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What year did you first get a cellphone?

Started by bandit957, January 05, 2023, 10:33:33 AM

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bandit957

For me, it was 2010.

Not long before then, cellphones were considered the province of the very wealthy. And when I say wealthy, man, do I mean wealthy! I remember occasionally seeing people back in the mid-'90s carrying cellphones around, but I could tell they were people with a lottttt of money!

I think the reason I got a cellphone was that I decided it was time to abandon my landline because Cincinnati Bell wouldn't do anything about the harassing phone calls that I got nonstop for 25 years.

The first time I got a smartphone was 2016. By that time, I think the only phones you could get were smartphones.
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Max Rockatansky

During 2009 when my job gave me a voucher to go buy one.  I liked not being reachable at all times and didn't see a personal need for a cell phone. 

skluth

I got one in 2003 when I took a position which moved me from St Louis to Norfolk. My new position required a lot of traveling and it was cheaper than paying hotel long distance rates. (Remember them?) Very basic with just talk and text which is all I had until 2014 when I finally broke down and got a smart phone.

FWIW, you don't have to have a smart phone. There are still companies like Nokia that still sell basic "dumb" phones. There are caveats like making sure it has at least 4G capability as the major service providers no longer support earlier standards in many areas and are letting old infrastructure die and be removed rather than replace it.

bing101


kalvado

2001. I was flying, had to meet some people over there -and finally decided I need one. Airport was a mess as TSA was taking over checkpoints from private guys that day...

1995hoo

Christmas 1999. My parents gave me a mobile phone for Christmas (I still have the same mobile number, though of course not the same phone). It was long enough ago that the phone said "Bell Atlantic Mobile." I had seen the writing on the wall when my car broke down one morning in the summer of 1999 on my way to the federal courthouse for a hearing. The lady behind me at the red light let me use her mobile phone. For many years, I jealously guarded my mobile number for reasons similar to what Max Rockatansky notes–I had some work colleagues I knew would not respect personal boundaries, vacation time, etc., and I didn't want to be on call 24/7. I got my first smartphone in 2011 when the iPhone became available on Verizon Wireless. (I had previously had a work-issued Blackberry, but I used it only for e-mail and didn't have phone service active because they didn't pay for phone service.)

There are definitely still non-smartphones available. The AARP magazine/newsletter usually has ads for some of those.
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kphoger

2000, Sprint

Then switched a year later to VoiceStream.  Remember them?




Quote from: skluth on January 05, 2023, 11:06:16 AM
FWIW, you don't have to have a smart phone. There are still companies like Nokia that still sell basic "dumb" phones. There are caveats like making sure it has at least 4G capability as the major service providers no longer support earlier standards in many areas and are letting old infrastructure die and be removed rather than replace it.

It looks like the one I recently got from Verizon is no longer available, but they have twelve other models of "basic phone" still available.
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Male pronouns, please.

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kphoger

For what it's worth, my parents got one in the late 90s to take along in the car.  I graduated and left home in 1999.
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Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

Ted$8roadFan

My parents had one as far back as 1995-96.

My first personal cellphone was purchased/activated in 1999, under the old Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile, just months before it became Verizon.

triplemultiplex

2005.
That first cell phone actually ended up in Lake Michigan due to me being a corny douche and wearing it on a shitty, plastic belt clip.  Bumped the railing on a pier with it and plooonk!  Goodbye first cell phone!  (It was winter so there was no going in after it.)

Quote from: bandit957 on January 05, 2023, 10:33:33 AM
I think the reason I got a cellphone was that I decided it was time to abandon my landline because Cincinnati Bell wouldn't do anything about the harassing phone calls that I got nonstop for 25 years.

Good lord!  I hope that's your hyperbole about robocalls.
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formulanone

#10
In 2002, I received a work-provided NEXTEL phone without an actual phone number. Since several of my friends and family had the same walkie-talkie service, I didn't bother with actual telephone service because I could still reach everyone important in my life. Besides, I was usually less than 5 miles from home. If I took a much longer trip, I'd borrow my wife's cell phone for emergencies.

I resisted getting a cell phone plan of my own until a few years later, which was a few months before my daughter was born. Family, nights, and weekends were free but texting and data was an alien concept because I just didn't need it. I figured you just call me, see me, write me, or email me and that would cover all bases of communication.

I received a work-issued smartphone in 2011. Texting didn't cross my mind until a co-worker sent me a message and I was afraid to answer it until I knew these sorts of things were free.

My father-in-law had a brick phone since the late-1980s and my dad had a rarely-needed "car phone" which was about half the size of an attaché case. I recall he mumbled it was 25 cents a minute in 1990 or so; the company covered the extravagant service but he was on the hook for the actual calls.

It's amazing how much previous cellphone culture has come and gone; waiting until nights to call for free, the interference of a 2G phone with a CD player, data being really stubborn and slow to get some highway travel information...

Dirt Roads

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on January 05, 2023, 10:40:29 AM
During 2009 when my job gave me a voucher to go buy one.  I liked not being reachable at all times and didn't see a personal need for a cell phone.

When I worked on the railroad, we got pagers in addition to our company radios (probably for folks like me that split the difference on an arc-shaped territory and lived in the "middle", but too far away from the railroad's radio system).  I got into consulting during the days when most folks that had cell phones got them partially or fully paid for as a business expense.  As some of our folks got into higher demand to help with projects in other time zones, there was a huge push by our project managers and some of our client for us to get cell phones.  Since that additional cost would come directly out of our bonuses paid to our Board of Directors, the Chairman pronounced that "you'all have reached a level where you do not need to bothered anymore with after-hour work assignments".  I was thrilled, since I had been on-call 24/7/365 for a bunch of years. 

I didn't get a cell phone for another 20 years.

JayhawkCO

My family had one that I periodically carried starting in 1995. I had my own starting in 1999.

kurumi

Around 2005, a flip phone.

You might not like Apple, but before the iPhone and revamped Android, software on "smart" phones was straight up garbage. To get to my own pictures, I had to navigate a menu that went something like Verizon -> Get it Now (promotional stuff like paid ringtones) -> Pictures -> My Pictures. There was a hard limit of 50 text messages (max 140 chars each) and if you didn't perma-delete the old ones, you'd run out of room. The web browser was like breathing through a straw.

Android at the time was pretty much Linux on a Blackberry (I was at a startup working on embedded at the time) and when the iPhone was unveiled they knew they had to adapt. Carriers tend to have their sticky fingers in more places on Android (not universally, it varies) but that experience is still way better than 2005.
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bandit957

Quote from: kurumi on January 05, 2023, 12:18:38 PM
Around 2005, a flip phone.

You might not like Apple, but before the iPhone and revamped Android, software on "smart" phones was straight up garbage. To get to my own pictures, I had to navigate a menu that went something like Verizon -> Get it Now (promotional stuff like paid ringtones) -> Pictures -> My Pictures. There was a hard limit of 50 text messages (max 140 chars each) and if you didn't perma-delete the old ones, you'd run out of room. The web browser was like breathing through a straw.

Android at the time was pretty much Linux on a Blackberry (I was at a startup working on embedded at the time) and when the iPhone was unveiled they knew they had to adapt. Carriers tend to have their sticky fingers in more places on Android (not universally, it varies) but that experience is still way better than 2005.

On my old flip phone, I think I had to spend 25 cents each time I wanted to transfer a photo to my computer. So I very rarely ever used this phone for photos.
Might as well face it, pooing is cool

7/8

2009 for me (grade 9). It was a flip phone I used mainly to text my Mom when to pick me up from after-school clubs (the City bus was a lot slower).

jp the roadgeek

October 1998.  Just happened in on a Bell Atlantic store and got myself a Kyocera with texting capabilities, but only by using the numbers on the keypad. Basically got it to stop having to use  payphones when I was in college or at work (I traveled quite a bit).  The first time I used one was in 1994, when I went to Pink Floyd at the old Foxboro Stadium senior year and one of the guys brought his parents Motorola car phone. 
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WillWeaverRVA

2002, I got a Kyocera prepaid cell phone with Virgin Mobile service when I went to college so I could stay in touch with my parents while out of my apartment. I didn't get a "real" phone (a Motorola RAZR on Verizon) until I graduated from college.
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jeffandnicole

My first *bag phone*, which needed to be plugged into a car's cigarette lighter, was around 1992. 

oscar

Probably 2002. My resistance broke down after I got into two emergencies where a cell phone would have been useful. That was just a basic flip phone.

It took until 2018 when I upgraded to a smartphone. Aside from my being generally a slow adopter of new technology, until my fifth eye surgery in 2017, I couldn't read a smartphone screen without a magnifying glass. (Still could drive -- my problems were with short-range reading vision.)
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MikieTimT

1997, same year as I graduated college and moved into my first house.  Still have the same phone number.  Never saw a need for a land line after college, so didn't get one in the house in order to keep telemarketers from calling, back when you paid for minutes.  Gray candybar Nokia with monochrome screen that I probably dropped 130 times without breaking.  Don't make them like that anymore, but infinitely more useful now.

hbelkins

1994, got a bag phone mainly for vehicle breakdowns.


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frankenroad

1992.  It was hard-wired into my car.  For a number of reasons, I gave it up after about a year, and then did not get another cell phone until about 1996.
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Bruce

2008, at a ripe young age because I was going on a summer school trip and needed to stay in touch.

Went from a Nokia 6263 (which had a dual screen and no 3.5mm jack) to a Nexus S to an HTC M7 to an LG G7 to a Google Pixel 7 Pro.



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