Not really computing, at least not when they first came out…
www.mobilephonemuseum.com/catalogue
Mine was a Sony ‘marsbar’, which I got almost as soon as I left uni :)
www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/sony-cm-h333
Before that I’d only used the wired in Nokia in my dads company car…
Last edited by: PeterS on Wed 24 Nov 21 at 16:49
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Its pretty poor, hasnt got the Racal handbag one that went into my Sierra in about '86 I think
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I can't find my old Sony "Mars Bar" on there. Bought in 1993 for £333.
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I had a marshal, linked to in my original post :)
It does em to be missing 3arly car phones though, but then they weren’t truly mobile I guess…?
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My first one was wired to the car, subsequent ones had a cradle in the car but could be removed, it was Vodafone, but I remember nothing else..
I wasn't a very early starter though, 89 perhaps.
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b***** hell, my NEC P4 was £700 in 1993. Who knew? I wouldn't pay that for a phone now!!
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> b***** hell, my NEC P4 was £700 in 1993. Who knew? I wouldn't pay that
> for a phone now!!
I had a Motorola 8000. Not a clue how much it cost because it was plonked on my desk and I was told to "Carry that when you're out of the office!"
On battery it had about 30 minutes to 1 hr talk time (depending on signal strength) and lasted about 8 hrs on standby so spare batteries and a car kit were essential.
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Mine was plonked in my car, I wasn't given a choice. So for that one battery life wasn't a thing.
I don't remember the life of subsequent ones. I guess I was in the car so much it probably didn't arise.
Though even after 1992, probably my last cradled phone, I don't ever remember having a battery issue until smart phones came along.
Mind you, I had absolutely no personal interest in mobile phones until I tried an HTC Smart Phone around 2010 so before then I made no particular social use of them.
I never actually bought a phone myself until that HTC. And that was £50 from the pub landlord, it wasn't even slightly new.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 24 Nov 21 at 21:19
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Borrowed a director’s Motorola Startac (?) in 1993 when Mrs Z was about to pop and I was running around the country. Cost then was about £800 plus £1 a call.
Two or three years later I purchased a pay as you go Mars bar type mobile phone from Sainsburys in Oxford for Mrs Z, both my parents and both her parents for <£50 for the lot. The calls cost 25p per minute.
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>>
>>
>> Two or three years later I purchased a pay as you go Mars bar type
>> mobile phone from Sainsburys in Oxford for Mrs Z, both my parents and both her
>> parents for <£50 for the lot. The calls cost 25p per minute.
>>
I thought it was 1999 when PAYG was introduced? It was then that mobiles turned from a toy of the few to everybody having one.
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Pay as you go was introduced in 1996. But my purchase could have been a year or so later. If was definitely when I was with a specific employer, hence being in Oxford so it couldn’t have been later than 97.
I recall Sainsburys had some phones in and couldn’t shift them hence the discount.
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First sort of PAYG was a Vodafone service in 1996 aimed at people with lousy credit.
Mercury One2One joined in in 1997. But I think that was inside the M25 only. Cellnet I think were in 98 before they were BT or O2 or Telefonica.
In 1999 the MVNOs hit the market, the first being Virgin.
Also in 1999 the supermarkets started reselling Orange, Mercury, Vodafone and Cellnet PAYG services.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Thu 25 Nov 21 at 15:35
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>> Mercury One2One joined in in 1997. But I think that was inside the M25 only.
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It was, and in those days of high call charges they got a huge number of people (Especially teenagers) on board by offering free calls to other 1-2-1 mobiles. So many in fact that when they realised how much it was costing in lost revenue they scrapped the scheme and offered to buy back the contracts of existing users, offering as much as 5k to the most prolific callers.
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I had one about 1988. Size of a small brick. I can't remember the make but I can remember the number, it was an 0421 code. Big improvement over my pager, which relied on me finding a phone box, just around the time BT were trying to make them invisible to the public in see through glass.
My friend and neighbour, John, had one much earlier, he had a wedding car business and had a phone in it's own brown leather shoulder case. He is the only person I knew well who died of Covid . 6/2/21 in Bulgaria, where he lived.
Ted
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www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/ga-628
My first work phone - drove over it once and it was unscathed. Great rugged little phone - I think I sent my first SMS on one.
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A quick taster from the Click prog
Mobile phone museum celebrates ugly and iconic phones
www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-59432930
Last edited by: henry k on Fri 26 Nov 21 at 22:00
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My first work phone was something like this…
www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/8500x
Programmed with our office number, our home number, our breakdown service (AA or RAC) and the emergency services.
All other numbers were barred.
These were provided after a colleague was trapped on a motorway all night in a snowstorm and couldn’t contact home.
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>> www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/ga-628
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>> My first work phone - drove over it once and it was unscathed. Great rugged
>> little phone - I think I sent my first SMS on one.
>>
I had one of those at one pint as well…again, a work phone. Not the most attractive thing, but you could change the colour of the front if it. I usually had the blue one in
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www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/nokia-3310
My first purchased phone in 2002 - came with a bundle of free minutes on a lifetime contract.
My then work phone by then was a Nokia 1100 (I had a couple of these and they were ideal work instruments !)
Later on we went Blackberry and I loved them, so much that I replaced my then Nokia N75 with a Blackberry Bold and then onto Apple which takes me to the current hand-set.
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The first mobile I was aware of was a house brick sized jobbie used by an outdoor clerk from one of the big London legal firms who visited the Court Service office I was working in everyday with forms, cheques to pay in etc. He was still using it long after the much smaller digital handsets came in.
The first of my own was a Motorola MR20 obtained in June 1996 when my father was dying in hospital in Leeds and I got fed up with using station callboxes etc. One year contract with Orange for £15/pcm including 15 bundled minutes with any unused being rolled over to the next month. Thereafter 30p/minute but sparing usage meant I rarely busted 15minutes and usually had some time rolled over.
MR20 had a Ni Cad battery which, after a year, wouldn't keep charge for a day. Replaced with an MR30 which was a massive improvement. Subsequently replace phone only when performance drops off. Couple of Nokias then Sony-Ericcson models before current smart phone.
Still got the same number from 1996.
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No pic of my first phone, a Nokia Cityman 100. It was pretty good by the standards of the time; I remember making and receiving calls from the basement offices of the National Gallery in 1992. The car kit was installed in my Citroen BX 16 valve and worked well with a mic. clipped to my shirt collar. I sold the phone in about 2010 on Ebay to a collector - in Finland!
Last edited by: hawkeye on Sat 27 Nov 21 at 11:08
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Missed the edit;
The phone was cloned to a Panasonic EB-2605 which I fitted in Mrs H's Volvo 760. When anyone rang my number, both phones would ring. Brilliant!
Last edited by: hawkeye on Sat 27 Nov 21 at 11:19
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Online mobile phone museum - Zero
