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When did you get your first cellphone and what was it, and when did you get your first smartphone and what was it? Login/Join 
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My first cell phone was a Samsung and I got it in 2000.

My first interaction with a cell phone was in 1994 when my friend had borrowed the county commissioner's truck and it had a cell phone installed in it. I still remember calling my mom and telling you're never gonna believe where I'm calling you from!

My first smartphone was a Motorola Droid that I got it the day Verizon released it in 2009.

I was an Android guy up until 2 years ago when I got an IPhone 15 Pro and was pleasantly surprised.

JP
 
Posts: 2190 | Location: Maryland | Registered: April 19, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of dsiets
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First phone, 2004 a Nextel through work. Had it several yrs before the housing market crashed and they went under and I turned it in.

Then in the 20teens I had a 3G flip phone I used just for emergencies and quick conversations. I bought it because I had to drive Mom to her granddaughters graduations out of state.

3G ended and had a cheap 4g flip phone until last year.

My first smart phone, 2025 I got one of the cheapest smartphones around after finally getting rid of the landline.
A Motorola G Play 2024. It actually works pretty well. Low memory but has a slot for up to 1T card, using the same carrier I had w/ the flip phones.
 
Posts: 8289 | Location: MI | Registered: May 22, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Technically Adaptive
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1992 car phone(Buffalo cellular), moved to AZ, had a pager for a while at work then a Motorola flip phone for my self around 1994.

Can't remember what year, got a IPhone SE.
 
Posts: 2032 | Location: Willcox, AZ | Registered: September 24, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Itchy was taken
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1989, bag phone. Work paid for it.


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Posts: 4323 | Location: Hendersonville, North Carolina | Registered: August 24, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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My first cell phone was a Motorola. Orange numbers. Had to make calls after 9pm or else it was crazy expensive and also roaming charges. About 1997 ish from radio shack. Then a Nokia bar phone then work gave me a palm. Could take decent pics and text but it was their phone. Then they just went to a flat $50 month extra and $500 every 2 years toward an upgrade, if you used your personal phone for biz and my boss needed me at odd hours so I qualified.

First smartphone was an iPhone 3 I believe then a 5 then an 8 that I’m typing this on and a 17e new in box at home that I need to activate and mirror this phone to that one.

At Verizon store on Sunday getting new phone and dude was trying to talk me into the “insurance”. And I explained to him I had a phone for 30 years and never lost it. Knock on wood.
 
Posts: 5624 | Location: Florida Panhandle  | Registered: November 23, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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First cell phone was a bag phone. My wife and I both had jobs that required us to travel via company cars so she had priority on having the phone with her if we both happened to be on the road on the same day. This was the very early 1990s. My first smartphone was an iPhone that I got in early March 2013 after starting a new job where the ability to receive and reply to emails was important. After getting the smartphone I quickly questioned how I was able to get along without it.
 
Posts: 5 | Location: Central Virginia  | Registered: September 07, 2025Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Don't Panic
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First cellphone was 1991, a Fujitsu Pocket Commander.

Had a standalone arm thing and an antenna installed into the car so I wouldn't die doing phonemail while commuting Highway 17 into Scotts Valley, CA.

First smartphone was a 2008 Blackberry Storm.
 
Posts: 15809 | Location: North Carolina | Registered: October 15, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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1992 Blaupunkt TC-132. Service by LA Cellular. I still got the phone…
 
Posts: 336 | Location: Orange County, California | Registered: July 18, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of Sailor1911
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Late 80's Motorola "bag phone" hard mounted to the tranny tunnel in my suburban. Had great range! Forced to give it up when Verizon insisted that it was about to stop service. Upgraded to a portable cell phone at that point, reception range sucked compared to the bag phone in the car. First smart phone must have been in the 2010's I'm guessing.




Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

“If in winning a race, you lose the respect of your fellow competitors, then you have won nothing” - Paul Elvstrom "The Great Dane" 1928 - 2016
 
Posts: 3900 | Location: Wichita, Kansas | Registered: March 27, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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First was a motorola flip in '99. First smart was an iphone 3gs in '09. Favorite was a little stick model that fit in the coin pocket of my jeans. It went for a swim in the porcelain pool and had to be replaced. Lucky for me it happened on Christmas and my cousin gave me the razor she replaced with the xmas gift iphone.
 
Posts: 4599 | Location: Peoples Republic of Berkeley | Registered: June 12, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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First cell was 1994, a Motorola bag phone very rarely used.

In 98 I got a good ol Nokia 5100. Could be used for calls or killing someone by throwing it. Big Grin Picked up a Motorola Razr in 04 and loved that phone.

First smart phone was the iPhone 3G on 2008.
 
Posts: 622 | Location: Colorado via South Louisiana | Registered: September 09, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Late 2004, the free one with the cheapest plan, I still have it. -Found it, Nokia-
I just changed that plan last year.

No smart phone, ever.



"Ninja kick the damn rabbit"
 
Posts: 4740 | Location: Oklahoma | Registered: October 11, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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My wife got the first cell phone, then almost a year later I got one. They were either Nokias or Motorolas. That was around 1998. Then, as usual, I got my wife’s hand me down iPhone 4 around 2013.


No one's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.- Mark Twain
 
Posts: 3958 | Location: TX | Registered: October 08, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
This Space for Rent
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My first phone was a Nokia, dont remember the model number but it was around 2003. Move to 2007 and had a Blackberry phone for about 5 years.

Wasn't until 2012 when I got my first Iphone. My last employer gave me a Samsung and i hated that thing. Apples are so much simpler for me.




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Liberals are like pussycats and Twitter is Trump's laser pointer to keep them busy while he takes care of business - Rey HRH.
 
Posts: 5951 | Location: Colorado | Registered: April 20, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
For real?
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I don't remember the dates but first phone was the Motorola StarTac. Actual smartphone was the first release Samsung Galaxy (which I still have in a junk drawer).



Not minority enough!
 
Posts: 8813 | Location: Cleveland, OH | Registered: August 09, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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The first one was a Mitsubishi bag phone in the 1980s. It had two SIMs: Verizon and Cellular One. You had to choose SIMs manually.
Verizon only worked in the city.

Upgraded every four to six years.

I remember a Motorola flip, a Nokia Hershey bar,
a BlackBerry, a couple of Samsung smartphones, and now a series of iPhones.
 
Posts: 5174 | Registered: February 15, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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First cell phone was either 2002 or 2003. It was a Panasonic bar type phone. It was compact and one of the lightest phones on the market. It did get fairly hot on long calls though. I still have it tucked away somewhere.

I got Blackberry c. 2008 but didn't subscribe to a mobile data plan. The full keyboard alone made texting much more enjoyable & useful.

First smartphone was a Samsung Galaxy S2 in 2012. I broke it in a fall and replaced it w/ a Galaxy S4. I was still using the S4 well into 2024.
 
Posts: 3848 | Location: Texas | Registered: June 17, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
A Grateful American
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Motorola DynaTAC 8000X first phone Jan 1993 (The Toomah Fone!!!)


followed later that year with the Motorola Bag phone





and then the Motorola flip phone (Alltel) in 1994




"the meaning of life, is to give life meaning" ✡ Ani Yehudi אני יהודי Le'olam lo shuv לעולם לא עוד
 
Posts: 46635 | Location: Box 1663 Santa Fe, New Mexico | Registered: December 20, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I got my first cell phone in 2000 as a 15 year old. It was prepaid so there was no subsidy on the phone, which made it very expensive. It was an Erickson CF-688. I blew through the prepaid credit on that thing so damn fast.

I sold cell phones from 2001 to 2003 during what was really the explosion of widespread cell phone use. There was a lot of money to be made there at the time.

When the September 11th attacks occurred, I was in school and somebody came into class late telling us about it. The classroom did not have a TV and the teacher could not get any news site to load on the computer. I used the very primitive WAP browser on my Samsung 3500 to pull up an article about it.

Got my first arguably smart phone, a Blackberry Curve, in (I think 2008). Addicted to the notification light. The term "game changer" is overused, but email on the phone was a game changer. The browser was a pain. You basically scrolled around the page in small sections. Essentially useless for 90% of web tasks.

First modern smartphone was a Motorola Photon in 2011. It took a while to get used to the touchscreen and lack of physical keyboard and I was pretty close to dumping it and going back to Blackberry but the writing was pretty well on the wall by then that the physical keyboard was dead and Blackberry was dying with it.
 
Posts: 5514 | Location: Iowa | Registered: February 24, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I mentioned this discussion with the other half, and she stated we got our first cell phones after Hurricane Katrina destroyed Richmond.

It was the basic flip phone model. It was about as basic of a flip phone you could get. It had to be a T mobile model because that is where we got our numbers. I saw a while back; I will edit the thread if I find it.

I then went to a T-mobile Razor with the dragon design on the cover. I carried that from 2004 to 2016. It went on every patrol whether it was County, state of Federal Indian Reservation, boot camp, AIT, Fort Irwin and to the Middle East.

It finally died on me when I was on orders at Norfolk Naval Station in 2016.

I ran to Kroger and bought a Nokia Lumia and I loved that phone. I paid like $23 for it on sale. I carried that till 2018.

I keep my phones pretty basic.
After all the years of being on call, being able to be reached at all hours, etc.. I really don't want a phone.
 
Posts: 1998 | Location: In NC trying to get back to VA | Registered: March 03, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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