The first mass-produced GSM phone - Happy birthday Nokia!!!

Fifteen years ago, Nokia, Finland's mobile-phone giant, has launched the world's first commercially available GSM digital phone, the Nokia 1011, the model number coming from the launch date: 10 November 1992.

Heikki Huttunen, representing Nokia and its research and development activities, is specifically recognized "for fundamental innovations and advanced design work, in particular for contributions related to GSM handheld cellular telephones".

Nokia launched its first GSM handheld Nokia 1011 in 1992, the only commercially available mobile phone for some time. Its successor Nokia 2110 won the most outstanding GSM/DCS 1800 handset awarded by GSM MoU Association in GSM World Conference 1996 in Cannes, France. The Nokia 2110 series of digital portable cellular phones was among the "Best New Products" of 1994 by Business Week.

The 475g 1011 was rather heavier than today's slimline models. A lot of the weight came from the unit's nickel-cadmium rechargeable battery, which yielded a low - by today's standards - talk time of just 90 minutes. It could stay operational for 12 hours in stand-by mode.

The 195 x 60 x 45mm handset could hold 99 phone numbers and the names of their owners, any of which could be displayed on the 1011's two-line screen. There was no colour, no camera, no Bluetooth, no memory card slot and the handset had to have an extendible antenna. But it did introduce one innovation that phone owners now use without a second thought: text messaging.

However, the 1011 lacked that crucial component of all modern Nokia's: the infamous Nokia ringtone. This jingle wasn't introduced until 1994.

The 1011 wasn't the first GSM phone, either. That honour goes to the unnamed handset Nokia developed for Finland's Radiolinja network in 1991. The Finnish phone giant also supplied testing handsets that year for Hutchison's Orange in the UK, then in the process of building its network up from the Rabbit service launched a few years previously.

Nokia GSM World Firsts
The Nokia "World First" list includes the following industry GSM firsts:

• First GSM order (Radiolinja, Finland, 1989)
• First GSM mobile phone network (1991) and the first genuine GSM call in this Radiolinja network, supplied by Nokia.
• First company to begin GSM phone large scale production (1992)
• First DCS/GSM 1800 order (Orange, UK, 1991)
• First SMSC (Short Message Service Center) into commercial use (in Europolitan's Nokia network, 1993)
• First Personal Communications Network based on GSM 1800 standard delivery (1993).
• First company to offer GSM data products (1994)
• First PCS/GSM 1900 order for the US market (1995)
• First all-in-one communications tool, Nokia 9000 Communicator (1996)
• First GSM dual band base station (1997)