Be Excellent To Each Other

Philips Savvy. Present from my parents Christmas 1999. It could make phonecalls and had two lines of text.

Go!

HI5 PHONE BUDDY!
About the same time, too.

A Nokia 3210, it could do pretty much everything I do with a phone even now:

Hah! I tried searching for my first phone on Google, but couldn't find anything. It took me a fair while to realise it was an Ericsson phone, well before they merged with Sony. I think it was an SH888, judging from photos, but can't be 100% sure.



It was shit.

Yup one of them. You sell it short, it also had a biocalendar.
Then some old ericcson, which wasn't much better, and didn't have a biocalendar. Then a motorola, as a free replacement for the broken ericcson. Which had no biocalendar.
Then a samsung d500. Finally a colour screen, and a camera. But no biocalendar.
And now some ropey Nokia. As a not-free replacement for the broken Samsung. Still no biocalendar.

Moral: I should've kept the Savvy.

Nokia 5130, represent:

(actually mine was the Orange-branded nk402, although that's the same thing.)

There's (probably) an App for that!

I had one like that, but there were two models I think, and one was slightly smaller and mine was the smaller one with a round centre button. Anyway it was a black phone on BT cellnet, and you could pick one number to make free calls to, and as I had started seeing Craig it was great as I talked for hours and hours.

You couldn't change the sim card to a new phone, and when they stopped the offer all of the phones kind of magically exploded.

I had a Nokia 5110, with it's delightful aerial, only I had a special case on it with a flip-down keypad cover. It looked way cooler, the cover looked like it had a mic in it, but it didn't.

EDIT - Hi5, doc! Almost.

Also, I've had the same number since then, too.

The ghastly 3110.



I had an even older one than that which I bought in Finland, I still have it somewhere so will dig it out for teh lols later.

Then I had an nk402, which was pretty similar (SNAP doc!)

I think this is the one, I couldn't remember the model number so had to do a quick search.

NEC G9:


Horrible phone, with a nasty pull out aerial that didn't seem to make much difference if it was extended or not. Also big and heavy. It was my mum's phone, but I was given it to have on me when I went out for emergencies - which generall worked out as me having it almost all of the time.

Then at uni I was given a siemens C25. It was nice and little for the time, and had these awesomely annoying dance-style ring tones that were supposedly made by some euro-DJ or something. It was a good phone.

You had the Philips C12, then.

I have no idea. In those days a phone was a phone!

Speaking of phones, and slightly away from the topic (so apologies), Samsung's ‘Jét’ annoys me. Marketing folk: you can't stick an accent above a letter and still pronounce it exactly the same. Stop trying to look cool and modern.

I had a C25 which was blue and it was the first phone that you could create your own ring tones on!

I loved that phone and would still use it today if I could... It saved the day once in the lake district I remember!

Motorola MR20 here... hi

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgur ... s%3Disch:1

Yes! That's what it was called

Samsung SGH300 or similar. Basically the first Samsung flip phone - no screen on the outside.

That's what I had too, couldn't remember the name of it.

I doubt it would be so hilariously crap though. It was always telling me my day was going to be crap (fair point, actually) with 2/5 for love. 2/5 for energy, and similar for the other two things it rated.

However, if you had the date set to the latest it would go, and your birthday as the earliest (therefore making you about 120) you got 5/5 for everything. I'm not sure whether that would just be from lowered expecations (When you're 120, a nurse cleaning you could be seen as 5/5 on the sexings front) or not.

The one on the right. I got it in 1998 I think.

it was fooking heavy

Sagem MC850.

Aye. That I had to jam a load of paper between the battery & body to stop it sliding around too much is the other thing I remember about it.

EDIT: I had to memorise the numbers that I wanted to send texts to too tu-tu, because the SMS thingy couldn't access the phonebook.

Yes, and the credit card sim kept falling out.....

You had SMS? Luxury!

I remember I was the only one with a phone, the rest of my mates had pagers...

That's kickin' it old school!

Pagers never really took off in this country, did they? In America loads of people still seem to have them.

it was around 1996/97

we used them to arrange pub meets..

We had loads of them for out of hours callout and the like before we replaced them all with Blackberries. Late 90s, like.

I had a pager up until a couple of years ago, when people finally realised that using a phone around a hospital wasn't exactly the same thing as going round smothering all the patients to death with pillows.

Indeed, I don't think I've ever seen one in real life, only in US dramas and things. And I think they're not part of the mobile network in the US, it's a separate thing.

Details kov?

Details of what?

I vaguely remember people at my sixth-form college hearing about the death of Jill Dando through a pager news service.

How did it work, what network and stuff? Was it limited to a particular town?

Ah, Now I'm reminded of them 'Rabbit' mobile phones, which I think were the precursor to Orange. Only worked in your house via a base station to your landline, or a Happy Eater iirc.

Not sure, they were a device half the size of a fag packet.

Panasonic pager (i think) with a unique reference number

Used to ring a number and leave a message, moments later it appeared on the screen. (it was 14 years ago, so a bit hazzy)

There are various protocols, the most common were on 900 and 400 MHz. Other than that they work exactly the same way as mobile service works now. They had massively beefier transmitters though.

Oh yeah, hutchison telecom though wasn't it? Worked on about 3 streets in central London and that was it.

Ericsson A1018s Coca Cola Edition

Remember the Sony Marsbar? Eh? Do you? What was that all about then? Eh?

Hang on. That rings a big bell than the image I dug up of my first phone, albeit I definitely didn't have a Coca Cola Edition one.

My first phone was a hideous crappy thing who's make and model I can't remember.

But I do remember that you couldn't access the phonebook when sending text, so I had to carry around a piece of paper with all my number printed out.

I was given one of these in mid-2004:

Motorola MicroTAC something (not sure what model, but that one looks just like it). About 1994-95?

Motorola Graphite, about 1997-98.

Used to love sending texts on it - no-one could understand why little written messages were coming up on their phones. Before this I had a pages which only paged me a phone number. I'd be out flyering one side of Coventry and have no 20p for the phone so when I got a page of the office number I'd have to walk back to find out what they wanted. Invariably it was to know where I was at the time. Hence I upgraded to the graphite. Never made any calls on it myself really - couldn't afford to.

/edit all phones, even the iPhone, should have an optional pull-out aerial. I loved them things. Now you just press the button to answer, or touch it or something, it's just not the same.

You better not laugh you cunts.

I had a Mercury M200 on the plan where you could call free all night after 6 and all weekend.

About 15 years ago. It cost, £300. And the contract was something like £14.99 a month IIRC.

Yup. Also known as the Mercury M300 (their branding).

They did the M400 which was the phone with no flip but the same thing, basically.