Remember Mobile Phones?

[Chedney Honks]

In 26 years of having a mobile phone, I never broke the screen. I don't understand how people break them so regularly. I once threw a phone at a tree when I was due an upgrade and it literally bounced back into my hand so I kept it for another two years.

It was this one, had a flip down bit where you could write Chinese characters on the little touch screen. Absolutely amazing phone, ergonomic to fuck. Little stylus snapped in the back, very tidy and futuristic. Nokia 6108 I just found out it's called.







My friend got a touch screen phone around 2008, some Chinese Xiao Mi iPhone rip-off and I thought it would never catch on and then eventually I got a HTC Desire in 2010.

[bgmnts]

Presumably those cunts were built to last. Smartphones have that planned obsolescence feel about them and break quite easily if you're not careful.

Don't think I ever broke my old Nokia. It was made out of adamantium or something.

[Old Thrashbarg]

Planned obsolescence applies to the software, but not really the hardware. The reason many phones break more easily now is because instead of being separate pieces of plastic, that aren't brittle and will disengage from each other before breaking, with just a small amount of glass, they're now mostly approaching 50% glass on the surface, enclosed in a single piece of whatever other machine-engineered material. So there's no give and when they have to absorb an impact the weakest point is the brittle screen.

[steveh]

Have long thought that mobile phone company websites should have to list the point at which a model will stop receiving security updates, which is the most notable obsolescence point now.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It seems a bit crap that they make these newfangled phones all sleek and fancy looking, but then you have to cover them up with some ugly case

Presumably those cunts were built to last. Smartphones have that planned obsolescence feel about them and break quite easily if you're not careful.

Don't think I ever broke my old Nokia. It was made out of adamantium or something.

Was that deliberate, or just inherent to the different designs? It was difficult to break the screen on a Nokia, because they barely had one.

What Thrashbarg said, basically.

In 26 years of having a mobile phone, I never broke the screen. I don't understand how people break them so regularly.

Drunken clumsiness? A friend of mine has wrecked countless phones while pissed. The only time I've damaged a phone was after a trip to the pub - it didn't have a case or screen protector and fell out of my shirt pocket as I was jumping over a big puddle.

[Endicott]

In 26 years of having a mobile phone, I never broke the screen.

... eventually I got a HTC Desire in 2010.

Funny coincidence, I've never broken a phone screen and I also got an HTC Desire in 2010. I thought it was fantastic until about 2 or 3 software updates later it ran out of memory and I had to keep removing apps.

Drunken clumsiness? A friend of mine has wrecked countless phones while pissed. The only time I've damaged a phone was after a trip to the pub - it didn't have a case or screen protector and fell out of my shirt pocket as I was jumping over a big puddle.

Also, anyone who keeps it in their back pocket is just asking for trouble.

I dropped that little HTC loads of times, but I kept it in a leather sheath case so it was pristine until the day I binned it off 6 years later.

[Shit Good Nose]

Those old Nokias were bomb proof, even compared with other phones of the time.  Dropped mine fuck knows how many times onto hard ground, it fell out of my pocket onto concrete from roof height when I was clearing the gutters in our previous house, and it even fell into a hot cup of tea once.  Cunt still works today (although it's obviously mega obsolete for everything bar calls and texts, and the battery only lasts about an hour from full charge it's that old).

These days I have a film layer AND glass protector to protect the screen, and a hard case to protect the body (I use mine for work as well and am regularly on construction sites and in plant rooms, so I need fairly beefy protection for it).

[Mr Banlon]

I've got an Alcatel Onetouch I bought new for £7. Had it a few years now. Before that I had an old Nokia a mate gave me. That lasted about 12 years. Friends keep trying to give me their old smartphones. I'm ok as I am.

[Sebastian Cobb]

As resilient as nokias were my first phone was a 3210 and it died after about 18 months from a crack in the circuit board (wouldn't power on unless you bent it a bit) and I hadn't bashed it around.

I had other models that fell out of a window and got thrown across a car park by the person responsible for the phone going out the window taking exception to me chucking some water on them when they went to retrieve it and it put up with that abuse fine.

[Ferris]

When going through a protracted period of poverty I had a Motorola WX180 which was best phone I ever had and would switch back to it in a heartbeat.

Sturdy as fuck, charged off a mini USB back when most phones had proprietary chargers, and tremendously functional - it held a full charge for several weeks no problem - I found my old one in a draw and it still switched on and worked no drama so held a charge for ~10 years. I think it was designed as a burner model for drug dealers, but if those fools chucked theirs away they missed out on so much.



It also cost £2. Sensational bit of technology.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I had a motorola V66 and it was decent.

It lasted me well but it eventually died when I snapped it by seeing how far I could bend it without snapping it. As you do.

[Ferris]

I had a motorola V66 and it was decent.

It lasted me well but it eventually died when I snapped it by seeing how far I could bend it without snapping it. As you do.

I used mine to tap nails into walls to hang pictures on more than one occasion.

[Icehaven]

Also, anyone who keeps it in their back pocket is just asking for trouble.

In about 2002 a friend of mine had a very long, narrow phone which was more like a stretched out landline handset than the stockier Nokias that were popular at the time. Anyway she kept it in her back pocket and one day she sat down and it snapped clean in half.

[Sebastian Cobb]

My old man used to keep his in his top pocket despite it falling out fairly reguarly, he once ran for his car in the rain and fell out his pocket and then he ended up drop-kicking it into a bush. Wally.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Loved my Nokia 3210. Would love to go back, but you can't do fuck all without proper internet these days can you? Everyone presumes you've email, a browser and a million messaging and social media apps on you.

Replaced it with a Nokia 3510, hoping for a Game Boy Color-style upgrade where it was effectively the same thing but with a bit of colour chucked in and the hardware clocked a bit higher, but they pushed the software far harder than the hardware could take and it was worse in every way. It was really slow, buttons were mushy, you couldn't see the screen in sunlight, the games looked and ran like shit. Imagine that; a version of Snake where you couldn't tell where the snakes head was properly, running at like 15fps. Dogshit.

Replaced that with a Sony Ericsson T610 which was ace, then a K800i which was the first time I had a camera on a phone and it was proper decent too. Had a flash and everything.

AND THEN SMARTPHONES HAPPENED.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Having said I've only damaged one phone, I did have another one go wrong: It was one of the follow up models to the Nokia 3310 (colour screen and polyphonic ringtones, but no camera or music player). The screen on it went kaput fairly quickly, for no obvious reason that I can recall. Meanwhile, the one that fell out of my pocket (a Samsung Note 2) is still working fine 5 years later, although the (replaceable) battery is getting a bit knackered.

It's kind of bizarre how quickly we got used to bigger and bigger smartphones. I remember the 4" screen on the HTC Desire HD seeming mega when my friend got one, back in 2010. By the time he upgraded and passed it down to me, a scant few years later, it looked minuscule. It's the opposite of the pre-smartphone days, when the trend was for miniaturisation. One of my schoolmates had a weekend job at Carphone Warehouse (or "Carphone Whorehouse", as we wittily dubbed it) and walked into school one day with a phone that fit (albeit not entirely comfortably) inside that little mini pocket you get on trousers.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Loved my Nokia 3210. Would love to go back, but you can't do fuck all without proper internet these days can you? Everyone presumes you've email, a browser and a million messaging and social media apps on you.

Replaced it with a Nokia 3510, hoping for a Game Boy Color-style upgrade where it was effectively the same thing but with a bit of colour chucked in and the hardware clocked a bit higher, but they pushed the software far harder than the hardware could take and it was worse in every way. It was really slow, buttons were mushy, you couldn't see the screen in sunlight, the games looked and ran like shit. Imagine that; a version of Snake where you couldn't tell where the snakes head was properly, running at like 15fps. Dogshit.

Replaced that with a Sony Ericsson T610 which was ace, then a K800i which was the first time I had a camera on a phone and it was proper decent too. Had a flash and everything.

AND THEN SMARTPHONES HAPPENED.

We had cheapo nokias as the works on-call phones. They were great as you could set them to loud while keeping your own phone silent so you didn't miss it or sleep through calls and the batteries lasted a full week. My next job had an iphone and it was just an over-complicated solution to something that only needed to receive calls and texts.

[ImmaculateClump]

I don't like them but my sister made me get one in case she needs to boss me about and she's not here.

This is the one I got.



I wanted something that'd last for ages before I had to charge it.
doesn't last as long as I'd hoped, but it's alright.
Dumbphones they call them nowadays.

Have I got the shittest phone? Are you all gonna call me shitphone?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Dumbphones they call them nowadays.

Apart from the smaller ones, they call them 'bumphones'.

[Icehaven]

It's kind of bizarre how quickly we got used to bigger and bigger smartphones. I remember the 4" screen on the HTC Desire HD seeming mega when my friend got one, back in 2010. By the time he upgraded and passed it down to me, a scant few years later, it looked minuscule. It's the opposite of the pre-smartphone days, when the trend was for miniaturisation. One of my schoolmates had a weekend job at Carphone Warehouse (or "Carphone Whorehouse", as we wittily dubbed it) and walked into school one day with a phone that fit (albeit not entirely comfortably) inside that little mini pocket you get on trousers.

There is a popular theory that phone screens started getting bigger at the exact moment it became possible to watch porn on them.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I was going to say 'that's not true' given things like the iphone didn't originally have 3g but then I just remembered some of the grim stuff some knobheads in college used to exchange over bluetooth.

[thecuriousorange]

There's a rapper now called Princess Nokia who's really cool with Gen Zs. Turn of the century tech has become retro, chill and really funky, unless you're old enough to remember it the first time round.

[Sebastian Cobb]

There's a rapper now called Princess Nokia who's really cool with Gen Zs. Turn of the century tech has become retro, chill and really funky, unless you're old enough to remember it the first time round.

Spotify recommended me her the other day so I had a listen, she's alright but it didn't quite hit the spot, I'm too old white and male to be the target audience but it recommended me it because I do quite like some of that stuff, Rico Nasty, Bree Runway and Yung Baby Tate are great.

[Jerzy Bondov]

I've had progressively bigger phones for the last ten years and each time I open the box I think fucks sake look at that you stupid cunt why did you buy that it's enormous and then after a while I find my previous phone in the loft and it looks like it's a phone for a fucking Clanger. Gone too big now though, going to get a smaller one next time but it'll probably have a bigger screen now that they're basically all screen.

[Gulftastic]

As Tom said in 'Parks & Rec' when he saw Ron's ancient mobile 'Eww, it's got buttons!'

[Endicott]

One of my schoolmates had a weekend job at Carphone Warehouse (or "Carphone Whorehouse", as we wittily dubbed it) and walked into school one day with a phone that fit (albeit not entirely comfortably) inside that little mini pocket you get on trousers.

Possibly a Motorola v8160? They were tiny. It was my first mobile phone.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I think it was Nokia. It looked like a shrunken 3210.

[Ferris]

I think it was Nokia. It looked like a shrunken 3210.

Did it have a white backlight (instead of the clumsy green effort of the 3310s)?

If so it was probably a Nokia 8310 or similar.



How on earth have I retained this information.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Nokia 1100 was the tank. Had a torch too.



in searching for that people are trying to sell them for £30 used, which is probably more than I paid for mine.

Thinking about it, I just remembered I ruined one of the Nokia on-call phones (I was on-call for multiple systems in tandem so forwarded them all to one phone) because it was in my bag and my lunchtime soup defrosted and all the water ran into it. Instead of coughing up and letting people know I was a moron I just bought another one for a tenner from Argos and swapped it.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Did it have a white backlight (instead of the clumsy green effort of the 3310s)?

If so it was probably a Nokia 8310 or similar.



How on earth have I retained this information.

I can't remember about the backlight (it was a depressingly long time ago now) but I think that might well be the one. It was well dinky.