@InnocuousFarmer That was my first phone; in an emergency it may have been more effective if thrown rather than being used as a communication device. Especially since you needed the extended battery pack to make it last for more than an hour, and that made it almost literally a brick in both size and weight.
On the other hand, with all these modern phones you can’t slam the flip closed in anger when you’re upset, so maybe these were better after all.
My blackberry wasn’t the original. It was one or two after that. I did a typing test on it. 50 wpm. I will never get that fast on a touch screen. Too bad i can’t have that sweet speed with a big screen.
@jdude727@narfcake When I was in high school I had a friend who had one of those- he used to occasionally whip it at a brick wall and it would fly into a few pieces across the concrete floor. He’d just pick it up, snap it back together, and it would be fine.
@jdude727@narfcake@QuietDelusions I destroyed in anger a series of flip phones as a teenager. They were there only so that my parents could call me, you understand. Should have been a Nokia candybar–might have only needed the one.
I will say, that first iPhone did tolerate abuse surprisingly well. Mine picked up a lot of deformations in the aluminum without dying. Might have just been lucky but the glass never cracked either.
@bruhaha@narfcake@regnowsin Maybe it is also about the chart’s scale. If 99% of people all answer the same, you can’t see the proportional differences in the other answers. That’d be boring.
@PooltoyWolf I looked it up. It’s debatable I guess. Mostly due to 911 capacity. Some carriers/networks may allow it under some conditions. I guess I may have to mount mine over the fireplace with the French shotgun that’s outlived its’ usefulness!
My old Nokia I got a matrix style sliding case for. Also, my Samsung rant when I realized I had a kids phone when my boss’s 13ish y/o daughter recognized it while I was using it. I was about 25.
My dad had one these mounted in his truck. He was self employed and I used to ride with him while he worked during the summer. Slow days were the best because we’d end up at Dave & Busters for a few hours. Good times!!
It almost seemed like an exercise in getting people to use something just because it’s different even if it’s less usable.
As I recall this was my first phone with a camera in it, and that’s why I got it–maybe it was the first phone with a camera? I definitely wasn’t taken with the rotary style keypad and the hate grew with use and time. It was also a good phone to make you fall in love with getting an upgrade.
My first cell phone was a Kyocera phone that had a built in 1200 baud modem. That modem had a kit that allowed it to be connected to a PalmIII or PalmIIIc PDA. I used to sit at a bar in the early 2000’s and download my email from the college’s server, and read web pages without any wires… (except the bulky one going between the phone and the PDA. Hah.)
I can’t find any pictures of the case, but it looked like a leather phone wallet you might get now, but with a big lump in it for the actual phone.
@kazriko ahh, the Qualcomm/Kyocera QCP-3035 — I still have mine somewhere with the Palm III kit. The big honking wire from phone to Palm is no joke. Was good for wasting time and money sitting in Starbucks and using AIM, several years before that was mainstream.
@kazriko it was also one of the very first phones with downloadable apps (the Qualcomm BREW platform) and as I recall one of the first to feature a speakerphone as well. I remember the sound quality not being quite up to par with the then-Qualcomm standard though; the call quality on my QCP 860 was considerably better.
@nolrak Yeah, I remember the Brew platform. I can’t say I used it too much though. The speaker phone was useful, especially in places where if you put it up to your ear you couldn’t hear it without turning it on…
I still have my (still works) Motorola SLVR L7 in a drawer somewhere. It was really small but sturdy. It was also the original iPhone, came with an iTunes install CD.
I owned a Samsung UpStage. Terrible.
I also still have my (non-working) Palm Pre. Such a good phone, really let down by the build quality.
Besides the first Nokia with the sliding Matrix case, I had the Walkman phones. I had the orange version and a yellow one according to some old Facebook photos.
Thought it was so cool to be able to put music on the phone and the special headphones worked as an FM antenna, when that still meant something.
I never got a Razr, I had the Motorola V-series flip phone. I had two, actually, they lasted for nearly a decade. Still worked when I finally got a smart phone…
My Nokia 700, which took me from 2012 to 2015. Small enough for a pocket, great camera, Symbian was working pretty smoothly, Nokia maps were awesome. While my friends were lamenting their iPhones’ cracked screens, I’d casually drop my Nokia from shoulder height. Replaceable battery. Expandable memory. NFC because of course. Oh hey let me just beam this picture to you!
Then Microsoft happened and all our dreams died.
I do have a Nokia again. It’s not the same. Android doesn’t run as smoothly on it as Symbian did on the 700. It’s big and bulky and the battery heats up too much. I can’t fit it in a pocket. I really just wanted updated tech for a 700. But that golden age is gone.
The kyocera 6035 came to market on the Sprint network in 2001, running the Palm OS. I bought one in the first month of release. And loved it, despite the limitations of the tech at that time.
The cellular internet connectivity of the time was about what you might get from a legacy 14.4 modem. Better than nothing, tho, and I used the hell out of the browser.
I think the first Handspring Treo hit the market in 2002 or 2003. One of my good friends was a fanatical fan of them. I finally bought one after Palm and Handspring merged.
@f00l@Oldelvis I completely forgot about the Visor — I had bought one when it first came out to replace my palm III (as I recall the big selling point for me was the non-volatile memory)
Wanted a Palm VII and then wanted a Handspring Treo when they first came out; ended up getting a Treo 650 after the Palm merger.
Nokia 3200. Loved the FM radio, the flashlight which activated by holding the *, and 2 games. An interesting feature was that the face plate system encouraged users to print out their own face plate designs and use it in the phone.
My first was a Nokia. I remember going into the cellphone store and getting my first phone contract by myself. It was the first time I had gone shopping with my friends rather than with my parents and I put my paycheck to good use, lol. I stayed with Alltel for several years. I also remember thinking how stupid texting was when you could just call someone. Now I despise when my phone rings and would much rather someone just text me.
@texquill I found my old one recently in the basement. It had really taken a beating. Moldy… rodent chewed thru cords, etc. I sent a pic of it to my grands telling them this is what your portable phone used to look like. And NO unlimited anything!
@nolrak I wasn’t even thinking of those until the picture. Man hhat phone was exciting. “For emergencies only”, $1 or $2/minute…
At the time, developing a pretense for calling someone on “the cell phone” was itself practically urgent enough to qualify as an emergency, you know?
@InnocuousFarmer That was my first phone; in an emergency it may have been more effective if thrown rather than being used as a communication device. Especially since you needed the extended battery pack to make it last for more than an hour, and that made it almost literally a brick in both size and weight.
On the other hand, with all these modern phones you can’t slam the flip closed in anger when you’re upset, so maybe these were better after all.
My first phone was a cheaper version of this without the flip part.
Roaming was $1 a minute, and that was any time I was outside the town I lived in.
I used it for work and my monthly bill was regularly more than $200 a month.
I always wondered if that plastic whip antenna that pulled out actually did anything.
My blackberry wasn’t the original. It was one or two after that. I did a typing test on it. 50 wpm. I will never get that fast on a touch screen. Too bad i can’t have that sweet speed with a big screen.
I hung onto my old Blackberry long beyond the joke threshold.
Love those clicky keys.
/image original Nokia 3310
@narfcake who keeps leaving out obvious answers on these polls?
I think that’s the one I had in mind! All those snap-on covers - those were the best! Not to mention, the phone was damn near indestructible.
@narfcake Man, I was just coming here to post that!! you could drop that thing off a building and it had a battery life for years!
@QuietDelusions
@jdude727 1000’ drop test, original 3310 vs new:
@jdude727 @narfcake When I was in high school I had a friend who had one of those- he used to occasionally whip it at a brick wall and it would fly into a few pieces across the concrete floor. He’d just pick it up, snap it back together, and it would be fine.
@jdude727 @narfcake @QuietDelusions I destroyed in anger a series of flip phones as a teenager. They were there only so that my parents could call me, you understand. Should have been a Nokia candybar–might have only needed the one.
I will say, that first iPhone did tolerate abuse surprisingly well. Mine picked up a lot of deformations in the aluminum without dying. Might have just been lucky but the glass never cracked either.
@Seeds Trying to break a wall?
/image 3310 battling ram
@bruhaha @narfcake I think they are just wanting more comments.
@bruhaha @narfcake @regnowsin Maybe it is also about the chart’s scale. If 99% of people all answer the same, you can’t see the proportional differences in the other answers. That’d be boring.
I loved my Droid with the slide out keyboard. On top of making typing easier for me, with the right tweaking, it was hella fun for emulated games.
HTC EVO. You can’t spell LOVE without EVO
@heartny My EVO 3D was my favorite phone ever.
Nokia 2115i
Palm Treo, baby!
I had a bag phone. It needed a bag. A big bag.
/giphy bag phone
@sammydog01 “Transportable” phones.
@sammydog01 Murtaugh wasn’t too old for that sh*t
Motorola StarTac. Smallest phone I ever had. Liked it a lot!
StarTac
@benj I bought mine in 1998. Didn’t replace it until 2005. No fancy features, no apps, no games… but it just worked. Always. Everywhere.
@benj @ruouttaurmind That was back when the Motorola name really meant something.
@duodec @ruouttaurmind My family’s first tv was a Motorola, back in 1953! Yes, I am that old!!!
@benj My family got our first about the same time. It was pink and grey. Looked like DeSoto.
@benj My father’s first cell phone, and the smallest in the world at the time! He had two, the analog and digital ones. I still have them!
@benj @duodec @ruouttaurmind That I want to see! Props for being aware Motorola made more than phones
Ive got a Motorola 62X radio from the 50s, still works perfect.
@tngrannyd
LOL
@PooltoyWolf I still have mine too. If I ever get sick of the internet I may go back to it!
@benj Can those still be activated? I know the analog networks were completely deactivated several years ago.
@PooltoyWolf I looked it up. It’s debatable I guess. Mostly due to 911 capacity. Some carriers/networks may allow it under some conditions. I guess I may have to mount mine over the fireplace with the French shotgun that’s outlived its’ usefulness!
@benj I do wish there were ways to keep using them!
I’m old. Does anyone even remember Airtouch? I also had a few pagers.
@jwoody27 This was my first phone. I bought it from QuikTrip, in '98. I had a yellow face plate and my wife (at the time) had red.
AirTouch became Verizon.
My old Nokia I got a matrix style sliding case for. Also, my Samsung rant when I realized I had a kids phone when my boss’s 13ish y/o daughter recognized it while I was using it. I was about 25.
@tonylegrone yes! My first cell was the Nokia with the matrix style case. I thought it was so cool. Such a tiny phone. How times have changed.
My car phone. Really not as convenient as it sounded
I don’t think I’ve ever had a phone that I didn’t learn to hate.
Because, sooner or later, someone would call that phone then bitch about the fact that I didn’t answer it.
The Nokia Ngage (side-talker) and Communicator (the brick) were my favorites and most reliable.
My dad had one these mounted in his truck. He was self employed and I used to ride with him while he worked during the summer. Slow days were the best because we’d end up at Dave & Busters for a few hours. Good times!!
My unlocked Verizon galaxy S3 with gigantic zerolemon battery running Android Nougat with custom recovery. Too bad that Verizon will be kicking these phones off their network.
https://swappa.com/blog/verizon-prevents-activation-of-iphones-older-than-iphone-6/
I remember the old Nokia candy bar phones the most, but one that I had that was very unique was the Nokia 3650:
Texting mode: expert.
@djslack this is my answer too! It was horrible to use but I loved it !!
@djslack Was this designed for Grandma to replace her rotary phone?
@djslack @FightingMongoos if it was, the designers were jerks- the numbers are in the wrong spots.
@djslack @FightingMongoos it was so awful to text with, and it wasn’t a very great phone overall. It sure looked space agey though !
@FightingMongoos @Seeds The designers were definitely jerks either way.
It almost seemed like an exercise in getting people to use something just because it’s different even if it’s less usable.
As I recall this was my first phone with a camera in it, and that’s why I got it–maybe it was the first phone with a camera? I definitely wasn’t taken with the rotary style keypad and the hate grew with use and time. It was also a good phone to make you fall in love with getting an upgrade.
My first cell phone was a Kyocera phone that had a built in 1200 baud modem. That modem had a kit that allowed it to be connected to a PalmIII or PalmIIIc PDA. I used to sit at a bar in the early 2000’s and download my email from the college’s server, and read web pages without any wires… (except the bulky one going between the phone and the PDA. Hah.)
I can’t find any pictures of the case, but it looked like a leather phone wallet you might get now, but with a big lump in it for the actual phone.
@kazriko ahh, the Qualcomm/Kyocera QCP-3035 — I still have mine somewhere with the Palm III kit. The big honking wire from phone to Palm is no joke. Was good for wasting time and money sitting in Starbucks and using AIM, several years before that was mainstream.
@kazriko it was also one of the very first phones with downloadable apps (the Qualcomm BREW platform) and as I recall one of the first to feature a speakerphone as well. I remember the sound quality not being quite up to par with the then-Qualcomm standard though; the call quality on my QCP 860 was considerably better.
@nolrak Yeah, I remember the Brew platform. I can’t say I used it too much though. The speaker phone was useful, especially in places where if you put it up to your ear you couldn’t hear it without turning it on…
The original Motorola Razr was a really sweet and solid phone. The later cheapened up versions that looked the same but weren’t… not so much.
I still have my (still works) Motorola SLVR L7 in a drawer somewhere. It was really small but sturdy. It was also the original iPhone, came with an iTunes install CD.
I owned a Samsung UpStage. Terrible.
I also still have my (non-working) Palm Pre. Such a good phone, really let down by the build quality.
I loved my LG Env2. I accidentally found out it could read my texts to me and I thought that was the coolest thing.
/image LG Env2
Palm Pre. The best of its time… For a few months.
@rustyh3
Good OS. But slow. Underpowered processor.
I returned mine when I discovered the limits of what one could copy/paste, and then having those limits confirmed by a palm employee.
Besides the first Nokia with the sliding Matrix case, I had the Walkman phones. I had the orange version and a yellow one according to some old Facebook photos.
Thought it was so cool to be able to put music on the phone and the special headphones worked as an FM antenna, when that still meant something.
And it slid open.
/image Sony Walkman phone orange black slider
I never got a Razr, I had the Motorola V-series flip phone. I had two, actually, they lasted for nearly a decade. Still worked when I finally got a smart phone…
I might have some of these hidden in a box somewhere. I loved them at the time.
Probably my first iPhone, the 3G. It still works to this day, as it’s been mostly sitting in the cradle of my old iPod dock clock radio since 2010.
It still holds a charge, too!
@ultimatebob My old 3Gs remains my all time favorite. I’d probably still use it (for… something) if the battery hadn’t inflated.
The original Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, obviously.
/image brick phone
@PooltoyWolf Close enough
@PooltoyWolf the DynaTAC was more like a cinder block than a brick
@nolrak That’s fair LOL
My Nokia 700, which took me from 2012 to 2015. Small enough for a pocket, great camera, Symbian was working pretty smoothly, Nokia maps were awesome. While my friends were lamenting their iPhones’ cracked screens, I’d casually drop my Nokia from shoulder height. Replaceable battery. Expandable memory. NFC because of course. Oh hey let me just beam this picture to you!
Then Microsoft happened and all our dreams died.
I do have a Nokia again. It’s not the same. Android doesn’t run as smoothly on it as Symbian did on the 700. It’s big and bulky and the battery heats up too much. I can’t fit it in a pocket. I really just wanted updated tech for a 700. But that golden age is gone.
Motorola Alias 2
the HandSpring Prisim Phone with the Cell phone module. The ORIGINAL smart phone
@Oldelvis
Not quite the first “smartphone”.
The kyocera 6035 came to market on the Sprint network in 2001, running the Palm OS. I bought one in the first month of release. And loved it, despite the limitations of the tech at that time.
The cellular internet connectivity of the time was about what you might get from a legacy 14.4 modem. Better than nothing, tho, and I used the hell out of the browser.
I think the first Handspring Treo hit the market in 2002 or 2003. One of my good friends was a fanatical fan of them. I finally bought one after Palm and Handspring merged.
For their day, they were pretty great.
@f00l @Oldelvis I completely forgot about the Visor — I had bought one when it first came out to replace my palm III (as I recall the big selling point for me was the non-volatile memory)
Wanted a Palm VII and then wanted a Handspring Treo when they first came out; ended up getting a Treo 650 after the Palm merger.
@f00l @nolrak I think I still have a treo in the box downstairs… It was great having it featured in the movie “A Good Year” too.
@f00l @nolrak Ring tone is here: https://www.zedge.net/ringtone/17004913-031e-361d-86e4-605249ecf5fd
@f00l Prisim was first :
@Oldelvis is this what happens when a game boy and a palm pda really love each other?
@Oldelvis Had one of those (without the cell module). I loved that thing.
Motorola SCR-300, WWII
Nokia 3200. Loved the FM radio, the flashlight which activated by holding the *, and 2 games. An interesting feature was that the face plate system encouraged
users to print out their own face plate designs and use it in the phone.
My first was a Nokia. I remember going into the cellphone store and getting my first phone contract by myself. It was the first time I had gone shopping with my friends rather than with my parents and I put my paycheck to good use, lol. I stayed with Alltel for several years. I also remember thinking how stupid texting was when you could just call someone. Now I despise when my phone rings and would much rather someone just text me.
Oftentimes, I wax nostalgic for my Motorola bag phone - usually when my “smarter than me” Galaxy S7 gets an automatic upgrade.
@texquill I found my old one recently in the basement. It had really taken a beating. Moldy… rodent chewed thru cords, etc. I sent a pic of it to my grands telling them this is what your portable phone used to look like. And NO unlimited anything!
Motorola Brick, my first cell phone.
No love for the N-gage Taco phone?
I had a lot of cellphones. I was obsessed, particularly with the interesting phones coming out of Europe with Symbian.
The two highlights on the list were the Nokia 7280 just for being weird / fun.
While less crazy, my absolute favorite was the Sendo X
flip phone or the Motorola bag phone we had that plugged into the car. $7.00 per minute. Yeah boy!
/image htc wing
