The man behind the mobile phone isn’t impressed with the path his legacy has taken. Martin Cooper, inventor of the mobile phone believes that the devices have become too complex, with a host of unnecessary features including cameras, music and video players.

The former Motorola researcher spoke at a conference in Madrid “Whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do any things well…our future, I think, is a number of specialist devices that focus on one thing that will improve our lives” The 80 year old was the lead engineer of the Motorola team that developed the first handheld mobile phone. He made the first wireless call from a busy Manhattan street corner on April 3, 1973.

“The first cell phone model weighed over one kilo and you only could talk for 20 minutes before the battery ran out, which is just as well because you would not be able to hold it up for much longer,” he said. “What we did with this mobile telephone was create a revolution. Before the mobile phone existed we were calling a place, now we are calling a person.”

Since that first call was made, the popularity of mobile phones has soared, with more than 4 billion people owning one today compared with only 300,000 in 1984.

What do you think; do mobile phones try to do too much? Should Smartphones be simplified, or should we accept new technological advancements and move forward?