Ben Wood with some highlights from the collection of more than 2,000 unique devices, reaching back to 1984.
As Vodafone marks its 40th anniversary, the founder of the Mobile Phone Museum, Ben Wood, looks back at the past and gazes towards the future of mobile technology.
Ben Wood’s job is to think about the future, yet he’s also obsessed with the past. As a telecoms analyst at CCS Insight, he writes about the future of mobile technology. But as the founder of the Mobile Phone Museum, his spare time is devoted to preserving technological history. By collecting historic mobile phones, he hopes to ensure that their impact and stories are not forgotten in the wake of ever-more rapid technological change.
Ben traces the roots of his pervasive passion for mobile technology back to his father, a cabinet maker who worked for renowned furniture firm Herman Miller, who instilled in him an appreciation for industrial design and how things are made. But his desire to preserve cellular history is as much emotive and social as it is cerebral.
“There is nothing like a mobile phone in terms of evoking nostalgia from people,” Ben told Vodafone UK News. “Everyone has a story to go with their phone. Also, the mobile phone is one of the most relatable pieces of technology. You can talk to anybody and ask them about their phone and they will have an opinion on it.”
Ben's seven key historical milestones
January 1985 - the Vodafone Transportable VT1, the first practical mobile phone (well, more or less), is launched in the UK.
1985 - the Motorola DynaTac 8000X, the first truly portable mobile phone (well, more or less) arrives in the UK.
1992 - GSM is launched, the network standard that made texting, mobile data and cross-border mobile usage possible for the first time.
1993 - the IBM Simon, the little-known first-ever smartphone, is announced.
1994 - Vodafone launches texting and mobile data services to the public, proving that mobile phones could be used for more than just voice calls.
2000 - the Nokia 3310, a truly mass-market mobile phone that anyone could afford.
2007 - the original iPhone, the first modern smartphone, is announced.
The course of mobile technology hasn’t always panned out as Ben thought it would. Along with almost everyone else in the industry during the early 1990s, he expected SMS text messages to be used for perfunctory, purely functional purposes, such as notifications from public utilities and tradespeople. Its explosive popularity as a tool for organising our social lives surprised everyone, including Ben.
Although 360-degree cameras were and are sold as separate accessories rather than built into phones themselves, Ben nonetheless expected 360-degree photos and videos to take off in popularity in the mid-2010s with ‘surroundies’, much in the same vein as front-facing cameras and selfies. “I even went to the trouble of registering surroundie.com, but it never happened, it never took off. But with spatial computing and VR headsets, and their ability to immerse yourself totally in a moment of time, perhaps the ‘surroundie’ will happen in the future.”
As for the future of VR and AR headsets, while Ben thinks they have huge potential, he doesn’t think they’ll displace smartphones as the most dominant, most popular form of mobile computing. “The phone has become so entrenched in society, it would have to be a huge step change to get people to give it up. Even the iPhone, as revolutionary as it was in placing a computer in your pocket, it was in a way an evolution of what had gone before it – a phone that you use in your hand”.
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Ben anticipates mobile technology having a hugely beneficial impact on health care. “Mobile phones and adjacent technologies, like smartwatches and other wearables, are going to have an incredible impact on health. We’re already able to monitor ourselves better. In the future, we’ll be able to do things like predictive health, spotting the warning signs before we get seriously ill.”
Whatever the future brings, Ben and the Mobile Phone Museum will be there to document and preserve it for future generations.
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![Ben Wood [centre] at the launch of the Mobile Phone Museum exhibit at PK Porthcurno.](https://www.vodafone.co.uk/newscentre/app/uploads/2023/11/DSC04029-550x367.jpg.webp "Ben Wood [centre] at the launch of the Mobile Phone Museum exhibit at PK Porthcurno.")
