Cellphones I have owned

"facw" (facw) 05/14/2018 at 02:37 • Filed to: CELLPHONELOPNIK, Nostalgia

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I’m awake, bored, and thanks to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , thinking about old cellphones, so please join me in reviewing my cell phones...

1999: Nokia 252

I liked this one. Felt incredibly sleek compared to some other things out there, and had a bunch of interchangeable faceplates that I never used. Of course plans were still pretty expensive, so I still made most of my calls via landline. Also cellphones were banned at school, though the smaller size meant I wasn’t quite showing Zack Morris level contempt for the rules. I do think I broke the battery clip playing with it at some point, it definitely looks weak:

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2000: Audiovox CDM-135

College meant a new provider (before we had national networks!) and a new phone (also a new number, this was also before we had porting). I liked this one too. Even smaller than the Nokia, while working perfectly well as a phone. By 2000 I was able to get a plan I could actually afford to make calls on.

I don’t remember why I got rid of this. Might have had something to do with the switch away from analog networks, or e-911, or maybe my contract was just up.

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2001: Audiovox CDM-4000

Physically this was quite similar to the previous one, but with a less appealing design. I had felt like going from Nokia to Audiovox was a bit of a downgrade. This one looked and felt cheap to me (it probably was cheap). Pretty sure I broke it, but don’t remember how.

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2003: Samsung SGH-A800

My first flip phone! While fairly small (remember, we were pursuing ever-smaller phones back then), it was still not as compact as the several year old Startac, to say nothing of some other modern flip phones. Still a much more premium feel than the Audiovox. Then as now Samsung’s software was bad. Among other things, Samsung had given it some terrible unchangeable wallpaper on the main screen.

One time I flipped it open, and the screen flipped off. So back to shopping for a new phone.

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2005: Motorola E815

Lot of firsts for me here:

First phone clearly bigger than its predecessor

First camera-phone (the camera didn’t get much use, it was pretty crappy, and you had to pay Verizon to get pictures off)

First color screens (would be pretty sad to take pictures without them)

First phone that could connect to a computer (didn’t work so well, Verizon had a lot of things locked down so you’d use their services)

First with Bluetooth. Again locked down pretty heavily, but I was able to pair with my computer, and while I couldn’t tether data, I was able to use it as a modem, and dial into a university modem pool getting (extremely slow) internet from places where I didn’t have it.

Sadly also had to get a new number. We did have porting at this point, but I was buying from some Amazon deal, and it didn’t really seem possible to get Verizon to switch over the number. Today I’d probably try harder, but not being able to port numbers was recent enough that it didn’t seem like a huge deal.

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2008: HTC Touch

Entering the smartphone era, just a few months after the iPhone cracked it open for consumers! The Touch looked and felt great, with a form-factor that was smaller than a deck of cards, and nice soft-touch plastics. Unfortunately, Windows Mobile was never great, and the launcher software HTC installed on top of it was just clunky and terrible. The real problem though was the resistive touchscreen, which was mushy and unresponsive, and pretty much useless if you weren’t using the stylus.

I took this phone out of my pocket to find the screen had shattered (The screen itself, well behind the touchscreen, which wasn’t damaged. Still not sure how that happened).

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2009: HTC Touch Pro

With the Touch out of commission I ended up buying its physical keyboard-having sibling, the Touch Pro (out of contract, and not that long before the Touch Pro 2 was released). I thought that the  keyboard would be good, given how awful the Touch’s touch screen was, but it wasn’t actually necessary. The touchscreen while still resistive, was massively more responsive, and had much less travel than the Touch’s. Indeed the real star of the device was the screen, which was 640x480, which doesn’t sound impressive, until you remember that it was a tiny 2.8" display (as compared to the iPhone 3GS’s 3.5" 480x320 screen), making everything super-crisp, and allowing a lot of content to fit. Additionally it produced some really deep blacks, and vibrant colors. It was well ahead of its time. Windows mobile still sucked, but an unofficial mod to 6.5 brought significant improvements and made it a very usable device.

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2010: HTC EVO 4G

This was a great phone. I was worried about how huge it was (the 4.3" screen was a big departure at the time), but quickly found it to be well worth carrying a bigger device. WiMAX provided great internet speeds (tailing off towards the end as Sprint shifted from WiMAX to LTE), and Android was finally ready for prime-time after having been clunky in its early versions. The device looked and felt great, though the little kickstand, while fun to fidget with, never really did a did a good job supporting the device.

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2013: HTC One

HTC’s crowning achievement, this is probably my favorite phone (despite one huge flaw). The phone looks great (and when it was released, like nothing else), feels great, and sounds great, on account of its excellent speakers (for a phone). Android is snappy, and the touchscreen is sharp and responsive. The car mount was great to use, and makes me hate that no phone today (even the high-volume iPhones) has a custom car mount, instead making us deal with clunky universal ones.

The flaw: The dreaded HTC One purple camera issue. Apparently triggered by exposure to excessive heat (when charging, being left in the sun, or in a hot car, etc.) the main camera becomes damaged in such a way that all pictures it takes are cast in a nearly monochrome purple hue. Turning on HDR helps, but it seems there was never any real solution other than sending it in for repair.

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2016: Samsung Galaxy S7

I have serious mixed-feelings about this phone. I really didn’t like it when I first got it, and considered going back to my HTC One, purple camera and all. It has since grown on me some.

Pros:

Big, crisp screen

Qi charging (seemed like a low-value gimmick, but I’ve found it useful)

Waterproof (though I’ve damaged it enough I wouldn’t trust this now)

Always on screen (especially since it was updated to show generic notifications)

MicroSD support (one of the reasons I picked the S7 was that Samsung was offering a free 256GB MicroSD. I’m not super concerned with removable storage, but 32GB is clearly no longer sufficient for my usage)

Ant+ support (nice to be able to use a cheap heart rate monitor when cycling)

Fast charging is nice

Cons:

Feels cheap, and not at all sturdy.

Slippery back and awkwardly shaped side means it is a lot easier to drop than the One (not that the One’s aluminum is slip-proof)

Painted metal side started chipping immediately

Despite a fast processor, apps are often quite sluggish and stuttery

Battery life is poor (this may be related to the always on display, in power-saving mode it’s much better)

Terrible speaker (may be a concession to being waterproof)

Samsung’s software, while not as bad as some earlier phones, can still be a bit invasive.

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So that’s it, nearly 20 years of cellphones. My contract is up in October, so maybe I’ll be adding another new toy then (especially now that I’ve somewhat damaged my S7). Honestly though none of the current crop jumps out at me as being significantly different or better than what I’ve got, so I may end up hanging on to the S7 a while longer.

duurtlang > facw 05/14/2018 at 03:18

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In my 17 years of cell phone ownership I’m only on my 5th phone right now.

2001 Nokia 3310

2006 Nokia 6230i

2010 Samsung Galaxy Spica (Android 1.5...)

2012 Samsung Galaxy Nexus

2016 Xiaomi Redmi 2 Pro

I only regret buying that 2010 Samsung. What a POS.

pip bip - choose Corrour > facw 05/14/2018 at 03:18

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my phones have been

1. Samsung (not sure what model it was, but it was a dumb phone, similar in looks to above.) (2009-2012)

2. Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830T (2012-2016)

3. Apple iPhone SE 16GB (2016-now)

facw > duurtlang 05/14/2018 at 03:52

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Yeah, I think 1.5 was just too early for Android. 2.2 had added a lot of good stuff, but looks like the Spica never was upgraded beyond 2.1.

facw > pip bip - choose Corrour 05/14/2018 at 04:03

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Galaxy Ace drove you to Apple huh? Setting aside some issues with iOS (the hardware is always nice), I think I’m locked in enough app-wise that I couldn’t make the switch to an iPhone.

BvdV - The Dutch Engineer > facw 05/14/2018 at 04:07

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From 2007 to now I had the following:

LG 343i

LG Cookie

iPhone 3GS

iPhone 4

iPhone 6S

The LG Cookie was a stupid purchase, I bought it in 2009, while my 343i was still perfectly fine, however that was just before cheap smartphones were a thing. That meant I had something that looked like a smartphone, but didn’t have any of the functionalities an OS like Android would have give it. Of course all my friends bought a smartphone shortly after that, and I was stuck in the stone age :p

pip bip - choose Corrour > facw 05/14/2018 at 04:13

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because i have an Apple desktop, i just wanted the ease of integration

i wanted to put songs on my samsung but as i’m not a tech head, so i couldn’t figure it out, so when the iPhone SE came out i bought one.

didn’t want an iPhone 5s or c (too old) or 6/6s (too big)

facw > pip bip - choose Corrour 05/14/2018 at 04:19

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Admittedly I just use Google Play Music to get my songs on my Android devices. A bit worried about what will happen to that given the Music is apparently being shuttered in favor of Youtube. I’d say I could easily switch to Amazon music, but they’ve recently killed the ability to store/play third-party music. Possibly Prime Music streaming is good enough, but weird to think that I might be manually loading songs onto the device like its 15 years ago.

facw > BvdV - The Dutch Engineer 05/14/2018 at 04:23

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The iPhone 4 is my favorite iPhone design.

duurtlang > facw 05/14/2018 at 04:27

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It wasn’t, and I had to manually upgrade it to 2.1 as it was stuck at 1.6. A major downside was the lack of storage space; only 180 MB available after OS installation. And I don’t believe I could install apps on the SD card. The 256 MB RAM (versus 3 GB on my cheap China phone) didn’t help either.

I’ve learned to look at specifications and OS upgradability since then. My current phone still updates frequently after two years, it’s an adaptation of Android but it works just fine. Especially for a purchase price of <$200 I’m not complaining at all. Battery is still enough for 1 day of lots of browsing or 2 days of limited use.

duurtlang > BvdV - The Dutch Engineer 05/14/2018 at 04:32

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From Wikipedia

LG targeted the entry-level touchscreen market keeping the cost of the KP500 as low as possible by omitting some of the features found on high-end products, such as GPS , 3G or Wi-Fi .

That made me laugh.

BvdV - The Dutch Engineer > duurtlang 05/14/2018 at 04:42

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Yeah, in hindsight it is pretty laughable, the only step up over my 343i (flip phone!) was it’s touchscreen, an sd card slot and a slightly better camera.

BvdV - The Dutch Engineer > facw 05/14/2018 at 04:45

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It’s definitely a nice design.

I still use it as a GPS/mediaplayer in my car sometimes, just because it is much more portable than a stand-alone GPS, and 32gb of music is pretty useful for when not wanting to burn all my data on spotify.

McMike > facw 05/14/2018 at 05:13

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One night I was drinking beer with my neighbor and his wife on his deck, and we were talking about cell phones.

Next thing I know, he comes back out of the house with an arm full of phones.

They have kept every one they have ever had.

He was arranging them in order of large - small, and just about got them all right (as far as the timeline) with exception of one of them. It took him a few minutes to realize that the one between the Qualcomm and the Nokia. was an old VCR remote. :)

Chinny Raccoon > facw 05/14/2018 at 05:16

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My first was a Sendo SV663, a UK company who no one has heard of and went bust after a few years.

After that I had a few- Motorola V663 and a Razr. After that it was a Samsung slide thing which was terrible, then I moved on to Nokia Smartphones.

The first was the Nokia N80, which I bought as a refurbished model. Had that for about six months, then got the upgrade itch and took out my first ever contract.

The Mighty N95 8GB. First time with usable mobile data too, a whole gigabyte! Seemed an enormous amount in 2008, now that’s the minimum amount on low end deals. Had this for a year or so, with the rise of the iPhone, surely Nokia could easily take on this upstart.

Around this time I had an N800 Tablet, which was a really impressive piece of kit. Basically a Linux PC in your pocket. So when rumours of a Maemo based phone started circulating, the future was clearly coming, and it was going to belong to Nokia!

I’d preordered the N900, but there were a few delays. When I was on a work trip to London, I actually went to the Nokia Flagship store on Regents Street to see if they had any more news about when shipments would start. As I remember the store was mostly empty, which was probably a sign of things to come.

When it finally arrived, it was actually a great device, but could have done with a couple of iterations. Nokia killed it off after a very short period of time, so there was no real successor.

After about a year I switched to the Dark Side.

The iPhone had caught up in the features department, I think the high resolution screen was the turning point for me. Plus an absolute killer deal- £30/month for the phone and unlimited everything. Ah the days when 3 were trying to add customers like crazy.

After that it got a lot less interesting, with a succession of iPhones, 5,6 and and now 8 every two years or so, though I had the 6 for longer. Just don’t feel the need to upgrade them as much.

boxrocket > facw 05/14/2018 at 06:20

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I still have all of my daily-use phones (all Nokia or Microsoft-branded), and they all work. I also have a few phones I got for tinkering or to loan to clients while I fixed their phones as a side gig, but I sold or gave away the Androids (T-Mobile G2 which was also known as the Desire Z, HTC Sensation 4G, plus the Viewsonic gTablet, which was one of the first mobile-based tablets with a dual-core processor), and haven’t gotten around to replacing the broken screen on the big green Lumia 1520.

If it weren’t 5AM I could probably list every one in order, starting with the Nokia 3590 up to my current Microsoft Lumia 950XL.

bhtooefr > facw 05/14/2018 at 08:00

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My phones: (not my photos)

2003: Nokia 3100b (I think):

Only had it for a couple weeks, after which we found out that AT&T’s plans weren’t as good as advertised re: roaming fees. (Namely, turns out, even on the national plan, you paid roaming fees if you were on, say, T-Mobile’s network.

2003: Nokia 3588i:

That one was stolen. It was pretty shit, too.

2004: Nokia 6225i:

Much better, although the cell radio died on it. I know it’s been disposed of.

2005: Sanyo SCP-8300:

I think I still have this one somewhere. It was quite a bit more capable, actually, although not exactly good yet. Thing was a tank, though.

2007: Motorola W385 (work phone):

So I didn’t have much in the way of problems with it, but then I literally only used it for voice calls. However, I was supporting a fleet of them at the school that I worked at (and graduated from), and every damn time a teacher would take photos with one, and then actually want to access them... Verizon lockdowns got really annoying, really fast.

2008: Palm Centro:

In some ways, this was a huge upgrade over the SCP-8300. In other ways... web browsing was actually worse, because it was still Opera Mini, but the J9 JVM was unstable. And, this thing was outdated when it was new, and it showed its age quite quickly. I ended up selling this to a friend.

2009: HTC Touch Pro:

Hardware quality was utter shit here, but otherwise, it was fantastic in comparison to the Centro... but it showed its age quite quickly. I know I put a 6.5 ROM on it at some point, but I think I might’ve actually downgraded back to a third-party 6.1 ROM, not liking the 6.5 UI. I know I’ve got it somewhere, but I couldn’t say where.

2010: Palm Pre (work phone technically):

So I got a job in which I needed to have a week of training from home, and needed to call in to do it, for 8 hours a day, before going on-site. I’ve never had a landline of my own, and the family plan I was on was not unlimited minutes. Sprint was offering unlimited plans with zero cancellation fee, so I decided to get an unlimited plan of my own, and cancel it a week later. And, if I get to try anything I want out, might as well try the Pre. Yeah, I was happy to return it - webOS did some things right, but the hardware just was not good.

2010: BlackBerry Tour 9630 (work phone technically):

This was another week-long phone - once I got onsite with the job mentioned above, the agency I was with at the time told me that I had to get a BlackBerry specifically, to receive company e-mail. So, this got tacked onto the family plan... and then I found out that Sprint didn’t work at the client site that I support, only AT&T. (And, they didn’t even use BES, they required that I sign up for a new e-mail account somewhere and add it to that, so there was literally no reason to use a BlackBerry other than, that’s what they required us to get.)

2010: BlackBerry Bold 9700 (work phone technically):

I think I actually still have this somewhere, but it was the replacement for the Tour.

2011: BlackBerry Curve 9300 (work phone):

Contract-to-hire worked out for me, and I got hired. So, my current employer proceeds to send me this thing, because to access their e-mail, it had to be a company-owned phone. Fine, except note the carrier - my employer was in the process of releasing their own T-Mobile exclusive phone model. (I think I forgot to send this one back, so it’s probably in my apartment somewhere, actually...)

2011: BlackBerry Curve 9300 (work phone):

Let’s try that again, this time with a carrier that actually worked at the client site. This thing was an absolute tank , with fantastic battery life, and it was downright excellent at the e-mail and phone calls duties I used it for. Still have it, know where it is, and it still works.

2011: Motorola Droid 2 Global:

In my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I learned my lesson about Android devices with this one. It meant that I got my physical keyboard, but it also meant that I got MOTOBLUR, which... you do not want MOTOBLUR. This was the bad old days of Motorola Android. Of course, it was also a Verizon exclusive, so I couldn’t use it at work. I still have it, although the touchscreen and keyboard didn’t work right last I tried it.

2013: Google/LG Nexus 5:

I didn’t realize how bad the Droid 2 Global was, really, until I got the Nexus 5... and I was blown away by how fast it was. Towards the end of its life, though, the web was bringing it to its knees, and the battery was degrading pretty badly, but it still worked perfectly despite being beat to hell. I still have it.

2014: Nokia Lumia 920 (work phone):

So, I got a new manager, who, upon finding out that all of the people who were newly under him had ancient technology, proceeded to order new laptops (yay) and new phones (ehh). On the plus side, this thing was an absolute unit , and Windows Phone 8.x is performant on potato hardware. On the minus side, Windows Phone 8.0 was buggy as shit , for the calls-and-e-mails functionality it was clunkier than the BlackBerry, and it had worse battery life. It’s actually sitting on my desk at work now.

2016: Google Pixel XL:

The Nexus 5 was showing its age, it was going to run out of security updates... so time to replace it, and I decided to go for bigphone. I’ve been OK with it so far, except for OLED burn-in, and battery degradation and struggling with the modern web is starting to become apparent already.

2018: iPhone 8 (work phone):

The Lumia 920 didn’t have VoLTE support on AT&T’s network, and my client upgraded from HSPA+-only to LTE-only for the distributed antenna network in the building, meaning that the Lumia could no longer make voice calls. (Annoyingly, my Pixel XL can’t, either, but that’s less important - I still get voicemails, and people who really need to call me have my work numbers.) Battery life (for phone calls and e-mail, anyway) is solid (almost as good as the Curve 9300), it’s fast (I mean, Apple’s got the best SoCs in the industry)... and I’ve run into some glitches here and there, and I don’t really get along with iOS at all, especially the on-screen keyboard metrics (iOS keyboards expect you to touch a bit below the key). I mean, it’s fine , but I’m glad it’s on my employer’s dime, not my own. (It actually annoys me, though, because it means I’m stuck in the trash fire that is Android for my personal device.)

Aaron M - MasoFiST > facw 05/14/2018 at 08:26

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In 2011, I broke my flip-phone while wrenching on my WRX (I was replacing the intercooler and the phone got caught between the fender and my thigh). I was a couple months short of a free upgrade, so in the interim my Dad lent me his Nokia E90.

No other phone I’ve had has been anywhere near as memorable as that one.

facw > bhtooefr 05/14/2018 at 09:12

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That’s an extensive list. I must admit I’m glad I never got stuck with a Blackberry for work (or indeed got stuck needing to carry a second device, I’d hate having to lug two phones around).

facw > Chinny Raccoon 05/14/2018 at 09:15

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I had forgotten that Maemo was ever a thing. 

facw > McMike 05/14/2018 at 09:18

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I have the One sitting on my desk (because apparently standards are hard for Omron, and my blood pressure monitor won’t sync over Bluetooth with the S7). I should have the EVO 4G around somewhere too, and I think I’ve even seen the Touch Pro. Not sure about the others, though some of them were definitely broken an got tossed. I may hoard old technology, but I’m not going to keep broken devices around.

facw > Aaron M - MasoFiST 05/14/2018 at 09:20

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That’s definitely a bit of a strange device.

FTTOHG Has Moved to https://opposite-lock.com > facw 05/14/2018 at 10:20

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My first phone was also a Nokia 252, I believe. I don’t remember the exact model for sure but it looked just like that photo except it was all black. It was actually in 2001 that I got mine. By then they had gotten pretty cheap and were available on the prepaid carriers. Mine was a Tracfone that I paid for myself my senior year of high school. I remember using it a lot just as a phone book to call people from land lines and save my minutes.

facw > FTTOHG Has Moved to https://opposite-lock.com 05/14/2018 at 10:23

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Yeah, it was available in a lot of different looks. Not as many as the ubiquitous 3310, but you still had plenty of options.  

bhtooefr > facw 05/14/2018 at 15:22

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I wouldn’t want to have one device be both my personal and work device, and I’m especially not a fan of the whole “let’s install a MDM on your own device” thing that’s pulled with BYOD today.

facw > bhtooefr 05/14/2018 at 17:00

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It’s definitely the case that I use mobile Outlook because if I try to set up my work email with the Samsung client, it demands I hand over full control of my device to my IT department. Some degree of sandboxing is certainly desirable.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > facw 05/16/2018 at 11:51

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I had the motorola razr slider phone, so close to a smart phone but not. Actually a very nice phone for doing phone things. The next phone I got after this was an Iphone 4, then a 5 and now a 7.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > facw 05/16/2018 at 13:17

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You’re wrong about no porting in 2000, it’s just that the carriers weren’t as willing to do it. There were also national carriers, but they were even more expensive than the smaller regional ones. Porting being available was mandated in 1996 in the same act that basically set the stage for the relatively endurable situation in cell service that we have today. It was implemented no later than 1998 for even the smallest carriers.

A funny fact on this: There are some big chunks of the country that are still under the control of these smaller carriers. Some have weird/bad relationships with national carriers. I’m on AT&T and somewhere in the middle of Nebraska I dropped to some weird smaller carrier that all the locals used. AT&T sent me a nasty message about high data usage while roaming that shocked me. I had to look it up and switch some settings so I could see when I was in these weird roaming zones.

As for my cell phones:

Nokia 5160 circa 1999.

Nokia 6160? 6260? It was a 6X60. It worked, but the serial port fried after getting drenched in a nasty storm on Jackson Lake; the phone still worked to call for help after we had to beach the boat and it worked for everything else, but when I told HR about the fried serial port they insisted on replacing it. I used the port to dial to the internet and/or company network from my laptop.

Nokia 6X60

Nokia 8260. Switched to this by choice because 6XXX series phones are clunky. Sometime in this era I was issued a Palm i705, which was sufficiently clunky that I later insisted on an m515 and using IrDA for Internet access... Can’t remember if I had this phone or the next when that happened, since they were quite similar.

Nokia 8290.

Nokia 8890 (I believe - had a slide out cover). Switched to this by choice. While I had this I started using PocketPC devices because that’s what my new employer used. They were light years better than the Palm devices, but the clunkiest things I ever carried.

Motorola RAZR. Switched because I switched carriers. Broke the hinge on this one.

Motorola RAZR. Had a pretty floppy hinge by the end.

Apple iPhone 3G. Switched to AT&T to get this. Quit carrying a second PDA device at this point.

Apple iPhone 4

Apple iPhone 5. Cell radio just randomly died one day when I was out of town shortly after the warranty ran out. Replaced at a discount at an Apple Store in the 909.

Apple iPhone 5

Apple iPhone 6 Plus. The case tweaked like many of these did, but it never had any problems due to it. I kept it in a case for a little more strength. I mostly quit carrying laptops at this point except on trips.

Apple iPhone 8 Plus. Current, still in a thin black leather case like the 6 Plus.

The surprising bit is that I somehow avoided ever carrying a Crackberry and even though I work in tech, I haven’t owned/carried an Android. I have considered Android a few times, but their ecosystem is so fragmented and there is so much variety in their hardware that I can never commit. I just expect my smartphone to work when I need it to for all the main tasks it needs to do. The only complaint I would make about the Apple devices is that I would like to have better remote administration tools and better ways to automate things (Pythonista is mostly solving that for me now).

facw > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/16/2018 at 13:22

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Wikipedia says:

The U.S. FCC since has mandated Wireless Local Number Portability starting November 24, 2003 (in metropolitan areas), and allowed operators to charge an additional monthly Long-Term Telephone Number Portability End-Use Charge as compensation. On November 10, 2003, the FCC additionally ruled that number portability applies to landline numbers moving to mobile telephones and, on October 31, 2007, the FCC made clear that the obligation to provide LNP extends to VoIP providers.

So it seems like they weren’t actually required to port your cell number until 2003, which sounds about right to me.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > facw 05/16/2018 at 14:01

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Ahh, I forgot it was staggered. Landline portability was fully implemented by the end of 1998. I didn’t remember any problems with it on cell phones (I remember wireless numbers being ported in 2001 for the 8260 to 8290 move, but those were big national wireless carriers), but I did abandon quite a few numbers over the years. The only one I’ve kept long-term was the one I got in 2007. Today your area code is usually where you grew up if you’re under ~30 or where you were in 2005-2008 if you’re over 30... Much as the first 3 digits of your SSN tells you where someone was born down to a state or major metro area.

facw > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/16/2018 at 14:03

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Yep. As always, xkcd:

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > facw 05/16/2018 at 14:14

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I wonder what everyone’s history was with carrying their phones, too.

The old late-90s phones with the antennas had to be clipped on a belt or tossed in a purse. My 8260 was when I started carrying them in my pocket, after which I started carrying my PDA in another pocket. The stupid i705 was so big I had to use a clip again, which I hated, then the PPC devices were freaking enormous (so, again, you had to clip them to your belt like you were Batman or something). Sometime around my RAZR I stopped carrying PDAs entirely and the iPhone was when the two needs were sufficiently integrated to simply carry the one device, which maintained the front right pocket position that my Nokia 8260 established... The RAZR era was when I quit wearing belts for everyday work clothing, because I didn’t need them anymore.

facw > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/16/2018 at 14:35

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I always just pocket carried mine (though the first often lived in my backpack as well). Never a fan of belt mounting things.

HammerheadFistpunch > facw 05/24/2018 at 10:29

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Mine starts around sgh800 followed by the e815