A History of Mobile Phones


I thought it might be fun to look back at the list of mobile phones I've ever owned, starting with the classic Nokia 2110 back in 1996 for the purpose of receiving calls for job interviews during my final year at college.

  • Nokia 2110 - classic and chunky
  • Nokia 5110 - nearly everyone had one of these ubiquitous phones
  • Siemens SL45 - advanced for its time, with built-in MP3 player and expandable memory card. Sleek looking phone.

  • Sony Ericsson T68 - my first mobile with color screen. Navigating through the phone's menu was on the slow side. It had Bluetooth which I didn't realize at the time. According to Wikipedia, this was Sony Ericsson's first color screen phone
  • Vodafone/Sharp GX10i - this was dubbed the "Beckham" phone as he was heavily featured in TV ads. My first flip phone as well as first camera phone. With polyphonic ring tones!
  • Motorola V360 - first mobile when working in the US. Nothing fancy. Good solid phone.
  • Motorola RAZR V3 - Like the 5110, nearly everyone had one of these. Motorola created an eye-catching, stylish must-have phone that everyone went gaga for. On reflection, its feature set was fairly minimal.
  • Samsung Blackjack II i617 - My first foray into smartphones. I opted for Windows Mobile OS and a physical keyboard. Good phone but underpowered for web surfing.

  • HTC Magic - this was the second ever Android phone (after the HTC Dream). My first foray into touchscreen (after resisting it with the Blackjack II) and Android. It shipped with Android 1.6 Donut and was upgraded to 2.2 Froyo. Looking back at it now, the screen resolution was average and the screen size is a bit small (3.2"). I inherited this from Wendy when she upgraded to the HTC Legend.

  • Samsung Galaxy S i9000 - the first true competitor to the iPhone, with strikingly similar physical appearance (rectangular home key instead of circular, rounded corners on apps icons). Fantastic resolution, screen size (4") and with composite video output.

  • Samsung/Google Nexus S i9023 - My current phone. Gave the Galaxy S to Wendy and got this instead, running pure Android. Specs-wise is identical to the Galaxy S, minus the MicroSD card slot and with rounded corners on the phone (I prefer the angular corners). Screen is still 4". Fantastic little phone - shipped with 2.3 Gingerbread, then was upgraded to 4.0.x ICS and last month to 4.1.x Jelly Bean. Despite having only a single core CPU, performance is still quite snappy thanks to Jelly Bean. Despite all the attention on the quad-core HTC One X and Galaxy S3, I will probably stick with the Nexus program for my next phone mainly for the timely Android updates.


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