To talk about the phones that we have been using in almost all of the last quarter of a century, especially for someone like me, who keeps on looking after what is new and more advanced, and who keeps searching for devices that offer more and have better specs; by doing that, we can, in a way, tell the story of this beloved handheld small machine, that became an essential part of our day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and minute-to-minute lives.
Of course, it will be impossible to list all the phones I used over the years, and still have, but I will choose those that represented each technological jump that we witnessed year after year.
The first phone I ever owned (1997) was one that has the
least known name in the industry, a phone produced by a UK/Italian company
that was called Telital, before it changed its name to Telit. That phone was Telital Gsm (pic.1). It was
cheap, big, with a relatively large display (at the time) and served its purpose
well.
The second phone I remember to own was from Ericsson (2000), it was
the grandfather, if not the great grandfather of the smartphone. It had a big screen,
with a stylus, a keypad that opens to reveal the beautiful display (monochrome,
of course) and all that it offers, from phonebook to e-mail to the notes app. This
was the Ericsson R380 (Pic.2). It is worth mentioning though that configuring
anything in that phone (such as e-mail) was so complicated and time consuming,
that many people had to settle with using it only as a normal phone.
The idea of having a device that can do more than just make
and receive phone calls and SMS messages, left me incapable of going back to
dumb phones, that is why I was excited when I saw the next phone in the showroom
of the great Emmezeta store in Italy; the device was a Motorola, a shiny Accompli
008 (Pic.3). This was a huge leap; it had a futuristic look with a silver body
and it really offered the possibility of checking your mail, navigating the web,
taking notes, and syncing with a PC, like no other phone did at the time
(2002).
From here on, things got only better and more interesting.
Sony Ericsson collaboration produced some of the best phones ever to be seen,
and one of them was my next purchase, in 2004; the P800 (Pic.4); the first
smartphone with a colored display, a camera, a stylus, and the possibility to download
and install apps. It was a real pleasure just looking at it.
Another smartphone, which left a huge mark on the industry is the Nokia Communicator 9300i, which I managed to own for a good while in 2005 (Pic.5).
My first experience with Windows Mobile was in 2006, with the Eten
Glofiish M700 (with its sliding keyboard and colored screen and its stylus)
(Pic.6), then with the HTC HD2 (2009), which had a gorgeous display and eye
catching app graphics and animations (Pic.7).
In 2010, I had a chance to use an iPhone 3Gs (Pic.8). To be clear, I did not buy it, I received it as a gift from my brother. It was a new experience, it was the first time I had to deal with new concepts, such as Jailbreaking and installing alternative app stores, it was good for a while, before going back to other phones, such as the HTC EVO 3D (Pic.9), which offered the first experience (at least to me) to watch videos in 3D.
But then came Samsung Note.
The first Note I bought was the one with moderate specifications; The Note 3 Neo
(Fig.10), and it was perfect in all aspects, it converted me completely to
Samsung, I became a loyal Note user, and even though many times, I was buying
other phones from Xiaomi, Huawei, or Microsoft, I was always coming back to the
Note. In fact, I had the Note 4, Note 5, Note 8, Note 20 Ultra.
iPhone is also a great choice, especially with its last
iteration; the iPhone 12 max, but when you get used to the freedom offered to
you by Android, it is difficult to accept the limitations of iOS.. But that is a
story for another time.
