Nostalgia - Phones From The Past

[AugieTN]

I still have this one sitting around

 

[olbriar]

I have every phone I ever used but three. Two I traded in and one I loaned that was never returned. I started my cellphone service with this phone. It still charges and boots.

 

[AugieTN]

HTC Windows Phone

 

[AugieTN]

I have every phone I ever used but three. Two I traded in and one I loaned that was never returned. I started my cellphone service with this phone. It still charges and boots.
View attachment 166048

I had one almost exactly like that. It held 10 contacts.

I was in Builders Square and I had the phone in my cart. I walked away for a minute and it got stolen. Then the Sh-thead that stole it called all 10 of my contacts asking what the reward was for finding it.

 

[olbriar]

I had one almost exactly like that. It held 10 contacts.

I was in Builders Square and I had the phone in my cart. I walked away for a minute and it got stolen. Then the Sh-thead that stole it called all 10 of my contacts asking what the reward was for finding it.

What a weasel. My original phone story is I wore that phone on a belt clip. I was working in a stair well when I accidentally dislodged it. It fell two stories and landed on a concrete floor. No damage.

 

[olbriar]

 

[AugieTN]

Palm Treo Pro - My last Palm phone

 

[olbriar]

The original flip phone.

 

[AugieTN]

Asus Zenfone 2

 

[treb1797]

Don't have it, but wish I did. Still my favorite phone ever. Samsung Rogue.

 

[ocnbrze]

i used to be jealous of people who had sidekicks

 

[nickdalzell]

I wish T-Mobile would bring back the Sidekick. I missed that era entirely. Didn't get my first smartphone until boss handed me an iPhone 3GS. I was at the time dead-set against them, seeing them as nothing more than the 'second coming of the Apple Newton'.

I was, at least until early 2010, using a Nokia 5185i through Page Plus (Verizon). The AMPS portion was for all intents and purposes, dead (screw you, FCC) but the CDMA 1x part continued to work, Unfortunately, the battery (and all the secondhand replacements) had degraded to the point of only giving 4 hours of standby, or 5 minutes of talk time max. After having a few instances where boss failed to reach me because I would hear two rings then 'bleep bleep! **recharge battery** **Power down**' that's how I got handed the 3GS.

The 5100-series were Nokia's hallmark in the mid-1990s to the early 2010s, and had tons of aftermarket accessories. This was the phone that brought us the 'Snake' game as well. I knew the menus in and out, and ironically the UI was flat. It was literally black and white 2D for an interface.

 

[AugieTN]

One of my wife's favorite phones from the past, Kyocera with the slide out keyboard. It was available on Virgin Mobile

 

[ocnbrze]

just curious, did anybody had a blackberry when it was hugely popular?

 

[Hadron]

My brother had one of the early Blackberries for a while. Never owned one myself.

One rather nice little oddball phone I owned was the Ericsson T68:

Tiny, weird-looking but surprisingly ergonomic because the pad of the thumb fitted into the "waist" of the phone when you held it. Little joystick for navigation, auto-switching tri-band GSM (i.e. worked in the States as well as Most Of The World), had bluetooth, a colour display, and amazing battery life (could last a good 10 days). Of course it was also a bit flimsy, the tiny buttons weren't the best typing experience, but was a genuinely nice and usable phone for its time.

It also had no water-resistance whatsoever, and mine died after being carried in the pocket of an old and insufficiently waterproof mountain jacket on a hike through Wales in the winter. It was replaced by the Motorola RAZR V3:

(which I could take my own photo of, as I still have this one, but can't be bothered to go up the stairs to get it). Much shorter battery life, and less comfortable in the hand, but flipping open to answer calls and snapping shut to end them never got old, and the call quality was very good. And it was the first phone I owned with an actual (mini)USB socket as the charging port. Definitely a design classic, even if you did pay a premium for it.

 

[olbriar]

View attachment 166053

Raises hand.... I did I did I just had to have it. I think I used it less than a year and moved on.

 

[mikedt]

My first phone was an Oki 900

just curious, did anybody had a blackberry when it was hugely popular?

I used to have company issued Blackberrys 2004-2005, but my own phone around that time was a Nokia 7600 Symbian phone.

 

[mikedt]

The last Blackberry I actually saw for myself was this one in Zhuhai,12 years ago. We weren't impressed.

 

[AugieTN]

Wife's LG G7ThinQ not terrible old. Purchased in 2018. Wife didn't like the bloatware that came with this LG phone

 

[nickdalzell]

just curious, did anybody had a blackberry when it was hugely popular?

I tried one. In 2011, while I was still struggling to find myself in the Android world (being a toy to play with since Apple hadn't yet frelled me over until iOS 7 came out two years later) and hearing all this about the 'BlackBerry' I stumbled upon a prepaid one at the Kmart. It was called the BlackBerry Curve, and was on Virgin Mobile (Sprint). It didn't start out all that great, given it took a WEEK to activate (due to Virgin's terrible customer support system along with a very broken website when you're still clinging to Windows 98SE, but I digress). But what really ruined the experience was that it was hardly a 'smartphone' in the real meaning of the word.

It was WORSE than Windows Phone. There was no Angry Birds, no Google apps, not even Plants vs. Zombies (you know, all the hyped up mobile games of 2011!) and worse yet, no YouTube client (forced to use its crappy browser) and not even a shopping or banking app. Forget Amazon Music, you had to buy them on PC and sync them via a cable like some ancient Pocket PC from 2003. The app store, 'App World', was awful. It had hardly anything, and what it did have (which consisted of Facebook and Twitter for the most part and tons of useless crap otherwise) were heavily out of date; the UI of Facebook in 2011 mirroring its Java counterpart from 2008. It didn't even work, as the login failed due to the server being dead!

The whole internet for apps, email, messaging, (except the web browser, being the only app that worked via WiFi in the absence of a data connection) were going through some sort of BlackBerry proxy called BIS, for BlackBerry Internet Services. Virgin had shaky dealings with it so I didn't get to utilize BlackBerry Messenger or Email (this was what RIM's whole premise hoped for, their CEO actually saying "nobody needs a smartphone for more than email, anyways" which brings back the infamous quote attributed to Gates "640KB of RAM ought to be enough for everybody") and all I could do was text, call, take notes, and browse the web.

You know, like any Pocket PC over 5 years earlier could do. That's when it worked. The term 'battery pull' was common on CrackBerry forums, as when these things crash, and they did--often, they just froze. You had to yank the battery, and restart and depending on the amount of apps, music and pictures you had, could take up to 30 freaking minutes. Let's just say I wasn't one bit surprised at RIM dying and their BlackBerry name being a joke.

 

[AugieTN]

Motorola Moto X4 from 2017

 

[nickdalzell]

Maybe it's just my perception of time, but 2017 ain't what I call 'phones from the past' since 2017 is still pretty much like today--phones haven't gotten any better or changed much since 2015. It's like calling any car newer than the 80s a 'classic car'. I mean really, does anyone ever consider the 1990 Ford Tempo or Mercury Bobcat a 'classic?' That's why it irks me to see cars from the 1990s+ at 'classic car shows'. I mean pretty much all cars post 1990 are garbage plastic and cheap. Replaceable not collectible like, say a 1958 Plymouth Belvedere.

 

[Cooper303]

Sony Xperia Arc. My first smart phone. Got it in 2012, IIRC.

 

[AugieTN]

Anyone else with a phone from the past?

 

[Steven58]

My first phone