Top 10 mobile inventions in the past 30 years

2. Motorola DynaTAC
Iain Thomson: Mobile phones had been discussed in labs for years but at the end of the day someone had to go out and build one. The result was the Motorola DynaTAC.

By conventional standards the phone looks laughably bulky, but in 1983 it was the coolest executive toy on the block. Sure, people had mobiles in cars, although you had to be careful with the earlier models or they'd drain your battery.

But this was something you could put in a briefcase and use on the move, and the City boys loved them. Gordon Gecko had one and there's still a bronze statue of a trader using a bulky early mobile outside Cannon Street station in London.

At over two pounds and a foot long when the aerial was extended, the phone was stretching the definition of mobile today, and the one-hour battery life made it pretty much useless except for emergencies.

Despite the near $4,000 price tag and fees akin to burning money while making a call, they sold remarkably well and the mobile industry as we know it kicked off.

Shaun Nichols: In many ways the DynaTAC shows just how far the mobile industry has come in terms of technology and culture. When Gordon Gecko wielded a DynaTAC in Wall Street, the phone was seen as the icon of high-tech excess in the mid 1980s.

Buying one would set you back several thousand dollars just for the hardware, and for the vast majority of owners it was a status symbol as much as a practical tool. Keep in mind that this was also before the advent of email and voicemail.

Fast forward 20 years and mobile phones are nearly ubiquitous for everyone over the age of 12 (and many under,) and are considered a vital tool. I, like many people my age, don't even have a land line phone connection in my house.

Definitely a far cry from the days of mobile phones such as the DynaTAC being a fancy gizmo for the ultra-corporate types

1. GSM
Shaun Nichols: What good would mobile phones be without a network on which to use them? Just like we couldn't have the internet without the basic HTTP protocol, mobile communications would be significantly different today without GSM.

The GSM network is by far the most dominant way to use a mobile phone, particularly in Europe. This of course makes it easier to connect to a network and make a call, and the standard has grown hugely.

Then there's the ability to switch providers without giving up your handset. Phones on the GSM system use removable SIM cards to identify themselves, so users aren't tethered to a specific phone model or service provider (unless the vendor and carrier have an exclusivity deal, i.e. the iPhone on AT&T.)

Iain Thomson: The GSM network is a great example of logical thinking. In the early days of mobile networks, each provider had its own communications system, or hired it from someone else.

Compatability was a huge problem and stunted demand for mobile telephony. So in Europe people got together and in 1987 13 countries signed up for the GSM standard, and the rest is history.

Here in America another route was taken. Competition was deemed to be the best way to sort out the dominant mobile phone network, and Qualcomm won the race. However, this left a mishmash of competing standards and the nagging problem that phones in the US didn't work in Europe, or much of the rest of the world.

This is a classic example of why those who advocate the market sorting things out are sometimes wrong. Mobile telephony needed a starting point, so that all boats would rise as it took off, not just a few.

By co-operating on one simple point rather than competing, GSM became the dominant world network, and by far the most popular.