Stephen Fry On The Phone The Complete Radio 4 Series cover art

Stephen Fry On The Phone The Complete Radio 4 Series

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 31 July, 2025 23:59 BST.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Stephen Fry On The Phone The Complete Radio 4 Series

By: Stephen Fry
Narrated by: Stephen Fry
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July, 2025 23:59 BST. Cancel monthly.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £7.99

Buy Now for £7.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Stephen Fry traces the evolution of the mobile phone, from hefty executive bricks that required a separate briefcase to carry the battery, to the smartphones available today. There are more mobile phones in the world than there are people on the planet. Stephen Fry talks to the backroom boys who made it all possible, and here’s how the technology succeeded in ways that the geeks had not necessarily intended. For example, the engineers who designed the early texting facilities didn’t imagine that anyone might want to reply. (Just in case, they added a short list of possible pre-set answers: yes, no, and maybe).

They also thought taxifones and fax machines for your car would be winners. In the early 90s, Nokia, then famous for toilet paper and rubber boots, was on the brink of collapse; until the new CEO made a bold decision to focus solely on mobile phones…. Thanks to Margaret Thatcher opening up the airwaves, Britain became a world leader in mobile phone technology. And today, 85% of the silicon chips inside all mobiles are designed by just one Cambridge-based company. Series produced by Anna Buckley.

©2011 Stephen Fry (P)2011 AudioGO Ltd Computer Science Entertainment & Performing Arts History History & Culture Social Sciences

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Fake Law cover art
A Prayer for the Ship cover art
Doctor Who - The Stones of Venice cover art
Doctor Who - Energy of the Daleks cover art
Who Are Ya? cover art
Doctor Who - The Dalek Contract cover art
Admiral Collingwood: Nelson's Own Hero cover art
Dalek Empire - 1.1 Invasion of the Daleks cover art
Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best cover art
Shakespeare's Kings cover art
Doctor Who - Blood of the Daleks, Part 1 cover art
Blake's 7 1.1 Fractures cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
When it was described as the complete series, I never would have imagined it to be such a brief podcast, given that I paid as much as a book for it. Very disappointing value for money.

How short it was

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Initial episodes are ok but when we moved into the smartphone era, despite being published in 2011 there is no mention of Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android etc, just Apple. Very short series also.

Short and maybe a bit biased?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.