Learn about the History of Cell Phones in Brazil. Documentary Video with
the DPC-650 and MicroTac Lite II models
The year 1990 brought great changes to Brazilian cellular telephony. It was the beginning of everything, large-scale retail sales to the Brazilian population, since cellular telephones had existed since the 1970s and in the 1980s they were already used in many countries, even being seen in period films. Here,
everything was still futuristic technology until the beginning of the 1990s,
when Motorola finally brought its first models to Brazil.
The first model launched in Brazil was the PT-550 (Microtac 9800X),
but other models became popular in Brazil until gradually the price became more and more affordable. In the early 1990s, cell phone lines were very expensive, some were even worth more than the dollar or another dollar. Many people sold and resold lines as they do today with mobile devices. It was a completely different time from today, when the cell phone line itself is worth nothing!
Then there were waiting lines, from months to years, it was really
very difficult to have a telephone enabled in Brazil, and even more so, both the line and the model of cell phone were very expensive.
In our telephony museum, we keep two cell phones from that time. The
DPC-650 which was a simpler model, and the
MicroTac Lite II which was much more TOP, "filled" with options such as
a personalized MENU to choose the music tone and many
other functions!
The DPC-650 Has a Dot Matrix Display that show some little messages in Menu. But DPC-650 can´t receive or send SMS or other text messages! The Display is Only for Messages configuration!
Watch our Documentary Video about the First Cell Phones in
Brazil! (Including the secret function test of wiretapping) Only Portuguese Audio version!