Cooper noted how he gave his iPhone to his grandson. As he said, "Kids are really caught up in that." The final sentence was the zinger (emphasis ours): "But I think that the Android phones are catching up now, and the latest version of the Android phones are every bit as good, if not better, than the iPhone."
The Droid was a huge success for Motorola, and for Android. It's still being sold, and is fact expected to get a Froyo update very soon, as early as July 13th, it is rumored.
Other tidbits from the interview:
- They knew the cell phone would become popular, but they never imagined it would happen so fast. "Well, we knew that someday everybody would have a (cell) phone, but it was hard to imagine that that would happen in my lifetime. And now we've got almost five billion phones in the world. Wow."
- Publicly demonstrated in April of 1973, the first commercial phone, the "DynaTac," didn't go on sale until 1983. It sold for $3,900.
- Cooper never imagined all the features that have been added into cell phones (GPS, camera, etc.) and he's not sure it's a good thing. "I must tell you as much as we were dreamers, we never imagined that all these things could be combined into one, and I'm really not so sure that it's a great thing. Phones have gotten so complicated, so hard to use, that you wonder if this is designed for real people or for engineers."
Cooper, now 81, is the founder of ArrayComm, a company which works to improve cellular networks, smart antenna and wireless communication. He and his wife also invented the Jitterbug, which is a simplified cell phone designed for seniors.
