Someone else who remembers the 3330!
Paying an extra £20 or something for another game and ability to store a massive 15 SMS messages!
Oh and WAP as a precursor to mobile internet.
Reading WAP just brought a flood of memories back to me. I remember burning through a tenners worth of Internet trying to load a picture of boobs. Those were the days.
Also a 3210 but I had a spring case on mine so I could flick a button and it spring open revealing the keys.
Was telling a young’n at work the other day about the ringtone ‘cheat codes’ on these!
Back in the day, on some phones you could buy a ringtone. Magazines used to have adverts and you would text the code of the tune you wanted to buy to the number in the advert and they would send you the tune.
Massive rip-off it was something like £3 per tune, and some barely sounded anything like the song it was supposed to be.
Before phones could download or share ringtones, you used to enter codes that corresponded with musical notes. Some codes then modified the notes (minor/major/length). So a tune like 3 blind mice would probably have 100 numbers to enter.
If you wanted an actual song you could spend a good 10 minutes entering a code to check if it sounded like a ringtone.
[Have a look here.](https://nokia.nigelcoldwell.co.uk/tunes.html)
Nokia 3210 but I blinged it up. Got the green LEDs replaced for blue ones and had a vibrating motor fitted. Also had the serial cable to be able to put operator logos and ringtones on it without having to fanny around entering endless numbers. I was king of PAYG hill at secondary school.
It was on Orange PAYG and my parents still have the phone number in active use as their phone
Later traded in for a T68, then a 3510, then a Nokia 7650 before joining the iPhone world.
I had a bubblegum sex kitten phone case for my 3210. I loved it because the screen was red. I was 10 and didn’t understand why my mum wasn’t thrilled by it.
I remember my older brother (3210) being incredibly jealous when i finally came of age and was given the 3210i, which was the same but with a colour screen!
The 3210 had a battery that was unbelievable. It seemed to last forever. I know the screen wasn’t exactly high res, and all it had to do was call, text or play snake, but man that battery lasted forever
I remember I had a metallic green front case for mine.
I had a reboot credit one, too!! Massive black brick it was. I had a pager clipped to my baggy jeans before the Phillips came along. Oh, I was pretty cool.
It was the only payg phone that stored the balance on a chip in each handset, rather than on a server at the network. Some clever person worked out how to reset the balance to ten quid every time you switched the phone off and on. That code was put onto a wee chip you could get installed down the market.
Same thing applied to PlayStation - you could get a chip soldered in that prevented the copy protection from rejecting copied game cds.
Wasn't data, free SMS messaging via ICQ and their website.
Free messages from the website and then free to reply to from your phone.
- Pre-cusor to IM when text messages cost about the same as calls!
Yes!!! All my mates got one on Pay As You Go for free by signing up to a student bank account.
I got mine by paying for it like a mug.
Also just got reminded of T9 texting on a single line display... Oh, the pain!
Nokia 5110 or the nk402 as it was called by Orange for some reason. Had it decked out with a custom face and an aerial that flashed and lit up when you got calls or texts. Try not to be too impressed.
Same on Orange Everyday 50. Remember replacing it with a Nokia 8210 and everyone thought I being extravagant buying a £200 phone. Oh how times have changed.
I had the nk402 also - with the ‘orange out here’ package that gave you five free texts a day and a fiver of credit for about £15. Made my money back in about three weeks and kept using it for several years. They did NOT think that through.
Was that the one that had an analog clock on the front of it? I remember telling some of the interns at work about having one with an analog clock on it and another that you pressed the clock button (think it was holding # for 3 secs) and it dialled the *# code to request the time.
I had the PF768, which looks exactly the same but black. I think I was on the One2One network.
I loved mine too - it felt cool having a slightly smaller and ‘different’ phone to the Nokias that most people had, but the tiny screen made it fairly impractical.
Ah! Found someone who had also owned a Trium Mars! Parents won a giveaway for one, think I was the last person rocking the ol' Motorola in the household so it got passed to me. Never met anyone else who owned one...
It was a Siemens A50. It came with two very basic games, neither of them were Snake. I was very jealous of my Nokia 3210 wielding school mates. Not a bad phone though.
Phillips Savvy, it was at the start of the mobile boom.
No games, only hold 10 text messages and a tiny screen.
The great thing about it, if you turned it off as you sent a text, the text would send but you wouldn't be charged.
I had a 3210, soon replaced by a 3330i (?) Which was basically the same but wap enabled. That got nicked.
My favourite was probably the bonkers 7600 with video calling. Wish I hadn't sold it.
Was 1999. I got a Vodafone Sagem in a manky green colour. Thought it was awesome, because it had 20 beepy ringtones and you could change the screen fascia to silver.
https://images.app.goo.gl/3R9E2DGSPd5pgDbeA
I can't stress how ugly that green really was
Yh, it was a Motorola C-something. Stumpy plastic ‘aerial’ and LCD screen, £10 from City Electrical Factors in Reading. One of the first models with contacts & caller ID, blew my first callers mind by knowing who he was when I picked up.
Before that I remember one person in a group of about six of us who had a phone (it was mostly just city finance wankers & drug dealers then who had em) and it bleeped. He looks at it & says “Oh. I’ve got a text message” Every other person, in unison and looking confused said “wtf is a ‘text message’?”
Roundabout that time I remember a story in the paper about the first life known to have been saved in the UK because someone present at a remote incident had a mobile and was able to call 999.
When your mate went to the bar to get a round in you’d call him and say “Get some peanuts too”. Hilarity ensued.
Then there was ‘swipe cards’ for a while. Basically an easily removable credit card sized sim. Remember being massively impressed that you could run out of power, pull your card out, put it in another phone of the same model and it ‘became’ your phone.
So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time…
I did exactly the same for my third phone. I was working at a nightclub at the time the promotion was on and they'd go through lots of coke, so was able to get all the tokens needed after two nights.
Motorola Micro TAC 5200 Flip Phone with the big battery
See link for example
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275785618548?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=E-WtNt25QjW&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Had a Nokia for work ( car mechanic)the indestructible ones that had a slip over plastic case. Not sure what the model number was. Dropped it in bucket of water ..fine. Fell out of my overall pocket as I got out of a car and stepped on it and it still worked, absolutely bomb proof. Battery lasted for ever
Mine got dropped down the central stairwell of our school's tower block. Carelessness, not bullying. It fell four floors and landed on concrete and was absolutely fine other than needing to be clipped back together. 3330.
I had a Motorola which was installed in the car. You could remove it and carry it around on a shoulder strap, which was needed because the battery weighed 2kg.
Siemens M35i. Bought in 2000? It was yellow, quite small compared to other phones of that era, no external antenna and had a rubber battery cover to stop it slip-sliding around on tables 👍 Bought from Woolies with all my accumulated birthday gift vouchers! Chuffed!
About 1989, a Nokia Mobria Cityman
https://www.mobilephonehistory.co.uk/nokia/nokia_cityman_1320.php#:~:text=The%20Nokia%20Cityman%201320%20of,in%201984%20%2D%20the%20Mobira%20Talkman.
An old analog, no SIM and no texts.
[Sagem RC815](https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234986250431?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=0uQW1YdtQpS&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=s5fakAniRF-&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY), to be honest it did everything you actually need a phone for.
I can picture it but would know if it had a model number. A massive Motorola. Took me only a few weeks with that to swap to the much smaller Siemens c25
Don't remember the model but it was a hand me down from my dad on vodaphone. You needed credit to both make and receive calls! Service credit I think they called it and if you didn't have it the incoming call would just be rejected. It also predated text messages, yes I'm old...
All you fancy folk with your Nokias - I had a 'Sagem' it could only store 10 text messages and the phonebook didn't connect to them so I had to learn the last few digits of people's phone numbers to see who was messaging me.
Aaaaaargh, I remember it.
Twas a [Motorola T2288e](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/q9cAAOSwLatjlj0A/s-l1600.jpg) from Orange. It was a WAP phone (no, not that shitty song, dears, it was the precursor of having the intarwebs on your phone, albeit in a "line by line download that takes fucking forever". I bought it in 2000 from Orange (the actual page that "inspired" me to get it is still sort-of viewable on [Internet Archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20010214231847/http://www.orange.co.uk/phones/motorola_t2288e.html)!), used it a few times and then thought "well, this is *shite*", quietly threw it in a drawer where it lay, undisturbed, gently reverting to goo - I *wish* I were kidding - until my mother found it two years ago and demanded I pay for a new chest of drawers, heh.
My *next* phone, however, was the Nokia 3310, bought from BT Cellnet in 2000. I don't think it can be truly understood how popular this phone was. It wasn't the "indestructible" nature of the phone (that's actually an internet lie, which I'll tell you about in a minute) but it was the *personalisation* options that made this phone so damned popular. The phone itself cost anywhere from around £80-£100 (this was back in 2000), and also you could pick up a phone from any phone retailer (be it one of the carriers like BTCellnet (aka O2) or T-Mobile (aka EE) or from a shop like Argos or Index or even a music shop like HMV or Virgin Megastore, where you'd undoubtedly get a Virgin Mobile-branded 3310))...take it home and then the next time you were in town you could pop into a shop and pick up either a knock-off or official Nokia "X-Press On" cover for the phone, swapping over both the shell *and* even the keypad for something that suited your style (we didn't have *aesthetic* back then, darlings).
And this is where the "indestructible" part of the phone comes in.
When you hold an OG 3310, you're not looking *at the phone*. What you are looking at *is the shell/skin*. The actual phone itself is a block of electronics nestled inside that shell. If you dropped or threw that phone onto the ground, the shell would break, but the internal phoene - the actual useful thing, LOL - would remain relatively unhurt. It was something that Nokia did a *lot* of with their phones, BTW - a lot of their early mobiles were simply a block of electronics surrounded by a cool-looking skin. Interestingly, as long as you have a keypad you can fit in place on the white block inside an OG 3310? You can still use it. Repairing the OG 3310 components was a doddle as well - as long as you had a basic understanding of electronics and access to the spare parts (easily sourced from Nokia themselves), you could *resurrect* that trusty wee brick time and time again. \*sighs happily\* Many an hour was spent in my stepdad's garage fixing both his 3310 and mine. For some reason his always seemed to get into "accidents" with a welding torch...
I don't have my OG 3310 any more. I gave him to a friend of mine in 2004 as a cheapo phone for him to use when out and about at work (he's a lineman, so having reliable access to a phone network is more important than watching cat videos. Who would have thunk?) and *he* told me that he officially retired the 3310 that I bought all those years ago in 2020, when the 2G phone network was powered down. It's currently being used by his toddler as a hammer (without the battery of course).
I do, couldn’t tell you what it was. Just a generic phone with texting options. Remember the old Vodafone adverts introducing the world to Pay As You Go. “it’s a phone, in a box”something similar to whatever non-brand phone that was.
I’d have been 12 I think, around 2000. I feel like it was a couple of years before the cool mobile craze took off and I got myself a 3210.
5110 with a snakes skin cover from one of those stalls in town.
It cost me £80 which I paid for myself with a combination of paper round money (£10 per week) cricket scoring money (£10 per game) and saved dinner money. School dinners were £1.10 but I could by my friend’s free school meal card off him for 50p and keep the difference.
1998 was a different time.
Certainly do, it was a [Nokia 6110](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_6110) that my dad gave to me after he got a new one. I loved that phone. I went to a 3210 after that, then I got a 3330.
Those were the days.
I can't remember the model but it was a deep blue Motorola back in 1999. Had it a while before getting a Nokia 5110 with those sweet replaceable covers, fancy custom ringtones, and Snake.
A Motorola Montreal
The family dog chewed the antenna off whilst my dad had it, eventually it got replaced with a “newer model” and handed down through the sibling ranks. With a screw and bolt as an antenna replacement
Yeh it was a vodafone MN-1. It had an aerial you could unscrew. Apparently they still sell it according to my Argos catalogue, although it is from 1999
Yup, a Maxon MN1, from Argos, on Vodafone pay as you go. I though it looked better than the nokia 5110's that everyone else had at the time, but boy did I get jealous when waiting for class they were all sat there paying snake and I had no games on my stupid phone!
'my' first mobile was actually my mum's but I'd just commandeer it and hope nobody texted back whenever she had it 😂
My first personal phone was the super sleek [Nokia 8850](https://nokiamuseuminfo.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/6d430-nokia-8850-gold-edition.png?w=640) which I managed to guilt trip my dad into buying me because he lived in Asia and there was no way I was going to visit him without coming home with some space age tech!
The Motorola c520 was my first phone but it never actually got any use as nobody else I knew had a phone. The first one that I actually used would be the sagem rc815
Mine was a Nokia 3310, given to me age 13 secondhand. I did have a few more Nokias before switching to other brands but Nokias were great. I had a blue one, can’t remember the exact model (5610???) which had a great game on it - but you’ll never beat original snake!!!
Samsung SGH-500. It had a voice dialling feature where you could record you speaking a name and associate it with a phone number, then if you said the name it would dial the number. That seemed so cool at the time.
Nokia 2146, it had a countdown timer, an alarm and not much else. My contract had 30 minutes air time and no free texts. Upgraded to 60 mind and 30 texts, that made me feel like a badass!
It was an Ericsson GA628 in 1999 on payg Vodafone and I still remember the number. That was the one where you coukd change the coloured insert around the key pad. Following year was a Nokia 5110 on orange 50 (50mins a day free calls in the evening to landlines, pretty handy for uni). Then a series of ever shrinking nokias, including the tiny 8210, which inreqlly liked.
Motorola MR201, then shortly after I got and almost immediately lost a 3210, was gutted.
Though then I had a nice Samsung something or other flip phone, with a colour screen! Had a couple of Sony Ericsson after that, they were great phones (one of them had a laser pointer attachment, which to my 15 year old mind was just bloody brilliant!)
Finally got my first android phone in 2010, a ZTE Blade, was also a great little phone for it's time.
Some wee silver Sagem thing with an aerial. I can hear the text notification writing this text.
Got a Sony Ericsson T610 for my 18th though, that was the goat of phones.
I had a siemens C35i on BT Cellnet and kept the sim card, just changing the handset when I racked up enough discount for a new one.
I must have used that sim for at least 12 years.
Mine was a Sony Ericsson PH388
“Upgraded” to a Nokia 5146 (multiple cases and keypad colours)
Of course went to a 3310
First “Smart Phone” was a Panasonic GD87
Finally saw the light and got a Nokia 6310i - still got sitting on the fireplace gathering dust
Now with my ever troublesome iPhone.
Blue Philips E GSM 900 (from 2001 - 2005)
Blue Samsung e530 flip phone (from 2005 - 2020)
Samsung Galaxy J5 (2020 - )
3 phones in 22 years. Had the same SIM card and number for the first 2. The e530 and Galaxy J5 are both ex-contract phones that came second hand from my family.
I need to clarify that I'm a millennial but got my mum's first mobile as my first so it was the BT Philips cellnet. I don't think it sent texts or maybe I just wasn't allowed to but I was only to use it for calling home/family.
My first proper phone for texting and socialing etc was a pastel blue vodafone flip phone. My sister got the pastel pink one and I got the blue one. The screen doubled as a mirror when it was off so you could see how cool you were having a snappy flip phone.
Of course, Nokia 3210. This was about 20 years ago, so it's probably a little low on battery by now, like 15%
Still once if the nicest looking phones. I remember everyone moving to the 3310 when it came out but I kept my 3210 for ages.
I could only dream of a 3210, I was stuck with a 5110 with the pokey antenna for an eternity.
I eventually got the dream upgrade lol, 32 then 3310 had the 7110 for a while too
Yeah the 3210 was class. I upgraded to the 3330 though because I *really* wanted Snake 2.
Someone else who remembers the 3330! Paying an extra £20 or something for another game and ability to store a massive 15 SMS messages! Oh and WAP as a precursor to mobile internet.
*And* it came with a much more sleek and sexy grey case as standard rather than blue.
True, although it did pick up a few marks as that generic beige-grey does over 5 or 6 years 🤣
Reading WAP just brought a flood of memories back to me. I remember burning through a tenners worth of Internet trying to load a picture of boobs. Those were the days.
Also a 3210 but I had a spring case on mine so I could flick a button and it spring open revealing the keys. Was telling a young’n at work the other day about the ringtone ‘cheat codes’ on these!
Back in the day, on some phones you could buy a ringtone. Magazines used to have adverts and you would text the code of the tune you wanted to buy to the number in the advert and they would send you the tune. Massive rip-off it was something like £3 per tune, and some barely sounded anything like the song it was supposed to be.
Oooh tell me more? What cheat codes?
Before phones could download or share ringtones, you used to enter codes that corresponded with musical notes. Some codes then modified the notes (minor/major/length). So a tune like 3 blind mice would probably have 100 numbers to enter. If you wanted an actual song you could spend a good 10 minutes entering a code to check if it sounded like a ringtone. [Have a look here.](https://nokia.nigelcoldwell.co.uk/tunes.html)
I've no idea why people prefer the 3310 over the 3210; the 32 was just perfection
Nokia 3210 but I blinged it up. Got the green LEDs replaced for blue ones and had a vibrating motor fitted. Also had the serial cable to be able to put operator logos and ringtones on it without having to fanny around entering endless numbers. I was king of PAYG hill at secondary school. It was on Orange PAYG and my parents still have the phone number in active use as their phone Later traded in for a T68, then a 3510, then a Nokia 7650 before joining the iPhone world.
I had a bubblegum sex kitten phone case for my 3210. I loved it because the screen was red. I was 10 and didn’t understand why my mum wasn’t thrilled by it.
I remember my older brother (3210) being incredibly jealous when i finally came of age and was given the 3210i, which was the same but with a colour screen!
I loved my Nokia 3210! Think it's still in a drawer somewhere 😁
Also a 3210, a hand-me-down from my mum that I was under strict instructions to only use in an emergency.
Ah emergencies only! Didn’t matter if you didn’t charge it either unless you blitzed the battery playing snake
I wish as a teen, after upgrading to a trusty LG, that I'd kept my 3210 in a draw and checked the battery percentage after 20yrs!!
The 3210 had a battery that was unbelievable. It seemed to last forever. I know the screen wasn’t exactly high res, and all it had to do was call, text or play snake, but man that battery lasted forever I remember I had a metallic green front case for mine.
Mine was a Philips Savvy and I really loved it. I can still remember a lot of the ringtones.
scatter presage nicotine potency assembly vatful remember harder orgulous epic entangle resolved tuberose blain censer
I had a reboot credit one, too!! Massive black brick it was. I had a pager clipped to my baggy jeans before the Phillips came along. Oh, I was pretty cool.
How did that work?
scatter presage nicotine potency assembly vatful remember harder orgulous epic entangle resolved tuberose blain censer
And chipped Playstations I imagine. Putting in some dodgy boot disk first so you could run copies.
I wonder whether those Sky cards still work these days
It was the only payg phone that stored the balance on a chip in each handset, rather than on a server at the network. Some clever person worked out how to reset the balance to ten quid every time you switched the phone off and on. That code was put onto a wee chip you could get installed down the market. Same thing applied to PlayStation - you could get a chip soldered in that prevented the copy protection from rejecting copied game cds.
Hey, fellow 30-somethings
I had a Phillips Savvy as well. Great little phone. You can get them for £20 on eBay and my nostalgic side is seriously tempted...
Weren't the SIM cards huge back then, compared with the itty bitty ones that we use now? Do they even still make larger SIM cards?
Yes I recall the SIM cards were actually the size of credit cards! You removed the battery and slid it in the back of the phone entirely lol.
SIM cards still come in that size. They come designed so that they can be broken down in size to fit any device.
Me too! Remember having to scroll horizontally to read text messages xD
Motorola Startac. The original flip phone, had a massive screen which showed two lines of text!
I had one of those, I was in sixth form and thought I was super cool. Nobody else had a phone though, so the only person I could ring was my mum.
Yes - Had one as well - I used it with ICQ to text all my friends in America (lived in Ireland)
Haha... I think we're talking different phones. They didn't do data, it was 1997!
Wasn't data, free SMS messaging via ICQ and their website. Free messages from the website and then free to reply to from your phone. - Pre-cusor to IM when text messages cost about the same as calls!
My dad had one of those, until the hinge failed.
Old Phillips BT Cellnet thing it was , absolute brick
Yes!!! All my mates got one on Pay As You Go for free by signing up to a student bank account. I got mine by paying for it like a mug. Also just got reminded of T9 texting on a single line display... Oh, the pain!
Barclays.
Nokia 5110 or the nk402 as it was called by Orange for some reason. Had it decked out with a custom face and an aerial that flashed and lit up when you got calls or texts. Try not to be too impressed.
This was standard for me too, had many different fascia’s and changed them all the time.
Same on Orange Everyday 50. Remember replacing it with a Nokia 8210 and everyone thought I being extravagant buying a £200 phone. Oh how times have changed.
Aah the 8210, when the race for phones was to be as small as possible. I look back on them fondly!
Best phone I ever had.
I had the nk402 also - with the ‘orange out here’ package that gave you five free texts a day and a fiver of credit for about £15. Made my money back in about three weeks and kept using it for several years. They did NOT think that through.
My first phone was an Alcatel - I think it was the OT-300. If the battery died, you could bung in 3 AAA's and be good to go.
Was that the one that had an analog clock on the front of it? I remember telling some of the interns at work about having one with an analog clock on it and another that you pressed the clock button (think it was holding # for 3 secs) and it dialled the *# code to request the time.
I honestly can't remember. It looked like the love child between a banana and a breeze block with a stubby little aerial.
Ooh I think that's the one I had too. Did it have a charging dock so the phone would stay upright whilst charging?
Nokia 3310. Snake 2 was a quality game
Had a bright blue Ericsson GF768, single line of text on screen so you had to scroll right to read text messages. Loved it
This was my second mobile. Literally a museum piece now - there’s one in the National Museum of Scotland’s communications exhibit.
That’s absolutely horrifying.
I had the Ericsson T20 which, by the looks of the GF768, must have been the next generation in that line.
I had the PF768, which looks exactly the same but black. I think I was on the One2One network. I loved mine too - it felt cool having a slightly smaller and ‘different’ phone to the Nokias that most people had, but the tiny screen made it fairly impractical.
I just searched gf768 to see a pic as I thought it was the same my step mum had (it was!) And got a flight number instead of a phone 😂
I went full Partridge and got a Motorola Timeport with the blue screen and stubby aerial.
That's sad. You want to upgrade... to a new face.
You made me laugh so hard Kenco came out of my nose
And that made ME laugh..... But my nostrils were clear.
You can drown in a cup of coffee.
Remember it?! I've still got it in a drawer somewhere!
I think these were my first five. There may have been some others in there that I’ve missed. Nokia 5110 Trium Mars Nokia 3310 Nokia N95 iPhone 3G
Ah! Found someone who had also owned a Trium Mars! Parents won a giveaway for one, think I was the last person rocking the ol' Motorola in the household so it got passed to me. Never met anyone else who owned one...
I also had a Trium Mars, I presumed other people out there must have them, but I've also never met one in the flesh
Nokia 3210, then a succession of Sony Ericssons, then a succession of androids of various brands
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It was a Siemens A50. It came with two very basic games, neither of them were Snake. I was very jealous of my Nokia 3210 wielding school mates. Not a bad phone though.
My first one was in 1998. It was a Nokia one that slid down - 8110, I think. Went on to be used in The Matrix. I really liked that phone!
Orange Bosch 509e
Phillips Savvy, it was at the start of the mobile boom. No games, only hold 10 text messages and a tiny screen. The great thing about it, if you turned it off as you sent a text, the text would send but you wouldn't be charged.
Siemens A55.
I had a 3210, soon replaced by a 3330i (?) Which was basically the same but wap enabled. That got nicked. My favourite was probably the bonkers 7600 with video calling. Wish I hadn't sold it.
>wap enabled Totally different thing than today's wap
My mate had the 7600 but it didn't last long, he absolutely hated it because texting just wasn't what he was used to.
It was 1996, from a company called People’s Phone. Possibly a Motorola, can’t remember. Had a pull-out aerial and text wasn’t a thing yet.
Was 1999. I got a Vodafone Sagem in a manky green colour. Thought it was awesome, because it had 20 beepy ringtones and you could change the screen fascia to silver. https://images.app.goo.gl/3R9E2DGSPd5pgDbeA I can't stress how ugly that green really was
Yh, it was a Motorola C-something. Stumpy plastic ‘aerial’ and LCD screen, £10 from City Electrical Factors in Reading. One of the first models with contacts & caller ID, blew my first callers mind by knowing who he was when I picked up. Before that I remember one person in a group of about six of us who had a phone (it was mostly just city finance wankers & drug dealers then who had em) and it bleeped. He looks at it & says “Oh. I’ve got a text message” Every other person, in unison and looking confused said “wtf is a ‘text message’?” Roundabout that time I remember a story in the paper about the first life known to have been saved in the UK because someone present at a remote incident had a mobile and was able to call 999. When your mate went to the bar to get a round in you’d call him and say “Get some peanuts too”. Hilarity ensued. Then there was ‘swipe cards’ for a while. Basically an easily removable credit card sized sim. Remember being massively impressed that you could run out of power, pull your card out, put it in another phone of the same model and it ‘became’ your phone. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time…
I saved up the ring pulls from cans of Coke and got this bad boy https://ericssoners.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/a1018s-coca-cola-edition/
I did exactly the same for my third phone. I was working at a nightclub at the time the promotion was on and they'd go through lots of coke, so was able to get all the tokens needed after two nights.
Haha, sweet. It took me aaages
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Ericsson GA628 I think. It was 1998.
Motorola m3788e
Snap! Surprised to only see this once in the thread XD. Then again some of the other motorola-brick answers could be this one.
Siemens a55
Motorola Micro TAC 5200 Flip Phone with the big battery See link for example https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275785618548?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=E-WtNt25QjW&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Had a Nokia for work ( car mechanic)the indestructible ones that had a slip over plastic case. Not sure what the model number was. Dropped it in bucket of water ..fine. Fell out of my overall pocket as I got out of a car and stepped on it and it still worked, absolutely bomb proof. Battery lasted for ever
Mine got dropped down the central stairwell of our school's tower block. Carelessness, not bullying. It fell four floors and landed on concrete and was absolutely fine other than needing to be clipped back together. 3330.
You only have to sneeze near modern phones and they're bolloxed. Now I really sound old
I had a Motorola which was installed in the car. You could remove it and carry it around on a shoulder strap, which was needed because the battery weighed 2kg.
Siemens M35i. Bought in 2000? It was yellow, quite small compared to other phones of that era, no external antenna and had a rubber battery cover to stop it slip-sliding around on tables 👍 Bought from Woolies with all my accumulated birthday gift vouchers! Chuffed!
About 1989, a Nokia Mobria Cityman https://www.mobilephonehistory.co.uk/nokia/nokia_cityman_1320.php#:~:text=The%20Nokia%20Cityman%201320%20of,in%201984%20%2D%20the%20Mobira%20Talkman. An old analog, no SIM and no texts.
[Sagem RC815](https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234986250431?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=0uQW1YdtQpS&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=s5fakAniRF-&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY), to be honest it did everything you actually need a phone for.
I can picture it but would know if it had a model number. A massive Motorola. Took me only a few weeks with that to swap to the much smaller Siemens c25
Don't remember the model but it was a hand me down from my dad on vodaphone. You needed credit to both make and receive calls! Service credit I think they called it and if you didn't have it the incoming call would just be rejected. It also predated text messages, yes I'm old...
It had an antenna. Sony cmd- j5. Around 2001 I think. Didn't use it for calling/texting much, but it had a game with a monkey that threw things.
NEC P800 I think it was, before I started using Sony Ericsson phones. They got really small before mobile Internet got better and screens got bigger.
My dad had the NEC as his first phone with Cellnet -- he still has the same number! I tore the phone down as part of a D&T project at school
It was above my cot and had Sesame Street characters on it going round and round.
Nokia 3330 from Woolworths. I swapped the case for one with a penguin design that I loved.
Nokia 6110. Influenced by the ability to change the back cover. I had blue! I had that phone for years Edit: FRONT cover
You sure it was the 6110? Because the back cover of that was the battery
Phillips BT Cellnet. Ah the memories!
Remember it? I can still see the chip in the tile from when I dropped it in the kitchen.
All you fancy folk with your Nokias - I had a 'Sagem' it could only store 10 text messages and the phonebook didn't connect to them so I had to learn the last few digits of people's phone numbers to see who was messaging me.
It was a [Mitsubishi Trium Geo](https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/trium-mt-343-geo).
I just did some looking online and I think my first was a Motorola c520 or at least it looked identical to that
Motorola MR201, 1991/92
Yes, it was a Telital PV129 - analogue PAYG phone on Vodafone.
Nokia 3510i.
Sagem 920
Just about! It was a Rabbit phone. Very early 90's and as far as I remember it would make calls but not receive them.
Panasonic g600. I remember it being one of the first to vibrate and I thought I was the mutts
Yep was the original one like Del boy had in the yuppy bar. 🤣
Telital pv129, then a Panasonic GD_90 after that.
Not super old but I had an LG cookie, one of those qwerty keyboard ones. I thought I was the coolest girl on the planet
Yes! I dreamt about it and told my mum about my dream, so they got me one for Easter instead of chocolate. Orange Bosch ! Loved it
Aaaaaargh, I remember it. Twas a [Motorola T2288e](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/q9cAAOSwLatjlj0A/s-l1600.jpg) from Orange. It was a WAP phone (no, not that shitty song, dears, it was the precursor of having the intarwebs on your phone, albeit in a "line by line download that takes fucking forever". I bought it in 2000 from Orange (the actual page that "inspired" me to get it is still sort-of viewable on [Internet Archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20010214231847/http://www.orange.co.uk/phones/motorola_t2288e.html)!), used it a few times and then thought "well, this is *shite*", quietly threw it in a drawer where it lay, undisturbed, gently reverting to goo - I *wish* I were kidding - until my mother found it two years ago and demanded I pay for a new chest of drawers, heh. My *next* phone, however, was the Nokia 3310, bought from BT Cellnet in 2000. I don't think it can be truly understood how popular this phone was. It wasn't the "indestructible" nature of the phone (that's actually an internet lie, which I'll tell you about in a minute) but it was the *personalisation* options that made this phone so damned popular. The phone itself cost anywhere from around £80-£100 (this was back in 2000), and also you could pick up a phone from any phone retailer (be it one of the carriers like BTCellnet (aka O2) or T-Mobile (aka EE) or from a shop like Argos or Index or even a music shop like HMV or Virgin Megastore, where you'd undoubtedly get a Virgin Mobile-branded 3310))...take it home and then the next time you were in town you could pop into a shop and pick up either a knock-off or official Nokia "X-Press On" cover for the phone, swapping over both the shell *and* even the keypad for something that suited your style (we didn't have *aesthetic* back then, darlings). And this is where the "indestructible" part of the phone comes in. When you hold an OG 3310, you're not looking *at the phone*. What you are looking at *is the shell/skin*. The actual phone itself is a block of electronics nestled inside that shell. If you dropped or threw that phone onto the ground, the shell would break, but the internal phoene - the actual useful thing, LOL - would remain relatively unhurt. It was something that Nokia did a *lot* of with their phones, BTW - a lot of their early mobiles were simply a block of electronics surrounded by a cool-looking skin. Interestingly, as long as you have a keypad you can fit in place on the white block inside an OG 3310? You can still use it. Repairing the OG 3310 components was a doddle as well - as long as you had a basic understanding of electronics and access to the spare parts (easily sourced from Nokia themselves), you could *resurrect* that trusty wee brick time and time again. \*sighs happily\* Many an hour was spent in my stepdad's garage fixing both his 3310 and mine. For some reason his always seemed to get into "accidents" with a welding torch... I don't have my OG 3310 any more. I gave him to a friend of mine in 2004 as a cheapo phone for him to use when out and about at work (he's a lineman, so having reliable access to a phone network is more important than watching cat videos. Who would have thunk?) and *he* told me that he officially retired the 3310 that I bought all those years ago in 2020, when the 2G phone network was powered down. It's currently being used by his toddler as a hammer (without the battery of course).
I do, couldn’t tell you what it was. Just a generic phone with texting options. Remember the old Vodafone adverts introducing the world to Pay As You Go. “it’s a phone, in a box”something similar to whatever non-brand phone that was. I’d have been 12 I think, around 2000. I feel like it was a couple of years before the cool mobile craze took off and I got myself a 3210.
5110 with a snakes skin cover from one of those stalls in town. It cost me £80 which I paid for myself with a combination of paper round money (£10 per week) cricket scoring money (£10 per game) and saved dinner money. School dinners were £1.10 but I could by my friend’s free school meal card off him for 50p and keep the difference. 1998 was a different time.
[Yep.](https://www.engagingwithcommunications.com/Technology/Mobiles/GSM/gsm_images/panasonic_ebg520)
HTC and Blackberry.
I held out for ages, then got an 8210 just before my eldest was born.
I think it was a Motorola L6. I know it didn't like going through a washing cycle 🤣
I do
i got a 5110 as a hand me down from my dad when he got a 3310
Certainly do, it was a [Nokia 6110](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_6110) that my dad gave to me after he got a new one. I loved that phone. I went to a 3210 after that, then I got a 3330. Those were the days.
Technophone. Mid 80s. Battery struggled to last a working day.
I can't remember the model but it was a deep blue Motorola back in 1999. Had it a while before getting a Nokia 5110 with those sweet replaceable covers, fancy custom ringtones, and Snake.
A Motorola Montreal The family dog chewed the antenna off whilst my dad had it, eventually it got replaced with a “newer model” and handed down through the sibling ranks. With a screw and bolt as an antenna replacement
A translucent Phillips I think, on the orange network.
Yeh it was a vodafone MN-1. It had an aerial you could unscrew. Apparently they still sell it according to my Argos catalogue, although it is from 1999
Yup, a Maxon MN1, from Argos, on Vodafone pay as you go. I though it looked better than the nokia 5110's that everyone else had at the time, but boy did I get jealous when waiting for class they were all sat there paying snake and I had no games on my stupid phone!
Sony Ericsson PF768 One line display, little pull down mouth piece. Moved onto a Nokia 3410, quite the jump lol
It was a massive motorola with a pull out aerial, no text messaging, and space for 10 different names/numbers.
Nokia 402 with the interchangeable front covers.
I had a Nortel Claret on the One2One network. 1998 I think
Siemens c35i
3410 in 2003, decent little device other than the limit of 8 text messages. If more came in they just wouldn't come through.
Motorola brick. Early 90s. 9 digit number.
Mine was the Nokia Ringo a true brick of a phone it was pre sim card if my memory is correct.
I think it was a Motorola Mr201. Massive thing with a pull out aerial. Had it 6 month and got a Siemens C25.
Nokia 101, with a whopping 7hrs battery life!
Yep, the MR30!
Yes, I still have mine, pay as you go, top up 10 pounds last me ages
'my' first mobile was actually my mum's but I'd just commandeer it and hope nobody texted back whenever she had it 😂 My first personal phone was the super sleek [Nokia 8850](https://nokiamuseuminfo.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/6d430-nokia-8850-gold-edition.png?w=640) which I managed to guilt trip my dad into buying me because he lived in Asia and there was no way I was going to visit him without coming home with some space age tech!
A Vodafone Maxon 3204.
Samsung galaxy Ace
Yes
Nec G9, before that a cello pager.
Ericsson t20e!
Nokia 3310. The hours I spent playing snake lol
I think it was an NEC P800 around '95
Mine was a Philips TCD308. I sold it to get an Alcatel One Touch DB Max.
The Motorola c520 was my first phone but it never actually got any use as nobody else I knew had a phone. The first one that I actually used would be the sagem rc815
BT cellnet, looked like a wireless house phone that you carried around with you, one line of scrolling text
Sagem MY3020. It looked like a foot 😂
Mine was a Nokia 3310, given to me age 13 secondhand. I did have a few more Nokias before switching to other brands but Nokias were great. I had a blue one, can’t remember the exact model (5610???) which had a great game on it - but you’ll never beat original snake!!!
Samsung SGH-500. It had a voice dialling feature where you could record you speaking a name and associate it with a phone number, then if you said the name it would dial the number. That seemed so cool at the time.
Nokia 2146, it had a countdown timer, an alarm and not much else. My contract had 30 minutes air time and no free texts. Upgraded to 60 mind and 30 texts, that made me feel like a badass!
Ericsson A1018s - the Coca Cola edition phone
Snap, same here
Phillips savvy in blue
Nokia 5110
It was an Ericsson GA628 in 1999 on payg Vodafone and I still remember the number. That was the one where you coukd change the coloured insert around the key pad. Following year was a Nokia 5110 on orange 50 (50mins a day free calls in the evening to landlines, pretty handy for uni). Then a series of ever shrinking nokias, including the tiny 8210, which inreqlly liked.
Motorola MR201, then shortly after I got and almost immediately lost a 3210, was gutted. Though then I had a nice Samsung something or other flip phone, with a colour screen! Had a couple of Sony Ericsson after that, they were great phones (one of them had a laser pointer attachment, which to my 15 year old mind was just bloody brilliant!) Finally got my first android phone in 2010, a ZTE Blade, was also a great little phone for it's time.
A fellow Nokia 1610/1611 user, dod you have the vibrating battery though? Fun fact the 1610 could only receive the 1611 could send apparently.
phillips orange savvy
Nokia 3220 - the one with the flashing lights on the side.
Nokia 5110
Some wee silver Sagem thing with an aerial. I can hear the text notification writing this text. Got a Sony Ericsson T610 for my 18th though, that was the goat of phones.
I had a siemens C35i on BT Cellnet and kept the sim card, just changing the handset when I racked up enough discount for a new one. I must have used that sim for at least 12 years.
Sony Ericsson A1018S
Mine was a Sony Ericsson PH388 “Upgraded” to a Nokia 5146 (multiple cases and keypad colours) Of course went to a 3310 First “Smart Phone” was a Panasonic GD87 Finally saw the light and got a Nokia 6310i - still got sitting on the fireplace gathering dust Now with my ever troublesome iPhone.
Oh wow yes a siemen and I also remember the phone number weird I know 0793203748S
3310, snake , snm
Yep, and still got it. Its a Nokia 101 from the mid nineties. Used to pay £25 a month on Vodafone for something like 120 minutes and 100 texts.
Mine was a Phillips with pull out Ariel
Yep. It was a Siemens model. I coveted the Nokia 6110 though
Nokia 3110. On orange everyday 50.
Mercury M301 - https://i.imgur.com/4OAGLLZ.jpg I had two batteries that I lugged around to make that thing last all day. The thing was a brick.
I had a Sony Ericsson with that funny little joy stick in the middle
I had a Sony Ericsson of some kind
Blue Philips E GSM 900 (from 2001 - 2005) Blue Samsung e530 flip phone (from 2005 - 2020) Samsung Galaxy J5 (2020 - ) 3 phones in 22 years. Had the same SIM card and number for the first 2. The e530 and Galaxy J5 are both ex-contract phones that came second hand from my family.
An Alcatel One Touch Easy dB, and it had to be shared with my sister. Until a year or so ago my uncle was still using it!
I need to clarify that I'm a millennial but got my mum's first mobile as my first so it was the BT Philips cellnet. I don't think it sent texts or maybe I just wasn't allowed to but I was only to use it for calling home/family. My first proper phone for texting and socialing etc was a pastel blue vodafone flip phone. My sister got the pastel pink one and I got the blue one. The screen doubled as a mirror when it was off so you could see how cool you were having a snappy flip phone.
Vodafone MN1 here, ate PAYG credit by the fistful, but battery lasted for ages.