Picture it: It was 1996, Charlottesville, and a young PPP had just gotten her driver’s license at age 16. She was working full time time 40 minutes from home and driving a crappy 1986 Chevrolet Celebrity on its last legs. So, she signed up for a big old Motorola brick flip phone through 360. At least, I think that was the name…they were bought by Alltel, I think. Nights and weekends started at 7 and I had a lot of minutes for a cheap plan. It was pretty sweet.
@dalex Was yours blue, too? Mine lasted until sometime in '97, I think. I ran it through a couple ditches a few times and the only damage it ever got was the little plastic pieces on the corners of the bumpers cracked. That car was a beastly tank for all its weird issues. Did you ever “bury” the speedometer needle on it? There were a couple long straight stretches on my long drive home, and I’d often floor it through there to see if I could bury the needle before having to slow down for the next curve. I earned my first speeding ticket at age 16 doing that. haha
@TickledLizard That was my last phone! I had it customized like that and it has “So Say We All” engraved on the back. When you turn it on, it says “Frakkin’ Toasters” on the screen!
Edit: Well, mine was the 1st Gen and I think that’s the newer version, but still.
@TickledLizard@Barney@carl669 I’m not too lazy to do this picture from my phone. I loved the customization on this phone, but didn’t like the phone itself.
@TickledLizard When I bought it, it was the best phone Republic Wireless was offering. I upgraded to the 2nd Gen (hubby wouldn’t let me customize that one) and found out right afterward that Republic wouldn’t be getting future support from Moto with it. At the time, they said they weren’t going to get the Pure edition, either. So, I sent the second gen back and bought a Nexus 6p through Fi instead. I like it a lot more, though there were a few features that Moto did really, really well.
@carl669 I definitely remember having that one for sure. The orange LCD display always fascinated me. The second picture I swear is familiar, especially the case. I don’t know if that’s the exact phone but I do distinctly remember that the flip part only covered the keypad/half the phone.
@DrunkCat people absouletly loved the startac phone. i remember people called in absolutely pissed when motorola announced they weren’t going to be making them any more. pretty sure that second one is one of the M3xxx series phones. (i used to work at motorola)
I think I was 11 or 12 when I got my first cell phone back in 2002-2004ish. My mom had this fantasy that I would always check in and tell her where I was.
got my first phone in 1997. the only reason was, i had to carry a pager for work and i finally got tired of always having to find a pay phone. it’s also possible i gave my pager# out to a few female type folks.
Had a brick in 1989. It got too hot to touch after a fifteen minute phone call, and to carry it I used a dog collar, which didn’t add appreciative weight.
But I remember staring at it in it’s charger base, thinkling it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
I actually remember the day. I got a Motorola StarTac October 14, 1997. Because on October 13th my car broke down on the highway in a Wyoming snowstorm and had to flag down a trucker to hitch a ride home.
An LG flip-phone in 2000, with Alltel (they covered where I was). Right after college graduation; I didn’t know how long I would stay in West Florida, so I got the mobile. I moved down to Orlando a year later, dropped the phone and number, picked up my (407) area code with Cingular and have had the number ever since.
It’s been such a long time I can’t even remember the years. It was in the mid 1990’s and the phone I had was a Motorola brick phone where the battery was more than twice the size of the phone itself. And if you weren’t careful recharging that beast the battery would develop a memory and would hold a shorter charge.
I got a red Blackberry Curve in 2006. I hate talking on the phone, but I’m a heavy email user, so I was pretty meh about carrying a phone until internet-enabled phones became more common.
However, I carried a Sharp Zaurus (Linux PDA) since around 2002, so I’d consider that my first mobile device (not counting pagers).
I loved the Zaurus… it had a touch screen, a physical keyboard, AND a stylus! Boom! I would do a lot of stuff like email, remote logins, etc., right from the teeny tiny command line. And it had Wi-Fi, but it was useless outside my house because nobody was using Wi-Fi very much back then.
I would connect it to a stereo, NFS-mount my MP3 collection, and run shell scripts to stream music.
My father worked at Motorola in the cell division , so we had those bag phones very early.
I got to carry a StarTAC as well. I could do some ‘testing’ on it, but was told not to go crazy with calling.
I had one of these long before I was trusted with anything that would cost my parents money every month.
I got my first phone at 16. Some LG flip phone. You know the one, heavily rounded and kind of shiny. That eventually turned into a “smart-ish” phone my sophomore year of college.
My wife had to travel a lot for work in 2000-2001 and got one then, a Sprint Samsung flip phone. I borrowed it the one or two times a year I had to travel, then got one myself in 2004, a Samsung flip/feature phone. Kept that until 2008.
My boss had a bag phone and the large brick, then upgraded every year or two. He would leave the bag/brick phone with us techs when we were alone at customer sites, especially new buildouts where there were no phones, so I did use those back in the day.
Got one of these puppies in '98 or so when I moved off campus, figuring it would be easier to have a phone that moved with me instead of having to port a number or keep providing people a new one every time I moved.
My first phone was in 2000. I bought a case on eBay before I even bought the phone. Cingular tried to get me to buy a different phone but I was dead set on whichever model Nokia it was, because the case I was getting would make the keypad cover slide like the ones in The Matrix.
This was similar to the phone I got. I remember it being really thin and tiny though. I don’t remember exactly which model:
The phone that I wanted it to look like, which was not available in the US:
I think it was 1998. My band was going on tour and I was working from home doing tech support for a music software company. I bought the phone so I could take calls while we were on the road. Somewhere between Seattle and Spokane I was on a call (not driving) when we got pulled over for speeding. I guess cell phones were still novel enough that the cop was trying to figure out who I was talking to. We ended up not getting a ticket but we had to give him a CD.
Put it off as long as I could. Once they became computers with 3G connections I broke down. Now I rarely ever turn my computer on.
Even compared to people my age (I’m 23) I got a phone very late. The Nexus 5 was my first.
@ianrbuck It was my first smart phone. (I carried a small Moto Razr 3 for a couple of years.) At least you and I both started out with good phones!
@ianrbuck I think I got my first when I was 27 or 28. About two years ago. Then got service last year.
Picture it: It was 1996, Charlottesville, and a young PPP had just gotten her driver’s license at age 16. She was working full time time 40 minutes from home and driving a crappy 1986 Chevrolet Celebrity on its last legs. So, she signed up for a big old Motorola brick flip phone through 360. At least, I think that was the name…they were bought by Alltel, I think. Nights and weekends started at 7 and I had a lot of minutes for a cheap plan. It was pretty sweet.
@PurplePawprints YES. I also had a 86 Celebrity. Mine also died a horrid death in 1996.
First phone was one of these sweet little numbers, ~1997.
@dalex Was yours blue, too? Mine lasted until sometime in '97, I think. I ran it through a couple ditches a few times and the only damage it ever got was the little plastic pieces on the corners of the bumpers cracked. That car was a beastly tank for all its weird issues. Did you ever “bury” the speedometer needle on it? There were a couple long straight stretches on my long drive home, and I’d often floor it through there to see if I could bury the needle before having to slow down for the next curve. I earned my first speeding ticket at age 16 doing that. haha
I’m going to get one someday soon. Maybe.
@Barney
@TickledLizard That was my last phone! I had it customized like that and it has “So Say We All” engraved on the back. When you turn it on, it says “Frakkin’ Toasters” on the screen!
Edit: Well, mine was the 1st Gen and I think that’s the newer version, but still.
@TickledLizard You are so mean.
@PurplePawprints i love “so say we all”!
@Barney
That’s only if I post either of these two links:
Link Link
@TickledLizard @Barney @carl669 I’m not too lazy to do this picture from my phone. I loved the customization on this phone, but didn’t like the phone itself.
@PurplePawprints
This is the 2nd gen. The newest one is from last year, although it was rebranded as Moto X Style/ Moto X Pure Edition
If it wasn’t for the fact that I have a thing for the Nexus family of devices, I may have gotten the Moto X at one point.
@TickledLizard When I bought it, it was the best phone Republic Wireless was offering. I upgraded to the 2nd Gen (hubby wouldn’t let me customize that one) and found out right afterward that Republic wouldn’t be getting future support from Moto with it. At the time, they said they weren’t going to get the Pure edition, either. So, I sent the second gen back and bought a Nexus 6p through Fi instead. I like it a lot more, though there were a few features that Moto did really, really well.
This was my first cellphone that was handed down to me through my dad:
Oh shit! I remember this guy too:
@DrunkCat startac! that was a great phone.
@carl669 I definitely remember having that one for sure. The orange LCD display always fascinated me. The second picture I swear is familiar, especially the case. I don’t know if that’s the exact phone but I do distinctly remember that the flip part only covered the keypad/half the phone.
@DrunkCat people absouletly loved the startac phone. i remember people called in absolutely pissed when motorola announced they weren’t going to be making them any more. pretty sure that second one is one of the M3xxx series phones. (i used to work at motorola)
I think I was 11 or 12 when I got my first cell phone back in 2002-2004ish. My mom had this fantasy that I would always check in and tell her where I was.
got my first phone in 1997. the only reason was, i had to carry a pager for work and i finally got tired of always having to find a pay phone. it’s also possible i gave my pager# out to a few female type folks.
Had a brick in 1989. It got too hot to touch after a fifteen minute phone call, and to carry it I used a dog collar, which didn’t add appreciative weight.
But I remember staring at it in it’s charger base, thinkling it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
I got mine in 1993, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I was the only one in my class to have one.
@conandlibrarian
Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na, Bag Phone!
@conandlibrarian
I think i still have a couple of those in a closet somewhere. The tower reception range was fantastic.
@conandlibrarian i still have one very similar in the basement except it is branded AT&T not Motorola although i think that is who made it.
@readnj Mine was branded Motorola, but the service was with Pac Tel, and the Airtouch.
I actually remember the day. I got a Motorola StarTac October 14, 1997. Because on October 13th my car broke down on the highway in a Wyoming snowstorm and had to flag down a trucker to hitch a ride home.
An LG flip-phone in 2000, with Alltel (they covered where I was). Right after college graduation; I didn’t know how long I would stay in West Florida, so I got the mobile. I moved down to Orlando a year later, dropped the phone and number, picked up my (407) area code with Cingular and have had the number ever since.
It’s been such a long time I can’t even remember the years. It was in the mid 1990’s and the phone I had was a Motorola brick phone where the battery was more than twice the size of the phone itself. And if you weren’t careful recharging that beast the battery would develop a memory and would hold a shorter charge.
@TheTexasTwister HULLO!??
@PocketBrain Nah! Still too small.
@TheTexasTwister HELLO???
@plastrd Yeah, that’s about right. Though the battery was MUCH thicker than that.
Like something that could call someone other than Bert, Ernie, and Big Bird? Or just any phone I carried around?
I got a red Blackberry Curve in 2006. I hate talking on the phone, but I’m a heavy email user, so I was pretty meh about carrying a phone until internet-enabled phones became more common.
However, I carried a Sharp Zaurus (Linux PDA) since around 2002, so I’d consider that my first mobile device (not counting pagers).
I loved the Zaurus… it had a touch screen, a physical keyboard, AND a stylus! Boom! I would do a lot of stuff like email, remote logins, etc., right from the teeny tiny command line. And it had Wi-Fi, but it was useless outside my house because nobody was using Wi-Fi very much back then.
I would connect it to a stereo, NFS-mount my MP3 collection, and run shell scripts to stream music.
Last month, and I’m not sure i’m going to keep it.
My father worked at Motorola in the cell division , so we had those bag phones very early.
I got to carry a StarTAC as well. I could do some ‘testing’ on it, but was told not to go crazy with calling.
I had one of these long before I was trusted with anything that would cost my parents money every month.
I got my first phone at 16. Some LG flip phone. You know the one, heavily rounded and kind of shiny. That eventually turned into a “smart-ish” phone my sophomore year of college.
It was something like this. Snake baby!
Teletac, through Sprint. They had a kiosk in Sam’s Club. Nights and weekends!
I do not remember, is that weird?
My wife had to travel a lot for work in 2000-2001 and got one then, a Sprint Samsung flip phone. I borrowed it the one or two times a year I had to travel, then got one myself in 2004, a Samsung flip/feature phone. Kept that until 2008.
My boss had a bag phone and the large brick, then upgraded every year or two. He would leave the bag/brick phone with us techs when we were alone at customer sites, especially new buildouts where there were no phones, so I did use those back in the day.
Got one of these puppies in '98 or so when I moved off campus, figuring it would be easier to have a phone that moved with me instead of having to port a number or keep providing people a new one every time I moved.
@TickledLizard Actually, I first elected for the flip phone specifically because I was holding out for the Star-Trekest phone available.
My first phone was in 2000. I bought a case on eBay before I even bought the phone. Cingular tried to get me to buy a different phone but I was dead set on whichever model Nokia it was, because the case I was getting would make the keypad cover slide like the ones in The Matrix.
This was similar to the phone I got. I remember it being really thin and tiny though. I don’t remember exactly which model:
The phone that I wanted it to look like, which was not available in the US:
My first cell phone was a Nokia 6160.
Best ringtone ever.
@jsh139 LOL I had a 6160; when I replaced it with a Sony/Ericsson, I programmed that phone with the Nokia ringtone. STILL FUNNY!
I think it was 1998. My band was going on tour and I was working from home doing tech support for a music software company. I bought the phone so I could take calls while we were on the road. Somewhere between Seattle and Spokane I was on a call (not driving) when we got pulled over for speeding. I guess cell phones were still novel enough that the cop was trying to figure out who I was talking to. We ended up not getting a ticket but we had to give him a CD.
May have been this one:
