Modern smartphones too complex says mobile inventor

Speaking at a 'privacy conference' in Spain, Martin Cooper, now 80 years old, suggested that the handset manufacturers have got it all wrong.

'Whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do any things well,' said Cooper. 'Our future, I think, is a number of specialist devices that focus on one thing that will improve our lives.'

That's completely at odds with the trend for smartphones to add ever more features and evolve into miniature computers.

Cooper made the world's first call from a mobile phone handset in April 1973 in a New York street. The same year his development team at Motorola created the catchily-named Prototype DynaTAC Portable Cellular System, the first mobile phone. Ten years later Motorola produced the world's first handheld mobile phone, the DynaTAC, which was finally available to consumers in 1984.

Cooper said that since the installed base of mobile phone users reached 300,000 in 1984, there are now four billion people with a mobile today.

Although today's sleek iPhones and Droids are light years ahead of the early brick-sized phones, Cooper is not convinced that the move towards combining dozens of functions into one device represents progress. Apple's iPhone has set the smartphone market alight by producing the first easy to understand interface.

'When you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do any things well,' he said. And Cooper has in the past criticised the iPhone for being too complex and hard to use.

However sales of smartphones are booming, while those of less powerful handsets are falling, suggesting that the public does not agree, suggesting that Apple, and its imitators, are on the right track.