Understand smartphone technology cost in the 1980s
About this idea
Learn that the technology in a single smartphone would have cost over $100 million and filled a building in the 1980s. This quick computing history lesson reveals the incredible pace of technological progress and miniaturization.
On this page
How to get started
STEP 1
your phone's power (3 minutes)
- Modern smartphone has:
- - 4-8 GB RAM
- - 128-512 GB storage
- - Multi-core processor (billions of transistors)
- - GPS
- - High-res camera
- - Touchscreen
- - Wireless communication
- - Internet access
- - All in pocket-sized device
STEP 2
1980s EQUIVALENT (5 minutes)
- To replicate in 1980s would need:
- Computer:
- - Cray-2 supercomputer: $17-32 million
- - Filled room, weighed 5,500 lbs
- - Less powerful than modern phone
- Storage:
- - 1 GB (1980s): $100,000+
- - Phone's 128 GB: $12+ million just for storage
- GPS:
- - Military only, building-sized receivers
- - Consumer GPS didn't exist
- Camera:
- - Professional film camera: $10,000+
- - Digital cameras didn't exist
- Communication:
- - Car phone: $3,000-4,000 + $150/month
- Total: Easily $100+ million, multiple buildings
STEP 3
moore's law (4 minutes)
- Gordon Moore (Intel co-founder):
- - Predicted transistor count doubles every 2 years
- - Cost stays same or decreases
- - Has held true since 1965
- Result:
- - Exponential growth in power
- - Exponential decrease in cost
- - Exponential decrease in size
- From 1980s to now:
- - ~20 doubling periods
- - 2^20 = 1,048,576x improvement
- - Million times more powerful
- - Million times cheaper
- - Thousand times smaller
STEP 4
PERSPECTIVE (3 minutes)
- Your phone:
- - More powerful than Apollo moon computers
- - Costs $500-1,500
- - Fits in pocket
- - Connected to billions of other devices
- What might 2060 look like?
- - Current supercomputer in your contact lens?
- - Brain-computer interfaces?
- - Quantum computing in watch?
- Rate of progress is breathtaking
What you’ll need
- smartphone
Recommended resources
Tutorials & Learning
Progress milestones
Track your progress with these key achievements:
1
5 minutes
Understand your phone's power
2
10 minutes
Learn 1980s comparison
3
15 minutes
Grasp Moore's Law
Common challenges
Every beginner faces obstacles. Here's how to overcome them:
Hard to believe progress is that fast
Solution: Look at photos from the 1980s—room-sized computers, car phones the size of bricks, no internet. In just 40 years, we went from that to supercomputers in our pockets. The exponential nature of progress makes it hard to comprehend.
Share your progress
Celebrate your achievements and inspire others:
- • Appreciate your technology
- • Share this computing history
- • Imagine future possibilities