Technophone

The Excel/Excell was a range of mobile phones developed by the British company Technophone in the 1980s. These mobile phones were advertised as the smallest, lightest most intelligent mobile phones in the world at that time, and were the first to fit in a pocket. While much larger than later mobile telephones at 7 inches tall, 3 inches wide and 1 inch deep, they were very much more compact than mobiles of their time, which included models by Motorola and Stornophone, and dedicated car phones.

Technophone was commissioned by the controlling shareholder of Millicom, Jan Stenbeck for Vodafone and his Swedish cellular firm, Comvik. It also received a research and development grant from the Department of Trade and Industry to develop the M1. This provided the DTI insight into how the mobile could change from an expensive professional electronics item only affordable by industry executives and millionaires to a mass consumer item. It led the DTI to create the conditions for the personal communications network transformation in the seminal consultation document "Phones on the Move".

The first phone sold by Excell Communications of Washway Rd, Sale, Cheshire was the M1 and later the M2 and the M2 (Philips class 3 phone)

The phone cost around £2500 when first launched and some owners were Terence Trent Darby, David Steel, Joan Collins and Jonathon Morris from the popular Liverpool-based TV show Bread. The Excell phone range were also featured in the TV show owned by the character Joey who brandished his phone everywhere he went. The phones were actually dummy phones created by members of the mobile phone repair team.

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