My Cellular History

1998

My first phone ever. I vividly remember having to convince myself that it was a necessity and not a frivolity. I was still delivering pizzas at the time and thought it might come in handy. Prior to that, every time you took a pizza to someone’s house and they didn’t answer the door, you had to leave their house and either find a pay phone or head back to the store. Talk about a pain in the ass. Anyway, one fine day I walked into an AT&T store and picked out the most standard phone of the day. The Nokia 5100.

Talk about your functionality! It could both make AND receive phone calls! Imagine!

Wait, there was a game on there, Snake, which you could play with the 2,4,6 & 8 keys, steering a snake around the screen to eat dots. Quite the triumph.

The big selling point of this phone however was you could buy new snap-on face plates for it. Yeah! Customization baby. I had a green metallic cover that was pretty sweet.

This phone lasted me a few years until it was time to up the ante.

2001

My next phone was one of my all time favorites, and to this day the smallest phone I have ever owned.The Nokia 8210.

I really loved that phone.

It was small. It made great phone calls and had terrific reception. Really it was everything you could have wanted in a phone in 2002.

2004

When the time came to upgrade again, this was the first time that I needed to do some research. Nokia phones had kinda dropped off the quality scale and a lot of newcomers were making phones. So, in my usual method, I spent an inordinate amount of time reading reviews and trying to decide what phone to purchase.

Somehow, despite all that work, I was still able to buy a phone that did nothing but make me crazy. I “upgraded” from one of my favorite phones of all time to the one that I hated the most.

The Samsung SGH-E317

This thing was so bad that I even devoted an entire blog post as to how nuts it drove me.

This was my first flip phone. That was one aspect that I did enjoy… it gave me another thing to play with. Constantly flipping it open and closed. This phone had a nice motion to it. It was also great for displaying a little anger when needed because you could really close it hard. You know, kinda like slamming down your house phone. (Yes kids… there was a time where people had house phones and those phones had cords. Also, there was no button to shut them off, you actually placed them back on the hook to hang them up. Crazy talk, I know).

This phone holds the dubious distinction for being the only phone I’ve dumped before my contract was up. That’s how bad it was. I paid full price for its replacement rather than use it anymore.

I do have to say, it was on this phone that I received my first ever text message. It was from Jess. We were barely dating, and I was at a Boise State game. I felt my phone buzz and make a sound I’d never heard before. I didn’t know what it was doing, until I saw a notice that I’d gotten a text. Text? I don’t even know where to find that!

But, I did, and the rest is history.

2006

Next up was the super sexy Motorola Razr v3.

Hooo boy… I’d call this one my first modern type of phone. Great for calls, and terrific for text.

This phone had it all. A web browser (such as it was back then). MP3 ringtones. You could connect it to your PC and perform functions on it. Manage your contacts. Add and remove pictures. For a geek like me, I was in heaven with this phone.

Super thin. Super light. Great screen.

Just an all around great phone. This has the distinction of being my last regular cell phone. From here, it was on to… SMARTPHONES!

2008

Here we go. The big daddy. Yes, the Apple iPhone 3g.

I had resisted buying the first generation iPhone, even though I really really wanted it. I’m of the mindset that whenever new technology comes out, it’s best not to buy version 1. There are undoubtedly bugs and quirks and things that will get ironed out. Thus, when the iPhone 3g came out, I jumped on that like a dog on a bone.

You can read about my excited countdown here, the procurement adventure here, and the day of the arrival here.

2011

As the pace of technology has increased, the once beloved iPhone is really showing its age. What was once the jewel of cutting edge, is now slow and plodding and kinda driving me crazy.

As recently as a month ago, I was on board with Apple and waiting patiently for the iPhone 5. I didn’t want to fork out the cash for an iPhone 4 just to have that become obsolete in a few months when the 5 was announced. But, iPhone 5 has not been announced yet. Everything is rumors and conjecture at this point.

As I’ve been waiting, I’ve been examining why I might continue to be in bed with Apple, when there are a number of super awesome Google Android based phones out there. There are many drawbacks to Apple. They lock everything down to the point where there is no customize-ability. iTunes is an absolute steaming pile of crap on the PC and sucks as both a music management and phone management platform. You can only sync your phone to 1 computer. So on and so forth. And really, I don’t own any other Apple products. I’ve been a PC guy from the very get go. The first Apple anything I’ve ever owned was this iPhone. I think I’m just weary of how Apple does things.

It was about a month ago Jess got an Android based phone from her office and I got to play with it. Turns out, I really like it. Obviously, I haven’t “lived” with it yet, but I’ve been doing a bunch of reading about Android and I really like what I hear. Android is growing by leaps and bounds. More users. More developers. More applications.

So, I’ve decided to divorce Apple for good. I’m gonna be an Android man.

And the phone I’m patiently waiting to purchase, once it’s released in the US, is the Samsung Galaxy S II. If I thought the iPhone was sexy, this thing will blow my mind. I won’t totally geek out about it here (you can read all about it in that linked review) but suffice it to say, I’m very excited. I love new things and this will be a total departure from my safe iPhone land.

Unfortunately, there is no official release date yet. The phone is out in Asia and Europe, but us unwashed Americans are going to have to wait. Hopefully not too long…

I’m sure I’ll be posting my thoughts about using it here once I finally get it.