Quelle: Darwin

IN THE BEGINNING, there was the analog cell phone. And it was good.And then the cell phone went digital. And that was even better,providing a clearer connection and more reliability. And better begata craving throughout the wired land for a handheld so powerful itcould handle voice, data, audio and video.

If you credit the rosiest vision, the future of technology appears tobe in the hands of the mobile phone industry. Cell phones andhandhelds are everywhere. Promises of "always on" pervade the land.The future is now, and it's wireless.

Except the future is still the future.

Let's face it: Wireless technology is relatively young. The firstgeneration has been around only since the early 1980s, when analogvoice transmission networks were introduced. The second generationtook over in the mid-'90s with the advent of digital wireless voiceand data networks, giving us the capabilities that spawned the cellphone revolution we know today. Yet, as remarkable as the technologyis, there's still plenty of room for improvement in the roamingcapabilities and sound quality of cellular transmission.