From big bricks to best cell-er

File photo / NZH

The original story referred to the far-out communications device used by television's Maxwell Smart: "Drug squad detectives have not quite made it to the telephone in the shoe stage, but they are testing new technology which is bringing them closer."

This picture of Peter Robinson test-driving one of the new-fangled mobile phones was taken on August 13, 1987, for the New Zealand Herald by photographer Mark Smith. Robinson, then a police detective inspector and head of the Auckland drug squad, says the original phones seem enormous now. "I've got a cellphone now that's a 40th the size of it."

The bulky briefcase-sized batteries made the devices too unwieldy for undercover cops to use discreetly. But they were useful, says Robinson: "At that time we were doing a lot of semi-covert operations and the phones came in useful when you didn't want to use the police channel - everyone those days knew you could intercept police radio."

By the end of that year, Telecom had 2400 cellphones on its books, or one for every 14,000 New Zealanders.

"They were dinosaurs. There wasn't a great deal of practical use in them because there weren't a great many stations set up."

Even yuppies scorned them, he says: "Sharebrokers wouldn't be seen dead with them."

But today, according to the CIA World Factbook, New Zealand has significantly more mobile phones than people.

The year after this picture was taken Robinson was promoted and sent down to head Dunedin's CIB. "I thought I would be there having a ball, but there were the Bain homicides, the Aramoana massacre - it did get a bit nasty."