Martin Cooper, who is credited with the invention of the first cellular phone, on Thursday said that people who spend too much time on their phones need to "get a life," the New York Post reported.
In an interview with the BBC, Cooper, 93, who invented the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x, responding to a co-host who claimed she spent more than five hours per day on her phone, said "Do you really? You really spend five hours a day? Get a life!" and laughed.
The DynaTAC 8000x was huge compared to today's smartphones and weighed an astounding 2.5 lbs, according to the Post. Furthermore, it only had about 25 minutes of battery before it needed to recharge, a process that could take 10 hours. On top of all this, it cost almost $4000 when it hit the market in 1983.
However, at a time when the most advanced phones people had were wired to their cars, the wireless phone was revolutionary.
For the first-ever call using the phone, Cooper called his rival Joel Engel, then-head engineer of AT&T, the Post added.
'GET A LIFE!!!'How long do you spend on your phone every day?Are you replacing your #Smartphone with a so called #Dumbphone?Martin Cooper - the man who helped invent mobiles - had this message for #BBCBreakfasthttps://t.co/P9SgrByh5Q pic.twitter.com/A4ASXL3O4L
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) June 28, 2022
First cellphone call ever
“Joel, this is Marty. I’m calling you from a cellphone, a real handheld portable cellphone.”
Martin Cooper in the first-ever cellphone call
“Joel, this is Marty,” he said. “I’m calling you from a cellphone, a real handheld portable cellphone.”
According to Metro.co.uk, despite the fact that Cooper is regarded as the "father of the cell phone," he admitted that he does not use it much.
Metro cited a study by WhistleOut that surveyed 1,000 Americans and found that millennials spend nearly a quarter of their lives on their phones.