for writers or filmmakers in the thriller genre...  “If there had been a Nokia in Janet Leigh's handbag, Hitchcock's Psycho would have been a short film with a happy ending."