Mobility

• The primary difference between a land line phone and a wireless phone is that one is mobile and the other is not. With a long enough cord a land line phone achieves a small amount of mobility, and cordless phones communicate with a land line base station, but this is not the same as being truly wireless. Wireless cell phones are dependent on cell phone towers for access to telecommunication lines, which are present in most populated areas.
  
  

Design

• The design of the two devices is also significantly different. Wireless phones are designed with several physical features in mind such as weight, shape and size. The phone should, ideally, be small enough and the right shape to fit in to a pocket, and be light enough to not be noticeable there. Land line phones are often stationary though, so none of these design features is significant. Land line phones are often designed to function on a flat surface or with the base attached to a wall, and with a long enough cord between the base station and the receiver to allow some limited mobility.
  
  

History

• The history of the two devices is also quite different. Though the inventor of the telephone is disputed, Alexander Graham Bell filed his patent for the device with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in March of 1876, and it was this technology that pioneered the technique for transmitting voice via electrical signals. The first cell phone came along somewhere around 1946, but was nothing like the modern cell phone. The pocket-sized cell phone is only a few decades old, and is a relatively new technology compared to the land line telephone.
  
  

Future Developments

• There is not likely to be much innovation with the idea of the land line in the future. The cell phone, however, has become an important device in the daily lives of modern people. Cell phones will likely develop better battery life, more processing power and greater bandwidth, becoming more like computers and less like telephones.