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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the say-it-in-160-characters-or-less dept.

BBC reports that Matti Makkonen, who helped to launch the worldwide sensation of texting, has died at the age of 63 after an illness.

Makkonen became known as the father of SMS after developing the idea of sending messages via mobile networks. Despite the nickname, he was often quick to point out that he did not invent the technology single-handedly.

In 2012, he told BBC News - in an SMS interview - that he believed texting in some form would be around "forever". Speaking on the 20th anniversary of the first text message, Makkonen said that he considered the development of SMS a joint effort and that it was Nokia who helped to popularise the service. "The real launch of the service, as I see it, was when Nokia introduced the first phone that enabled easy writing of messages (Nokia 2010 in 1994)," he said.


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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:27PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:27PM (#203778) Journal

    The 4g corruption almost certainly has to do with the whole digitization->compression->loss->decompression->analog chain.

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  • (Score: 2) by RobotMonster on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:49PM

    by RobotMonster (130) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:49PM (#203785) Journal

    Nah -- I'm talking corruption where you get to hear yourself, corrupted to buggery, or just complete call failure, or various other things that just shouldn't happen, ever, in a digital system.

    My favourite detail from the GSM specs was "comfort noise" -- this is where your phone generates white-noise to play to you when there aren't any packets coming through, to help convince you that your phone is still working...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:59PM (#203790)

      It's not to convince you your phone is still working, but to convince you that the connection is not dead. You won't consciously notice that noise, but you will notice its absence (assuming you're not in a noisy surrounding, of course).