Earbuds or earphones are headphones of a smaller size that are placed directly outside of the ear canal, but without fully enveloping it. They are generally inexpensive and are favored for their portability and convenience. However, due to their inability to provide isolation, they are not capable of delivering the precision and range of sound offered by many full-sized headphones and canalphones. As a result, they are often used at higher volumes in order to drown out noise from the user's surroundings, which increases the risk of hearing-loss.



Nokia had been producing commercial and military mobile radio communications technology since the 1960s and later began developing mobile phones for the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) network standard that went online in the 1980s. Nokia introduced its first car phone, the Mobira Senator, in 1982 and the world's first hand-held NMT mobile phone, the Mobira Cityman, in 1987. NMT was the world's first mobile telephony standard that enabled international roaming, and provided valuable experience for Nokia for its close participation in developing Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). It is a digital standard which came to dominate the world of mobile telephony in the 1980s and 1990s, in mid-2006 accounting for about two billion mobile telephone subscribers in the world, or about 80% percent of the total, in more than 200 countries. The world's first commercial GSM call was made in 1991 in Helsinki over a Nokia-supplied network, by Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri, using a Nokia phone.