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Cell Phone: Difference between revisions
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(GSM has encryption but the standard is deliberately weak (maybe 40 bits or so?) due to pressure from governments, France in particular) |
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{{trope}}
[[File:Cell phone evolution 37.jpg|frame|[[Technology Marches On|Even the one on the far right is no longer remotely in line with current tech offerings.]]]]
{{quote|''"Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?"''|'''[[Memetic Mutation|Much-parodied]] Verizon ad.'''}}
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* Naturally, given the setting, Cell Phones play a major role in ''[[The Wire]]''. In the first season, the drug communication is all done on pay phones and pagers, to avoid taps. In later seasons (when those pay phones have all been torn out), the gangs buy short-term phones in bulk from all over the state of Maryland so they can stay one step ahead of the court orders.
* While most teenage drama's characters use cell phones a lot ''[[Gossip Girl]]'' is probably the most prominant example. They not only call and text each other about a hundred times a day, they pull of plots against each other by manipulating cell phones, they steal each other's phones to make copies of the information on them, they take pictures and video clips which they later use for various purposes... And of course the blasts from Gossip Girl herself are all sent to the main characters' phones via text.
* ''[[Switched at Birth (TV series)|Switched at Birth]]'' uses text messaging as the go-to means of telecommunication between characters as much of the cast is deaf. They have access to TTYs but tend not to use them; when a mainstream technology appears that replaces a clunky special-needs workaround, the latter tends to fade away.
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{{quote|'''Penny:''' What are you doing?
'''Billy:''' ...Texting. It's...very important. Or I would stop. }}
* ''Clients From Hell'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20160924202101/http://clientsfromhell.net/post/149836163196/i-was-working-with-a-small-business-owner-in-his presents] the new and sad state of affairs:
{{quote|'''Client''': I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU WANT ME TO TAKE PICTURES WITHOUT A PHONE.}}
* Despite being set in a pseudomedieval fantasy world, the [[Reincarnation Fantasy]] isekai web novel ''[[Tori Transmigrated]]'' has a local [[Magitek]] equivalent to cell phones, called the "comcrys" ("communication crystal"). They are somewhat limited compared to a proper cell phone -- you have to "register" your crystal with another person's before you can call them (neatly and accidentally eliminating spam calls), they only flash to indicate an incoming call (making it easy to miss calls if you're not looking in the right direction), and of course they lack practically all the features of a modern smartphone. They also don't work if you're on a boat or in the water, as they need to "ground" to the earth's [[Ley Line|energy currents]] to make a connection. But despite these limitations, instant real-time communications make the massive, long-lived Empire of Soleil ''possible'', as well as facilitating more sophisticated trade and business than one would expect.
== Western Animation ==
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== Real Life ==
* Mobile phones and the cell system did exist as [[Older Than They Think|early as the 1940s]], they were just prohibitively expensive. The cell system was essentially invented by Motorola as a way of managing the large number of police car radios that had to be coordinated when tackling organized crime in American cities.
** These "manual mobile" telephones technically are not "cell phones" as they had a limited number of frequency channels and any phone talking on one channel monopolised the channel city-wide. This led to wait times of up to half an hour to even get an available frequency in congested areas, which led to telephone companies imposing years-long waiting lists for mobile service. The innovation which made mobile telephones "cell phones" in [[The Eighties]] was the use of multiple, small base station transmitters which each covered a tiny area (a "cell") instead of the whole city; this allowed the same frequencies to be re-used aggressively by multiple users across a large metropolitan area. That meant needing the network to be able to automatically "hand off" mobile calls from one base to the next as users moved from one cell to another, and that logic required a bit of actual computing power behind the network.
* The flip phone's design was inspired by ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'''s communicators. The first clamshell phone was called the StarTAC; wonder why?
* Toy companies have made special cellphones so parents can keep track of their children but the children can't run up huge bills.
** Using discarded cell phones as toys for small children, even if they're not subscribed anywhere, may still lead to misdial calls – as even an unsubscribed handset can call 112, 9-1-1, 999 or similar local emergency numbers.
* A man arrested in Egypt was able to contact his bosses for help by using his cell phone and Twitter to announce what had happened. The people on his Twitter follow list contacted people in the US and got him released.
* Cell phones with cameras are banned from gyms so that people can't take pictures of other gym goers in the shower and post them to the internet, cell phone cameras generally now all play an audible sound when taking photos due to concerns about peeping toms and [[The Chikan|subway perverts]].
* Flash Mobs are assembled on short notice via
* If something was filmed in the [[The Nineties|late '90s]] or [[Turn of the Millennium|early '00s]] in the UK, expect to see a [[Nokia]] 5110 (known as the Nokia Brick for its size, weight and indestructibility). The first phone to crack the mass market
** It's since been surpassed by the [[wikipedia:Nokia 1100|Nokia 1100]], which is smaller, every bit as indestructible, and with over 200 million units shifted is said to be the single best-selling ''consumer electronic device'' ever.
** Prior to the [[media:Nokia Brick.jpg|Nokia Brick]] was the even more
** And then there's equally iconic, if less ubiquitous [[wikipedia:Motorola RAZR|Motorola RAZR]], a classic clamshell that for much of the 00's held the title of thinnest and most stylish phone around.
** In the case of Japan and Japanese media, the [[Wikipedia:Japanese mobile phone culture|garakei]] ("Galapagos phone", from the term describing the isolated development of Japanese technology that solely fits local needs) was absolutely iconic. Usually a clamshell similar to the RAZR, garakei phones tended towards being much more advanced, with advanced mobile internet via I-mode, 1seg digital terrestrial television tuners, fingerprint scanners, NFC digital wallets, fancy mobile games and high resolution cameras all being a thing years before the West caught on. Unfortunately, the colorful world of garakei phones was torn apart by the smartphone (specifically the iPhone) by the early 2010s as most local companies besides Sony, Kyocera, Fujitsu and Sharp closed shop due to their mobile phone philosophy still being stuck in the 2000s while Western and Chinese producers outgrew and delivered more on the same tech Japanese phones were famous for, often for much less money. Nowadays most Japanese mobile phones besides the Sony Xperia (which had to have some adaptations for the foreign market too) will look positively ''quaint'' compared to what the Chinese are pumping out - for example, Sharp's flagship Aquos series is still on a single camera (albeit a single camera with a big sensor) compared to your average Chinese phone, which has ''three''.
* [[Hugh Jackman]] and [[Daniel Craig]] called out an audience member whose cellphone ringer went off in the middle of a stage performance. Many stage actors will do this, and sometimes without breaking character.
** In the same vein, Gwyneth Paltrow called out a reporter for being on his cell phone during her post-Academy Award acceptance press conference. She took the phone from him and tried to have a conversation with the person on the other end of the line, but they clearly did not believe it was Gwyneth Paltrow on the phone.
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