Engadget: our first cellphones
posted Aug 9th 2004 3:08PM
So we were all hanging around the Engadget HQ watercooler reminiscing like we often seem to, when we started
talking about our first cellphones, and about those pre-millennial days when they only did one thing: make phone calls.
No email, no Bluetooth, and definitely no camera. Normally we'd selfishly keep all these entertaining anecdotes to
ourselves, but we thought we'd force everyone to write them down to share on the site. And of course we're dying to
hear what your first cellphone was, too. Extra points to any of you out there who actually had a Motorola DynaTAC
8000X.
Ryan Block -
I held off for a while because I wasn't
living in the city, where a cellphone is totally essential. But when I moved to New York I started off with an Ericsson
T28 on VoiceStream (that was back in the days before they got bought out by T-Mobile). This thing was killer; it was
the smallest American phone at the time, and it had Tetris and was one of the first available with Bluetooth (though it
was add-on that looked more like a huge cameraphone attachment). The thing had such a high SAR I was sure to get brain
cancer in 6 months, and it pumped out so much juice it made my scalp sweat?when I used it within 15 feet of any
speakers, they would often get this crazy squelching interference. But it was worth every penny. I went through like 4
of them in a year.
Peter Rojas -
As a so-called gadget expert, it's a little
embarrassing to admit that I had trouble remembering what my first cellphone was. I was working at Red Herring (the
original one) in the late Nineties and was given senior editor Brian Taptich's old Nokia as a hand-me-down which had
been sitting around unused on a shelf for months after he left the magazine (after consulting with Eric I'm pretty sure
it was the 6162?I never even noticed who the carrier was). I remember
that no one bothered to erase the phone book before it was given to me, and I was too lazy to delete the entries
myself. Not that it made much of a difference, since I hardly ever used it except when traveling for work?I couldn't
even remember what its number was. The phone seemed completely dispensable at the time, though the first thing I did
after I was laid off and forced to relinquish my cellphone was to sign up for service with Sprint and get a Samsung
flip-phone. It was stolen less than eight weeks later. Fast forward a few years and I'm now obsessively checking email
on my Treo every five minutes as if somehow a message going more than a few seconds without being answered will spell
the very end of Engadget.
Eric Lin -
I wasn't ever that keen on PDAs, but I was always
infatuated with mobile phones. However (just like with my first PDA), I refused to buy a phone before one was small
enough to actually fit in my pocket. My first opportunity came when I was living in Oregon, working for an ad agency
that had a number of clients in the cellular industry?even back in the mid '90s I was already a cellphone freak. I was
moving to a new house and when I went to check it out I discovered that despite what the phone company told me, the
land line didn't work. Calling the phone company again, I learned that it wouldn't be hooked up for another four weeks.
Since I couldn't go that long without a phone, I used the situation as an excuse to get my first cellphone. It was an
Ericsson 688 with the extra-thick extended-life battery that lasted about 2 days between charges and made the phone
about as big around as a MagLite. I got a plan with free long distance and tons of minutes on AT&T. That day I gave
all my friends and family my mobile number and never bothered to learn a landline number again.
Simon Spagnoletti -
I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think
my first phone was the Mororola StarTac on Sprint. Yeah, that sounds about right. Wonderful phone. Small (it's still
thinner than some of today's phones), well designed (it helped inspire the Palm V, after all) and quite durable, which
I unfortunaly put to the test by constantly dropping the thing on every possible side. But I'm better now, I promise.
Of course, it had an absolutely awful OS, probably one of the worst I've ever used of another Motorola, a Samsung, two
LG's and one or two Nokias I've had since. I've managed to block most of that out, but I do vaguely remember having to
hit the FCN key every time I wanted to do pretty much anything. And I must have gone through at least three antennas. I
still have the phone lying around somewhere and I'm sure even the last antenna is hanging off precariously. On the
other hand, I still have fond memories of that green LCD. I'm a fan of color displays mind you, but there will always
be a soft spot in my heart for that classic green.
Katie Fehrenbacher -
I moved to Brighton, England, during horrible floods and an epidemic of Foot and Mouth disease spreading across the
country, so being stuck inside a 10 square-mile area and not knowing anyone I thought it best to get a cellphone. I got
the Nokia 3360, which was the only free option at the lot, but it was still a lot better than the American ones I had
looked over at home. Everyone was already texting like crazy in England and new English friends would constantly text
me completely incoherent messages. But I remember you could email text to the phones, which seemed somewhat advanced at
the time. The 3360 had no external antenna and was very square and dumpy, but in a cute way. It was also really heavy
and brick-thick. I remember dropping it repeatedly and amazingly it never broke.
Gareth Edwards -
My first phone was a Sharp A241, which has to be one of cellphone history's tiniest footnotes. I got it while I was at
university in Tokyo in 1996 because I lived in a bedsized room that I was never in. It was Japanese and gadgety when
the rest of the pack were these boring straight-type things; it cost about ¥150. It was a PHS, which work off
lunchbox-sized base stations that can be stuck pretty much anywhere, but there was never one near enough. I'd always be
leaning out of windows pointing the phone around to trying and get a signal. My first real cellphone was a Mitsubishi
D501i, one of the first i-mode phones with a color display, which I bought in 1999. It was cool in that it came with a
real email address and a web browser, and you could write sites for it in HTML rather than learning the Martian code
you needed to make WAP pages. It had a springloaded scroll/enter key that was fantastically useful, and I also had this
thumb keyboard with shortcut keys for the major apps that strapped onto it with a velcro loop. The sound quality was
awful and it had a terrible cheap purple plastic case and a dorky pullout antenna, but all those functions made up for
it.
Joshua Klein -
Let's get old school for a minute?real old school. You
remember the big square faux-leather bags that weighed a ton and had a handset connected to them by a long curly cord?
The ones you had to plug into the cigarette lighter in your car? When I was in high school I had one of those, a
300-watt Motorola Bag Phone duct-taped into the emergency brake hole in my VW rabbit (the brake lever came out in an
accident). No text, no camera, no data, no nada?just a nice thick cord and a residual hernia from lugging the thing
around. The sound quality was terrible and you had to drive around forever to find a parking lot with reception, but
damn I was cool going through the drive-through at to the Mickie-D's to see that hot girl from math class and
pulling out the phone. "Oh excuse me, I have a phone call. Yeah, a phone call. In my car."
Never mind that it was usually my parents wondering where the hell I was. The best part about it? You could really
improve coverage by putting it on the roof of the car where it would act as a planar antenna. If you could do it
without denting the car, I mean.
Phillip Torrone -
I'm pretty sure my first cellphone was a Motorola Ultra or Classic II brick-style. But I was always a data first kinda
kid?shocking?so the devices I used most were the Motorola Marco the Apple Newton with a Wireless Paging card over my
eWorld and Compuserve accounts. Yeah dawg, memories of kickin' it 1995 style. Almost 10 years of cellular now, and no
tumors. But I am completely sterile.
man, i still have (and use) a nokia 3360...looks like i need a new phone....
a whole historic account of all my crap I had. Form the motorola bagphone, all the way to my current color sidekick. Ive owned a tone or crap, but tested tons more. I like to buy stuff and sell it a week later after I get bored. Here you go:
http://killerconcepts.com/omnipoint/
My very first was a Motorola Microtac Digital (the digital version of the cliched cellphone from every TV show or movie in the mid 90s). It had a larger screen than the analog version, which was nice, but the battery was so big that it wouldn't fit in your pocket. When I replaced it with a Samsung 3500 a few years later I couldn't believe the difference...
I love my T28 World. Never mind that I use my headset and world charger with my current T610 but I still do go back to my T28 occasionally. The original battery still holds some juice (at least for a day) and thanks to GSM SIM cards, my contacts can be used. There was never a true successor to the T28 World!!
Yeah, but how many of you remember that Sprint was first into the PCS market with -- wait for it --- GSM! That's right... in Washington, DC, Sprint was handed one of the early test market licenses, where they deployed a GSM network. I remember looking with crazed eyes at the salesdood, saying "I'm not putting anything at 1.9GHz -- GIGAHERTZ -- next to my head!" Nine months later, I was carrying around an Ericson 337.
It's always fun calling up Sprint PCS and trying to get an unlock code for the Nokia 2190. "Yes, it's GSM phone. YES. GSM. YESSS. It has a SIM card. A *SIM* card. Yes, I said GSM! Yes, it HAS A SPRINT LOGO ON IT!!!".
My first cell phone was an analog Audiovox from CellularOne in Washington, DC that cost $50. I got it back in spring 1997 and I don't remember it working too well, especially when I traveled. The battery had to be removed from the phone to charge it, so you couldn't use the phone while it was charging. And CellOne's network and customer support were terrible. I had a 2-year contract and by the end of year one I was dying to get out of it. When I saw a friend with a Nokia 6160 in early 1999 I decided not to wait until the contract ran out and went to an AT&T store in downtown DC to hook myself up with one. I've been a happy AT&T Wireless customer* for five years, using the 6160, the 3360, the 3595, and now a Treo 600 in that time. Of course I love the Treo but I keep the 3595 around for the times when I don't need to carry a PDA with me, like when I'm cycling on weekends.
*I might be the only one.
I guess I'm showing my age here, since the thing was a $1000 analog phone... here's a link to a picture of the thing:
http://images.phoneshark.com/Wireless_Model_Motorola_Elite_63x150.GIF
Unfortunately I crushed it in a motorcycle crash, so I was forced to upgrade. I was able to call for help by holding the broken pieces together, which is quite a testiment to the durability of these old phones.
-dw
These were all the rage when I got my first cell phone. I ended up upgrading when I switched providers.
http://commerce.motorola.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prrfnbr=362&prmenbr=126&phone_cgrfnbr=1&zipcode=
My partner had an older "car-phone", ie, mobile, but definately NOT portable. Not sure what model that thing was, since it was always hidden under the seat.
I'm curious as to how Ms. Fehrenbacher was able to use a TDMA phone in England.
I first had a Ericsson T28z from Cingular about 4 years ago. It broke so I bought the successor, the Ericsson T39m, which was nice since it had Bluetooth built in among other things. Now I use a Sony Ericsson T610 which is awesome, plus all my accessories from my T28 and T39 still work with it!
and it was A$1,399 on a $50/month plan.
Summer of 1990, waited in line for 4 or 5 hours for a free 'transportable' 3 watt phone at a Cellular One (I think, they've been through 2 or 3 name changes in my area since then) store grand opening. The sales rep had to fudge my birthday on the app cause I was a couple months shy of 21 and that was a contract requirement at the time. Instead of a typical bag phone it was a hard plastic box about the size of a small vcr. It had a shoulder strap built in and the handset latched on the front with a thumb button to release it. Slot on the end took one of those huge rectangular batteries that most bag phones and some camcorders used at the time. Don't remember who made the phone but I thought it was the coolest thing at the time because it wasn't a typical bag phone and brick phones were still insanely expensive.
T28 owns! I have a T39 I still use every day. Best phone ever. I wish they made small flip phones like this now. No clamshell BS or color screens. Geez, with all the junk they're loading into phones these days, the T39 is still one of the smallest phones on the market. Great reception, and I dig the antenna, makes it so easy to get out of your pocket!
I actually keep a running log of this sort of thing:
http://justinblanton.com/gadgets/
I have a problem. :)
http://www.mobilenews.ru/unitsimg/img_90_51.jpg
microtac 650
looks small, but it's not. and it's heavy. I got it as soon as they came out.. I was excited to not have to carry around a brick phone.
Sony CMZ-100 Or whatever it was called. That very tiny rectangular phone with the flip down boom mic. I used it up until about 2002. The antenna case cracked when I dropped it and it was getting old anyways. So I replaced it. But I love my T616
I have no idea what model Ericsson it was - just it was almost as thick as it was wide. The most stunning feature was it's built-in alarm. Considering it had no internal clock, this was stunning. You set the alarm and nothing happened...
A bit off-topic, but for those with Treo 600's, I've been using Webviewer for a couple of months. Instead of downloading pages directly to the phone and rendering on the screen using the Treo's tiny processor, you send page requests to Webviewer's server, the page is rendered on their server for your screen and then the compacted page is delivered to the Treo. Very, very good. Engadget looks very good on it, too.
This is the reason why I've hated all the little blobby phones since they first started coming out. Maybe when the Razr forces all the others to go back to a thin form factor, I'll actually spend money on a phone... until then, there will always be the complimentary phone from your cell provider.
I also thought I'd try to load up an image, but if not, the link should be good.
[IMG]http://www.tricom.net/english/images/celulares/qualcomm%5B1%5D.gif[/IMG]
First phone was a Nokia brick from Verizon (Bell Atlantic back then), analog, worked very very well in Manhattan. My next three or four phones never worked as well - the Motorola StarTac 8000 (built-in answering machine!), a Samsung and the Motorola Vader with Sprint, the Ericsson T28W (nice!) and T68m (horrible!) with Voicestream... after many phones, currently on the Motorola v80 for voice and Treo 600 for data.
I have a T39 too, and it's my primary phone. It's got mega RF power, like the T28, and I got the extendable antenna for it from some Euro phone parts importer. Not only is the thing slim and easy to get out of your pocket, the reception is outstanding.
There's just something cool about a cell phone that screws up the audio on your TV when it's 20 feet away.
Let's see, I had a MicroTac I think in 1995. Before that, i refused to get a cel phone, until it would fit in my pocket. the microTac just about fit the bill, but I think I was stretching it a bit, I may really have just wnted to show I could afford it.
Then I stopped for a while a year later, sort of as a protest, because the thing didn't work very well, and really was expensive, and was frankly too heavy, so I hardly took it with me. When I did start up again, I went back to L.A. Cellular and thought I could use the same phone since I still had it. They wouldn't let me, and to this day i think they were messing with me.
So i think I ended up in 1998 getting the little Qualcomm flip phone, which was pretty small, and had no external antenna. My buddy got one too, and we sort of have had a cel phone war ever since.
We both had to repace those Qualcomms a few times, then I got the Samsung SCH 3500 I think, a nice black one, and as soon as I got it, my friend got one too. I liked mine quite well, although I broke one when I hd it in my pocket and smacked against a pool table, cracking the screen. i replaced it with the same kind of phone, I liked it so much, but my friend couldn't get reception at his apartment by the beach, so he changed to a Motorola V60, I think, which he says gets better eeception, and is built like a tank. He's dropped it numerous times, even ran over it, but it didn't survive being in the hot tub, although it lived long enough for him to transfer his address book.
For me, my newer Samsung started having battery trouble (someone has to do something about that, it seems every phone eventually has crap batteries) so I replaced it with my current phone, another Samsung, that ACH 530. I was so excited because the sprint version had digit dial, letting you say the digits, but unfortunately Verizon in its money grubbing wisdom was trying to sell a service to do this (which you had to *call* to use, idiots), so they deactivated that feature. If I could have brought my number with me then, I would have switched.
Right now, I praying Verizon doesn't screw up the Motorola V710, as it has everythign I would want: Bluetooth (although I'm not as sure now, what with the Bluetooth gun and all), digitdial, camera, small size. If it syncs with my Mac's iSync (well, really, with entourage) and if the digit dial really works and if I can transfer pix via Bluetooth and not for-pay e-mail, then I'll get it. If not, I may finally change carriers.
I think I first got my own cellphone in early 1993 or so. A year after the first commercial GSM network launched here in Finland. I've stayed with the same operator ever since with the same number ever since. Now that I could change the operator while keeping exactly the same number, I'm considering a cheaper option.
The first phone I had was a Nokia 1011, had it for less than a month before I got a 2110 (I think it was that) prototype. I had that phone for years, it could take any kind of treatment and miss-use and still function.
I've never bought a single phone, yet I've always had several Nokia models to choose from.
Currently the phones that I use are Nokia 7200 and 7700. Like the first one, the second is rather large.
My first cell phone was a GSM phone. But hey, what else would I get in Germany? It was the Hagenuk GlobalHandy. This phone was very thin and didn't have an antenna when all the other phones at the time did. I received it from my Dad sometime in 1999 after he had used it for the previous two years. I didn't use it very long though, because I bought a small Sagem phone shortly afterwards (I don't remember which model).
In the fall of 1999 then, I was browsing the T-D1 website (now T-Mobile Germany) and I found out that they were looking for people to test this new data technology called GPRS. Of course I signed up and believe it or not, I got picked to test GPRS (I would have to say that I was probably one of the first people in the world to use GPRS since T-D1 was the first network operator in the world to launch it). The best part of the deal though, was that I got a Motorola Timeport 260 before it was even sold on the market. And for free to boot! When the phone finally did go on sale, it sold for about 1000 DM.
After using the Motorola for over two years, I moved to the United States to attend a university and then rarely used it anymore (partly because the roaming costs were outrageous on a prepaid card). My second year of college then, I decided I needed a cell phone, so I signed up with T-Mobile USA and got a SE T610. Of course I sold the Motorola afterwards. Right now I'm still using the T610, but I'm already looking for my next phone. :)
David
My first was an Ericsson A1018s... had 'stylish' interchangeable faceplates, and an antenna that I often used for self-defence.
Thank god for Anthony German. I'd been having a similar discussion with some friends, but couldn't remember the name of the tiny Sony analogue phone I had. No-body else had ever seen the one with the flip down boom. It was so simple there wasn't even a screen. Great phone though -- it really was tiny at the time! I remember my father having a huge Motorola Dyna-Tac -- the first genuinly portable phone.
Since being the coolest person around with the Sony, I've had a number of Ericssons (H688, T18, T28, T39, and T68m), a Nokia (6120 I think -- the little red one anyway), and some Sony Ericssons (T610, T630, and a K700). That's quite a few in 10 years!
Incidently -- to the person above questioning the use of a TDMA phone in England... GSM *is* TDMA.
was a Siemens S3. it was big and heavy. i bought 1994 in Germany. I think it was one of the first to get in germany. Nice to remember :-)
I remember just like it was yesterday...
My first phone was a Nokia (don't remember the model number, though it was apparently the same as the one used in Armageddon, which the salesman was SURE to explain). I got that phone from PrimeCo (before they were bought by Verizon). What an awsome company! If there was any problems with the phone, they'd just replace it, no questions asked! My bill would remain the exact same amount from month to month, and they were ALWAYS great people to ask questions to. I replaced the Nokia with the Qualacomm Q phone (which I got for $25 off by trading in my Nokia, try to do THAT anymore!!).
I moved through various Sprint phones (including the StarTac and the Kyocera 6035), and my latest phone was the super-thin Sanyo SCP, which I loved until it was stolen. Now I'm back to my trusty Kyocera 6035 until I find a new phone that I like (although if anyone knows where I can get a Sanyo SCP for Sprint....).
I had a T28, still have it but now I use a Treo 600, that was an awesome phone. I also had a T39 - like someone said, there isn't any equivalent phone available today.
My full cell phone history:
Nokia 3-watt bagphone (mounted it in my car), Moto MicroTac, Moto GSM Microtac, Nextel original brick, T28, Treo 180, Ericson T300, T39, Nokia 3600 GSM, Nextel i60, i90, Moto V66, Nextel 730i, Treo 600
My first phone was also a StarTac with Sprint service, and I loved it. The problems I had though were that the antenna broke (what seemed like) daily, and at $15-20 a pop that wasn't fun. Also, The sprint service in 2000-2001 (haven't used it since) was horrible.
Thats when I switched to Verizon and got a Timeport. Which was essentially a silver StarTac that was a little thicker. Cool thing was, Motorola made a few with "color" OLCD screens. The main text was Green, the time and some other things along the top were blue and there was a red stripe of icons in between. That had the same antenna problems..
Never heard of it? That's okay! This third-rate half-pound black brick was never popular and is best used as an anti-mugging club. It's what you got if you walked into Fido years back and said "Look, I just want a cheap phone. I'm a big guy. I don't care how small or light it is." First one died a week past warranty, but they gave me a new one out of the vast stock of unsold. So I still have it. All the features I'd ever want are added server-side.
Cells are sexy, cells are sweet, but I went to pure email somehow. That number became just something to put on government forms. When offline I get the blissful luxury of quiet.
I started out with my dad's Motorola DynaTAC "Zack Morris Limited Edition". If someone tried to steal it from you, you could just beat them with it because it weighed a freakin' tonne. Two-tone grey (phone one shade, battery another shade) with a big rubberized antenna. When I got my own phone a few years later, it was some Mitsubishi model from PowerTel (which became VoiceStream which became T-Mobile). It actually took a SIM. From there I traded up to a T28 World and I still have the Bluetooth module and the old HBH-10. When I moved to Australia, I kept using the T28. It still works as I just returned from a trip to California and used an AT&T Wireless SIM while I was there. I have in the past year upgraded services to a 3G network and after dealing with the brick that is the NEC e606, I now use the SonyEricsson Z1010. Neither of these phones are tri-band, so thankfully the T28 still performed. Ahhh, I love techno-reminiscing.
The T39 rocks! I have used mine for the past 3 years and nothing else comes close. To the guy who asked Fehrenbacher how she uses a TDMA phone in England - it was a GSM phone before they converted it to TDMA for the middle America masses.
My first mobile was a Sony model (pre Erikson) that was the original slider. I don't recall the model number, but it had a sliding ear piece that activated the phone and was about 2/3 the size of your average corded phone handset these days and somewhat brick shaped. It was the now long gone Airtouch network.
My first phone was a Nokia candy bar phone, can't remember the one but I think it was the first phone with changable covers. Anyway... i remember that you actually had to buy a different battery to use the vibrate function. EEK!
I remember that day like it was yesterday. The beginning of the wireless web. In late 1999, Sprint just started selling the NP1000, by now defunct NeoPoint. It was a big champagne colored phone, with a huge LCD screen capable of 11-lines of text that would suck your big champagne colored battery dry in about a days time. I had to charge it EVERY night. It had voice dialing, a calendar feature, it could receive faxes, and it allowed very limited internet access. I could read my e-mail and news anywhere I had signal. People thought I was crazy back then. It gave me 2 years of great service until a friend gave it a bath. To this day, I think it had the best phone O/S I've ever used. Several phones later I have a t610 and no complaints.
My first phone was a Sony 'Kit Kat'. Can't remember the model number (had an 11 in there somewhere) but it was an analogue phone with flip down mouthpiece, no display and crap performance. That would have been around 1993 ish and I still have it kicking around the house somewhere.. My wifes first phone was slightly earlier, affectionately known as the Sony Mars bar phone (again, can't remember the model number but it was the one with the flip up ear piece, again, no display but better performance). That one bit the dust when my wife, desperate to spend a penny, dropped it down the loo.........
1996-TracFone, manufacturer unknown
1996-PowerTel, Nokia 2170 GSM
1998-BellSouth Mobile, Nokia 6120(the 1st real cellphone)
1999-Bellsouth Mobile, Nokia 8820
2000-BellSOuth Mobile, Nokia 7160
2001-Nextel i85s
Ok, I ditched nextel because they are pompous @$%&!
2001-VoiceStream, freebie Motorola 105?
-Ericsson T28, quickly bought a T39, still have it!!!still use it!!
But..
have had..
Nokia 3390
Nokia 9200
MOT v60, v70
SideKick
Various Samsung scum
T-mo Pocket PC
Nokia 3650?
RIM 7230
Seimens S55
Currently using SE T610,
Say all that to say, I still use my ericsson because it rocks!!
ahh.. yes.. i remember my good ole motorola back in 1995 (the size of a small novel!! hehe)
then got a audiovox 1998, then my first color, and now a sidekick... my sk2 is in the mail! hehe...
- Ericsson 688
- Ericsson a1018
- Ericsson T28
- Ericsson T29
- SonyEricsson Z200
- SonyEricsson K700i
I do not, nor have ever, worked for Ericsson. I just happen to like their phones! :-p
Re: the 3360 in England question. First off, GSM is *not* TDMA. While the two do share the TDMA air interface, the cores (the engines, so to speak) are completely different. GSM uses a MAP core, while TDMA (and CDMA) uses the ANSI-41 core. As we all know, memory puts a haze on what really happened. I believe that the phone in question is either the Nokia 3330 or the 3310.
The 3330: http://www.nokia.co.uk/nokia/0,,18678,00.html
The 3310: http://www.nokia.co.uk/nokia/0,,18162,00.html
Notice that, looks-wise, the only real difference between these two and the 3360 is the two GSM phones (and the nearly identical 3390 - the US version) use of the "Navi-key", while the 3360 uses seperate send/end keys.
Bottom line: the 3360 is TDMA, and uses the 800 MHz and 1900 MHz bands, neither of which is used for cell phones in the UK. The 3390 is a GSM phone, but it only uses the 1900 MHz band. Therefore, by a quick search on Nokia's UK page revealed that the 3310 and the 3330 are the most likely candidates we are looking for.
Had a Dynatac...
My Dad worked for Motorola and I recieved my first cell phone in high school in the late 90's. A Batwinged Dynatac. I don't remember what model it was but knowing me I still have it somewhere. I had something else later, then a startac, an i370 or i390 nextel, i1000+, i90c, and yesterday my contract with Nextel expired and I am getting something else. Alltel due to family members being on it. Maybe a LG LX5550 or Moto V262. I work for a defense contractor (no cameras allowed). My wife is getting the LG LX5450. Any suggestions?
I need software for connect Motorola StarTac 2004 with PC
Please help me
in 1986, houston, tx, 16th b'day got a barely used bmw325, in the dash/console was a phone! i was lettin' everyone have it, i was so cool. i actually got the car a couple wks before my birthday and my parents were cool enough to let me drive to school and of course the day before my actual b'day i was on the phone on my way home from school and ran into the back of these two dumb football players in a hatchback mustang...you know the bad mustang years, like 70-81 or something. i barely bumped them but it set their hatch out of alignment from the car. i had that for another year or so, then i didn't have a cel again until i moved to LA in 92. one of my relatives or some guy i was dating gave me one of the phones in the leather bag with a shoulder strap, i would imagine that it would probably be comparable in size today to a camera that a tv cameraman would use on a live remote for the news. at the time, i worked at a real estate office and somehow i got a plan through them, not sure how or what it involved, maybe i lacked credit and got the service because i worked there. at any rate, dig this...LA Cellular came out to my office in the Pacific Palisades and hooked my phone up for me in the parking lot. That's right, they had mobile van units that went around hooking up service to phones. it was a good thing too because i'm not sure i could have lifted the phone to take it in a store to activate it. i also had a pager at that time...remember those? the only folks whohave them now are the hosts at chili's or tgif's. since then i've had too many phones. the "world's slimmest phone" from sprint, like a skor candy bar. it could fry an egg if my call went on longer than 5 minutes. i had to make sprint release me from my contract since i was getting client vm mssgs 24 hrs after they were left. phone couldn't go to another carrier. my favorite was a tri-mode 3 band (?) star-tac...loved that phone. it was left by fedex at my front door one day and i called maybe 5 x to tell them it wasn't mine and pick it up, but they never came, so i eventually activated it. loved it but i had a car with black leather interior and my god i was always searching between the seats, under them, in the console and floorboards for taht phone. got a t-mobile next, 1 of the first camera phones. the camera attached and stuck out just waiting to be broken. that phone was stolen and i had been told on several occassions by tmobile that i had insurance. when it came down to it, they didn't even offer insurance at the time. in the case it was stolen or lost, they offered you a couple of choices of phones (overstock?) and then gave you a discount based on your tenure with them. naturally- mine was stolen in my second month, so they wanted to give me $10 off of a phone that was substandard to the one stolen, and then not insure the new one either. well- a filed complaint with th fcc(?) and they quickly released me from my contract. then onto verizon (shadey shadey company but good service in LA) first 2 years with a hideous LG phone with a button on the side that mutes all sound without any indication that you just did it, where your hand always is if you're holding it. so hours would go by while i waited and waited for clients or friends to call, even though they had left a mssg two hours before. hated that phone, still do, if it came in here right now, i would swat at it and make it leave. now in my 2nd 2yr contract, i have motorola v710. f'ing verizon has disabled all of the bluetooth features that motorola advertised it to have, in an attempt to make you buy back the services the phone was designed to do on it's own. i have had 6 of these phones since november of 2004...can you believe it? 6...i'm beginning to think that someopeople and certain electronics aren't compatable. i wonder what's next for me...i should probably go back to the over the shoulder bag phone, it looked like a medics in ww2