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4. Shrinking the Handset

Episode 4 of 5

Meet more brains behind mobile phone evolution - the engineers who turned them from hefty bricks into fashion items. From 2011.

Stephen Fry continues to trace the evolution of the mobile phone.

Now he talks to the engineers who turned mobile phones from hefty executive bricks into svelte fashion accessories.

One man at Motorola dreamt of a mobile phone small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, but it was Nokia, once more famous for making loo paper and wellies, that cornered the global market.

In the early 1990s, Nokia was on the brink of collapse. But the new chief executive, brought in to save the company from bankruptcy, made a bold decision to ditch the wellies and focus solely on mobile phones.

Soon the iconic Nokia ringtone (extracted incidentally from a piece for classical guitar composed in 1902) was inescapable.

Producer: Anna Buckley

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2011.

20 days left to listen

15 minutes

Last on

Fri 13 Mar 202603:30
BBC Radio 4 Extra

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5. The Chips Inside Smartphones

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  • Thu 24 Nov 201113:45
    BBC Radio 4
  • Sun 30 Dec 201200:15
    BBC Radio 4
  • Sun 15 Jul 201815:45
    BBC Radio 4 Extra
  • Mon 16 Jul 201803:45
    BBC Radio 4 Extra
  • Thu 12 Mar 202608:30
    BBC Radio 4 Extra
  • Thu 12 Mar 202613:30
    BBC Radio 4 Extra
  • Thu 12 Mar 202619:30
    BBC Radio 4 Extra
  • Fri 13 Mar 202603:30
    BBC Radio 4 Extra