The evolution of tech:

How much has changed since we started

- Gabriel Pe

Gadgets Magazine is turning 25 this year. Since we started in 1999, we have seen how much tech has changed. In just 25 years, we come so far; mobile phones have rapidly developed, laptops and computers have become smaller yet more powerful and, finally, the internet, from its infancy, has taken over most aspects of our lives.

As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, we look back on some of the major tech innovations that have changed our lives over the last 25 years.

The late 1990s and early 2000s were a great decade for mobile phones. Mobile phone manufacturers began the race to create a truly portable device. The 1990s saw a departure from the bulky Dynatacs of the 1980s (those massive phones from Motorola). It was during the 1990s when brands like Nokia and Motorola stepped up their game, introducing smaller devices. Nokia delivered hits like the Nokia 1011 and Nokia 9000 Communicator. Motorola leveraged its mobile development to come out with the Motorola Startac, the first clamshell mobile phone that was the predecessor to their iconic Razr series. The 1990s also gave us the first Blackberry devices in the form of the RIM 850 and 857. Finally, towards the end of the millennium, we got colored display mobile phones, courtesy of the Siemens S10.

The 2000s intensified the rapid innovations in mobile connectivity. The decade gave us some of the most iconic mobile phones, such as the Nokia 3310 launched in 2000. In the same year, we saw the first commercially available camera phone in the form of the Sharp J-SH04. There was also the now iconic Motorola RAZR V3 (ironically, the V3 was actually the first version), which set the standard on what a flip phone should be. Later in the decade, Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in 2007, which totally disrupted the mobile phone landscape.