Once upon a time, there lived a cell phone, one that made and received calls and nothing more.

That was, of course, before the emergence of touch screens; cameras; SMS texting; multi-billion-dollar mobile buyouts; Bluetooth; hand-held devices smarter than their users; on-the-go Web browsing; and anything that ever slid, flipped, or had its own keyboard.

How’d we ever survive on 1G?

From the Zack Morris to the Steve Jobs, we take a look back.

1983-84: Motorola DynaTAC. “Saved by the Bell” would have never been the same.



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1989: Motorola MicroTAC. Let there be flip!



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1996: Motorola StarTAC. Back in the mid-’90s, people thought clam-shaped contraptions were meant for Disney characters’ bras—and then came this phone.



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1998: Nokia 5110. I still hear the sound of mallrats ringing their parents to come pick them up.



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2000: Nokia 3310. Look who shed their baby fat. So long, antennas.



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2003: Nextel Push-to-Talk. We all have that distant relative who comes to Thanksgiving once every four or five years, depending on the terms of his parole. This is the cell phone equivalent.



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2004: Motorola Razr. Welcome to the world of bedazzled cell phones and cases.



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2006: BlackBerry Pearl. Thanks to this little guy and his ancestry, the “Jersey Shore” house discovered the shadiness of Sammy “Sweetheart.” Let that be a lesson—watch your BBMs, people.



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2007: Apple iPhone. And the world was never the same again.



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Though the last few years of cell phones have seen their share of breakthroughs—there’s probably an app to check that—they’ve been more generational improvements on the list above.

Sure, Google’s Android operating system has cut the iEverything clutter, but will we ever see a day when my fully charged phone doesn’t drop a call—or doesn’t ring during a movie?

The world awaits the next cellular game-changer.

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