Portal:Telephones

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The Telephones Portal

A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic signals that are transmitted via cables and other communication channels to another telephone which reproduces the sound to the receiving user. The term is derived from Ancient Greek: τῆλε, romanized: tēle, lit. 'far' and φωνή (phōnē, voice), together meaning distant voice. A common short form of the term is phone, which came into use early in the telephone's history.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be granted a United States patent for a device that produced clearly intelligible replication of the human voice at a second device. This instrument was further developed by many others, and became rapidly indispensable in business, government, and in households. (Full article...)

A mobile phone (or cellphone) is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area, as opposed to a fixed-location phone (landline phone). The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture, and therefore mobile telephones are called cellphones (or "cell phones") in North America. In addition to telephony, digital mobile phones support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messaging, email, Internet access (via LTE, 5G NR or Wi-Fi), short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), satellite access (navigation, messaging connectivity), business applications, payments (via NFC), multimedia playback and streaming (radio, television), digital photography, and video games. Mobile phones offering only basic capabilities are known as feature phones (slang: "dumbphones"); mobile phones that offer greatly advanced computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones. (Full article...)

A smartphone (often simply called a phone) is a mobile device that combines the functionality of a traditional mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multimedia playback and streaming. Smartphones have built-in cameras, GPS navigation, and support for various communication methods, including voice calls, text messaging, and internet-based messaging apps. (Full article...)

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Mobile phone use while driving is common but it is dangerous due to its potential for causing distracted driving and subsequent crashes. Due to the number of crashes that are related to conducting calls on a phone and texting while driving, some jurisdictions have made the use of calling on a phone while driving illegal in an attempt to curb the practice, with varying levels of efficacy. Many jurisdictions have enacted laws making handheld mobile phone use illegal. Many jurisdictions allow use of a hands-free device. Driving while using a hands-free device has been found by some studies to provide little to no benefit versus holding the device itself and carrying on a conversation. In some cases restrictions are directed only at minors, those who are newly qualified license holders (particularly those of a younger age), or to drivers in school zones. In addition to voice calling, activities such as texting while driving, web browsing, playing video games, or phone use in general may also increase the risk of a crash.

In the United States, automobile crashes due to distracted driving are increasing even after the passage of laws intended to lessen such use while driving. Using a cell phone while driving increases the driver's risk of causing a crash. Drivers can become distracted, decreasing the driver's awareness on the road, leading to more car crashes. When drivers talk on cell phones the risk of an automobile crash resulting in hospitalization is four times higher than when not talking on a cell phone. Drivers who text when behind the wheel are twenty-three times more likely to have an automobile crash. One out of every four automobile crashes in the United States are caused by texting while driving. (Full article...)

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A cordless telephone or portable telephone has a portable telephone handset that connects by radio to a base station connected to the public telephone network. The operational range is limited, usually to the same building or within some short distance from the base station.

A cordless telephone differs functionally from a mobile telephone in its limited range and by depending the base station on the subscriber premises. Current cordless telephone standards, such as PHS and DECT, have blurred the once clear-cut line between cordless and mobile telephones by implementing cell handoff (handover); various advanced features, such as data-transfer; and even, on a limited scale, international roaming. In specialized models, a commercial mobile network operator may maintain base stations and users subscribe to the service.

Unlike a corded telephone, a cordless telephone needs mains electricity (to power the base station). The cordless handset contains a rechargeable battery, which the base station re-charges when the handset rests in its cradle. (Full article...)

List of phone types
Payphone Courtesy telephone Emergency telephone Secure telephone Smartphone Mobile phone Satellite phone Phablet Car phone Windows Phone Camera phone Feature phone VoIP phone iPhone Tin can telephone Sound-powered telephone Grillo telephone Golden telephone Reis telephone Shoe phone Field telephone IBM Simon Mobile radio telephone Foldable smartphone Modular smartphone Prepaid mobile phone

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RO' SIT

Reorder – intraLATA

VC SIT

Unassigned N11 code, CLASS code or prefix

NC' SIT

No Circuit – intraLATA

IC SIT

Intercept

IO SIT

Ineffective/Other

Future SIT

Future Use (Not Used)

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In telephony, a special information tone (SIT) is an in-band international standard call progress tone consisting of three rising tones indicating a call has failed. It usually precedes a recorded announcement describing the problem. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various telephone-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1A high-capacity portable battery charger (power bank) (from Smartphone)
Image 2A Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus, featuring a "hole-punch" camera (from Smartphone)
Image 31917 wall telephone, open to show magneto and local battery (from History of the telephone)
Image 4A Moto G7 Power; its display uses a tall aspect ratio and includes a "notch". (from Smartphone)
Image 5Personal Handy-phone System mobiles and modems, 1997–2003 (from Mobile phone)
Image 6A German rotary dial telephone, the W48 (from History of the telephone)
Image 7A New York City driver holding two phones (from Smartphone)
Image 8Tivadar Puskás proposed the telephone switchboard exchange in 1876. (from History of the telephone)
Image 9A text message (SMS) (from Mobile phone)
Image 10The back of a Nokia 9 PureView. It features a five-lens camera array with Zeiss optics, using a mixture of color and monochrome sensors. (from Smartphone)
Image 11A user consulting a mapping app on a phone (from Smartphone)
Image 12Typical mobile phone mini-SIM card (from Mobile phone)
Image 13The HTC Desire, a 2010 smartphone with optical trackpad and search button (from Smartphone)
Image 14Dupuis and Haug during a GSM meeting in Belgium, April 1992 (from Mobile phone)
Image 15People using phones while walking (from Mobile phone)
Image 16A sign along Bellaire Boulevard in Southside Place, Texas (Greater Houston) states that using mobile phones while driving is prohibited from 7:30 am to 9:00 am and from 2:00 pm to 4:15 pm. (from Smartphone)
Image 17A Meizu MX4 with Flyme OS (from Smartphone)
Image 18Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. (from History of the telephone)
Image 19The original Apple iPhone; following its introduction the common smartphone form factor shifted to large touchscreen software interfaces without physical keypads (from Smartphone)
Image 20Optical track pad sensor of an HTC Legend, 2010. (from Smartphone)
Image 21A 19th century acoustic tin can or "lovers' telephone" (from History of the telephone)
Image 22Tooltip in Kiwi Browser, a Google Chromium derivative, reveals the full URL by hovering over the tab list using the stylus on a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. (from Smartphone)
Image 23Inserted memory and SIM cards (from Smartphone)
Image 24Two decades of evolution of mobile phones, from a 1992 Motorola DynaTAC 8000X to the 2014 iPhone 6 Plus (from Mobile phone)
Image 25Android smartphones (from Mobile phone)
Image 26
Bell prototype telephone stamp
Centennial Issue of 1976
(from History of the telephone)
Image 27Mobile payment system. (from Smartphone)
Image 28A French Gower telephone of 1912 at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris (from History of the telephone)
Image 29Mobile/desktop convergence: the Librem 5 smartphone can be used as a basic desktop computer (from Smartphone)
Image 30A smartphone touchscreen (from Smartphone)
Image 31Philipp Reis, 1861, constructed the first telephone, today called the Reis telephone. (from History of the telephone)
Image 32E-waste in Agbogbloshie (from Smartphone)
Image 33Actor portraying Alexander Graham Bell in a 1932 silent film. Shows Bell's second telephone transmitter (microphone), invented 1876 and first displayed at the Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia. (from History of the telephone)
Image 34Apple iPhone smartphone (from History of the telephone)
Image 35Smartphone with infrared transmitter on top for use as remote control (from Smartphone)
Image 36Old Receiver schematic, c.1906 (from History of the telephone)
Image 37The Nokia 9110 Communicator, opened for access to keyboard (from Smartphone)
Image 38"Device options" menu of Samsung Mobile's TouchWiz user interface as of 2013, accessed by holding the power button for a second (from Smartphone)
Image 39Scrapped mobile phones (from Mobile phone)
Image 40Private conversation, 1910 (from History of the telephone)
Image 41This layout of the camera viewfinder was first introduced by Apple with iOS 7 in 2013. Towards the late 2010s, several other smartphone vendors have ditched their layouts and implemented variations of this layout. (from Smartphone)
Image 42A sign in the US restricting cell phone use to certain times of day (no cell phone use between 7:30–9:00 am and 2:00–4:15 pm) (from Mobile phone)
Image 43Elisha Gray, 1876, designed a telephone using a water microphone in Highland Park, Illinois. (from History of the telephone)
Image 44IBM Simon and charging base (1994) (from Smartphone)
Image 45Cellular networks work by only reusing radio frequencies (in this example frequencies f1-f4) in non adjacent cells to avoid interference (from Mobile phone)
Image 46Antonio Meucci's telephone. (from History of the telephone)
Image 47Antonio Meucci, 1854, constructed telephone-like devices. (from History of the telephone)
Image 48A smartphone displaying the homepage of the English Wikipedia (from Smartphone)
Image 49The LG Prada with a large capacitive touchscreen introduced in 2006 (from Smartphone)
Image 50Historical marker commemorating the first telephone central office in New York State (1878) (from History of the telephone)
Image 51Active mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants (from Mobile phone)
Image 52Several BlackBerry smartphones, which were highly popular in the mid-late 2000s (from Smartphone)
Image 53Mobile phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants. 2014 figure is estimated. (from Mobile phone)
Image 54Top of cellular telephone tower (from History of the telephone)
Image 55Martin Cooper of Motorola, shown here in a 2007 reenactment, made the first publicized handheld mobile phone call on a prototype DynaTAC model on 3 April 1973. (from Mobile phone)
Image 56Thomas Edison invented the carbon microphone which produced a strong telephone signal. (from History of the telephone)
Image 57The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. In 1983, it became the first commercially available handheld cellular mobile phone. (from Mobile phone)
Image 581896 Telephone (Sweden) (from History of the telephone)
Image 59Mobile payment system (from Mobile phone)
Image 60The back of a Huawei P30. It features three rear-facing camera lenses with Leica optics. (from Smartphone)
Image 61A driver using two handheld mobile phones at once (from Mobile phone)
Image 62The master telephone patent granted to Bell, 174465, March 10, 1876 (from History of the telephone)

Selected biography

Fleet in studio, August, 2008

Pat Trumble Fleet is an American voice actress. Widely recognized for the tens of thousands of recordings she has made for US telephone companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, the former Bell System companies, and others since 1981, she is still most recognized as the person who says "AT&T" in the company's sound trademark, which played prior to any operator assisted or credit card paid call, and on answer when calling AT&T customer service numbers.

She is also the voice for most "star" services (e.g. last-call return, call blocking, etc.) for AT&T local telephone companies, and the voice heard when making AT&T handled calls through 1-800-CALL-ATT (225-5288) and through international AT&T access numbers such as USADirect. (Full article...)

List of selected biographies
Alexander Graham Bell Thomas Edison Innocenzo Manzetti Charles Bourseul Johann Philipp Reis Antonio Meucci Tivadar Puskás Douglas H. Ring W. Rae Young Martin Cooper (inventor) Thomas Cowherd Gardiner Greene Hubbard Anthony Pollok Thomas A. Watson Elisha Gray George Sweigert John Draper

Selected images

Image 1A cordless phone
Image 2Emergency telephones, on the Paris-Bordeaux railway line, Saint-Saviol station, Vienne, France
Image 3Photograph of the interior of the Prairie Grove Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booth in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
Image 4A Western Electric candlestick phone from the 1920s
Image 5Acoustic telephone ad, The Consolidated Telephone Co., Jersey City, New Jersey, 1886
Image 6An Italian gettone telefonico (telephone token) from 1945, which was used in Italian phone booths
Image 7An example of a K6, the most common red telephone box model, photographed in London in 2012
Image 8Landline call blocking in use
Image 9Apple iPhones
Image 10Wooden wall telephone with a hand-cranked magneto generator
Image 11Mailbox and public telephone in Haßfurt, Germany
Image 12Telephone booth box art outside the Tower of London, 2012
Image 13A Bell Canada payphone with digital display
Image 14Rotary dial telephone, probably from Belgium; the circuit diagram inside is in Dutch and French
Image 15A police box outside Earl's Court tube station in London, built in 1996 and based on the 1929 Gilbert Mackenzie Trench design
Image 16Push-button telephone
Image 17The AUTOVON was a worldwide American military telephone system that was built starting in 1963.
Image 18A traditional North American rotary phone dial. The associative lettering was originally used for dialing named exchanges but was kept because it facilitated memorization of telephone numbers.
Image 19Foldable smartphones
Image 20Automatic electric Rotary dial telephone
Image 21Track-side emergency brake and emergency telephones at the platform of the metro station Aspern Nord, Donaustadt, Vienna, Austria
Image 22A Northern Electric telephone, model number N415H, circa 1950 (probably)
Image 23Public telephone, Bucharest, Romania
Image 24Historical telephone with the German imperial eagle and the heraldic shield of the House of Hohenzollern dynasty; Vollmer's Mill, Seebach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Image 25A historic telephone booth in Skansen, Stockholm
Image 26Android smartphones
Image 27A Funke + Huster telephone inside the Idrija Mine, Slovenia
Image 28Rotary dial telephone, probably from Belgium; the circuit diagram inside is in Dutch and French

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v t e Telephony
Types	Landline Cable telephony Mobile phone Satellite phone Photophone
Accessories	Answering machine Caller ID
Connectivity	Cable protection system Communications satellites Fibre-optical Free-space optical ISDN Mobile phone signal POTS PSTN Submarine cables VoIP
Calls	Missed call Misdialed call Nuisance call Phone tag
Applications	Fax transmission Telephone calls Telephone newspapers Théâtrophone Video calls
Telecommunication portal Telephones portal

v t e Emergency telephone numbers
Emergency telephone Harmonised service of social value
000 (Australia) 102 (India) 106 (Australia) 108 (India) 110 (Iran, Japan, China) 111 (New Zealand) 112 (Europe and others, worldwide GSM mobile networks) 119 (parts of Asia and Jamaica) 120 (China) 122 (Austria, Egypt, and Bosnia and Herzegovina) 123 (Colombia, Egypt) 128 (Mercosur member states) 190 (Brazil) 911 (Iraq, North America E-911 system, Philippines) 988 (North America Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) 999 (Bangladesh, UK and others) 1122 (Pakistan)
Telephones portal Telecommunication portal List article Category Wikimedia Commons