Evolution of cell phones over time

I still remember in junior high when my father would lug around this massive brick with a full size receiver -- that was how advanced cell phone technology was back then. 

At that time, the goal of cell phones was to replicate land lines on the road.  The holy grail of cell phones was to retain the call quality of land lines, but allow the freedom to receive calls anywhere.  I think as time went on, this holy grail may have been lost to a dizzying array of gadgets that cell phone manufacturers have managed to stuff into the phone.

I been through quite a few cell phones in my days and even for a short period of time worked as a business strategy consultant for a large wireless network in Seattle.  During my time working there, they were integrating their CDMA network to their GSM network.  This of course caused a lot of glitches and issues as they had to migrate users from one technology to another.

In my personal experience back when cell phones were just phones, the best wireless network in the San Francisco Bay Area was hands down Verizon.  Cingular/SBC/AT&T was a distant third behind Sprint.

AT&T has always focused on the latest technology craze and being on the forefront of cell phone technology over the quality of their voice calls.  If I remember correctly, they were the first service provider to come out with the Motorola RAZR, SLVR, and now Apple iPhone products.  With the onset of smart phones such as Blackberry and iPhones, voice quality of cell phone calls has taken a back seat to gadgets, 3G networks, as well as texting.

Today, on my Blackberry and iPhone, I constantly feel the quality of my voice calls are substantially sub par (my calls are constantly being interrupted by dropped calls as well as blank spots).  In the past, on my Motorola RAZR on the Verizon network, people had difficulty telling whether I was calling from a land line or cell phone.

Here is an interesting article going into detail about what I wrote above.