I'll have to find my cellphone from about 1983-4. It is a fairly large metal box (about the size of a VCR) that fit in the trunk of the car. It is several components including a whole lot of big cables to connect between the tranceiver, antenna, power and the floor-mounted phone.
That one was compact compared to the ones we had in the company test cars during the trial of the first cellular system in the nation here in Chicago.