They did, but it was very slow. Picture messaging was also a thing, but may have been early 2000s. There wasn’t much to browse on the mobile web…basic weather and news etc. Usually it was the network operator but there were offerings from yahoo and similar.
Well WAP and I-mode were both introduced in 1999 and didn’t go mainstream till 2000. So I don’t think any phone had internet access in the 90s. Even in 2000 most people had a Nokia 3210 or similar, a lot of people still had screens that could only display 2 lines of text at most.
Yes, looks like first rollout was end of 99. So technically correct, which is the best kind.
However, it was not groundbreaking and the point is that someone in the 90s would not be shocked by internet connected devices. If I recall, some sites also allowed you to blog online by sms. I’m fuzzy on the details and the timeline on that though.
Well technically yes, CSD was a thing and allowed mobile phones to connect to the internet. However it wasn’t like these days, where you could actually use the internet on the phone. It was a technology that allowed mobile phones to work as a modem. So you’d connect the phone to the serial port of your 90s laptop and could “dial in”. The data rate was terrible as well as the latency, but it could allow salespeople on the road to digitally submit orders to the head office for example. This was technically internet, but usually people dialed in to a specific number which only connected to the one server/service. It was also super expensive to do so, so adoption was low.
Internet on mobile phones first started with WAP and I-mode, which are close to internet and technically use the internet, but still isn’t the same as what we have these days.
The first mobile pocket devices which could actually browse the internet in a modern way were probably pocket pc’s. Especially the Windows Mobile ones that came with a (for the time) very capable browser. They exploded in popularity and soon became available for phones as well. Yes there was a time Microsoft dominated the mobile phone market and caused the juggernaut Nokia to fall. They then completely dropped the ball when they didn’t realize they were actually marketing to consumers instead of business and failed to innovate in ways that were more user friendly. Instead focusing on productivity and technical capabilities. Blackberry and Apple swooped in and the rest is history.
I used a device in the mid 1980s that was a modem with rubber cups that clamped on to the handset of a telephone and was plugged into my portable electric typewriter thingie. I used it to file copy when on the road. Peak experience was using it in a public phone box in the countryside.
Maybe throw in a bit about how cell phones are flat rectangles now, they’re ubiquitous and have both high speed internet access and built in cameras.
Yeah, cell phones had internet in the 90’s as well.
What cell phones had internet in the 90s? Keep in mind, the Nokia brick in the early 00s is like an eidetic memory for most millennials today.
They did, but it was very slow. Picture messaging was also a thing, but may have been early 2000s. There wasn’t much to browse on the mobile web…basic weather and news etc. Usually it was the network operator but there were offerings from yahoo and similar.
Well WAP and I-mode were both introduced in 1999 and didn’t go mainstream till 2000. So I don’t think any phone had internet access in the 90s. Even in 2000 most people had a Nokia 3210 or similar, a lot of people still had screens that could only display 2 lines of text at most.
Yes, looks like first rollout was end of 99. So technically correct, which is the best kind.
However, it was not groundbreaking and the point is that someone in the 90s would not be shocked by internet connected devices. If I recall, some sites also allowed you to blog online by sms. I’m fuzzy on the details and the timeline on that though.
The Nokia 7110 was the first, launched Oct 1999.
Source
But machines that could use it were not the size of a mobile phone yet
Well technically yes, CSD was a thing and allowed mobile phones to connect to the internet. However it wasn’t like these days, where you could actually use the internet on the phone. It was a technology that allowed mobile phones to work as a modem. So you’d connect the phone to the serial port of your 90s laptop and could “dial in”. The data rate was terrible as well as the latency, but it could allow salespeople on the road to digitally submit orders to the head office for example. This was technically internet, but usually people dialed in to a specific number which only connected to the one server/service. It was also super expensive to do so, so adoption was low.
Internet on mobile phones first started with WAP and I-mode, which are close to internet and technically use the internet, but still isn’t the same as what we have these days.
The first mobile pocket devices which could actually browse the internet in a modern way were probably pocket pc’s. Especially the Windows Mobile ones that came with a (for the time) very capable browser. They exploded in popularity and soon became available for phones as well. Yes there was a time Microsoft dominated the mobile phone market and caused the juggernaut Nokia to fall. They then completely dropped the ball when they didn’t realize they were actually marketing to consumers instead of business and failed to innovate in ways that were more user friendly. Instead focusing on productivity and technical capabilities. Blackberry and Apple swooped in and the rest is history.
I used a device in the mid 1980s that was a modem with rubber cups that clamped on to the handset of a telephone and was plugged into my portable electric typewriter thingie. I used it to file copy when on the road. Peak experience was using it in a public phone box in the countryside.