Smartphones are a part of our everyday lives, but we don’t often stop to consider how they got here. In 1973, Motorola’s Martin Cooper made the world’s first mobile phone call on a prototype that was heavy, cumbersome and expensive — not exactly the definition of a must-have portable digital device.

It took ten years for mobile phones to become truly useful, but in 1992 the first text message was sent. The text, which read “Merry Christmas,” was sent from an IBM Simon Personal Communicator, a precursor to the modern-day smartphone.

Today’s smartphones are packed with high-tech features that help make our life more convenient. Most have a touch screen, GPS and camera for navigating around town and the web, and they let us stay connected to friends and family via social media apps, email, chat and video calls. Many also have a microphone and speaker to allow hands-free calling.

There are lots of different types of displays on smartphones, with liquid-crystal (LCD) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) being the most common. A few have pressure-sensitive touchscreens, which respond to the varying degrees of force used to press down on them.

Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Fold smartphone has a tri-fold design that enables it to open out into an eight-inch display. The company’s senior vice president, Samsung mobile chief DJ Kang, said the firm is considering releasing it in the United States, a major move for a tri-fold smartphone that has only been offered in South Korea and China to date.