When did you get a mobile phone?

[manicinsomniac]

I've always known I was late getting one (got a bright blue Motorola brick for Christmas 2000 and I was very excited! ) but I don't remember seeing them until 1997 or so and tv/films from the 90s don't seem to feature them much.

But I've just been reading about mobile phone history (thrilling, I know - fell down the internet black hole!) and apparently there were handsets available from 1985 (1983 in the US) and the first non brick flip phone came out in 1988. I'm really surprised.

When did you get your first phone?

I got a Nokia in 1997 when I was 11 (pic attached). It had an infra-red feature on it and only one other person in the school had the same one and we were able to play.....TWO player Snake! It was the talk of the school for days 😂

1995 - it was quite chunky. I did a lot of travelling and the company gave it to me in case i broke down later/early in the day and needed help.

February 1998 when I got a new job in IT. It was this Sony one, or very close to it.

I don’t remember the exact year but it must have been 1997-98ish. It was a Nokia ‘banana’ phone bought from a shop in Fallowfield Manchester, next to Blockbuster Video!

I was 11 and starting secondary school, so 2002. I don't remember even asking for one, I think my Mum just got it for me in case I missed the bus. It was one of those Sony Ericssons which had an actual antenna. I was excited until I saw how many people had the Nokia 3510s which could play snake. It's insane thinking about how quickly phones improved after that- within a year we all wanted flip phones.

I remember when my Dad's work went from issuing pagers to issuing mobiles though. It would have been around 1998. I don't think I knew enough about the world to really recognise what a big change that was.

Dec 1999. It was a Philips C12. I still have it in the kitchen drawer and it still works.

2002. My husband got me my first one for my 40th as he said he could never reach me. I'm old enough to remember when taped answering machines came in and thinking how arrogant my friend was for getting one (thinking why did she think she was so important that she needed one)!

1998. It was a Siemens one that was huge but very thin. I was in my second year at university and my parents were sick of never being able to talk to me (I lived in halls).

I didn’t get one until 2002, nobody I knew really had one. Apart from DP who I met in 1994 and he had one then, I thought he was very swish. He ran his own business and it was pretty useful for him.

I used to be a reporter on a local paper and I remember in the early 1990s, they had these enormous contraptions with huge rechargeable batteries described as “mobile phones” for us to take out in important jobs. Except they NEVER worked when you needed them and we’d end up having to find a phone box.

Interesting. Thanks. Maybe the 80s and early 90s phones were only used by business people.

1997 when DS was one, and he'd had his first seizure. DH travelled with work and I really felt I needed to be able to contact him night and day. Little could I have dreamed that this one-off reason would morph into a device to which I am almost totally reliant!

They probably weren't affordable or a practical size before then. I was about 13 so about 2000 with a Nokia 3210.

I used early mobiles in 1991 when I started working as a local radio journalist. Don't know how I didn't knacker my back lugging (running with!) a brick like phone and huge analogue Uher tape recorder. Amazing!
The mobile hardly ever worked and the quality of connection was rarely good enough for broadcast!

In 1999. DH & I shared it at first. I still have the same number now.

I had use of my mums mobile in 97, it was after I passed my driving test and my banger was a bit unreliable.

Then boyfriend(now DH) treated ourselves to mobile phones in 99, they were Philips BT Cellnet phones, we could send text pictures to each other

1998 but I remember my older sister had one in 1995

2002. I was 17. I bought one of those Motorola bricks on Orange

I got a Nokia 3220 for high school in 2005, because my dad said I was clumsy, and if they weren’t picking me up at least i could call them when inevitability got hurt. Within three weeks I’d slipped down a bank and dislocated my knee so I suppose I did need it.

I had one of the first Mercury One2One phones as a work phone in about 94, I worked in comms/IT. We also had the massive brick things with an antenna and a sort of dip in it where your face went.

1993 or 1994

2002, I was 11, when I started secondary school Nokia 3310, I got it because I had to travel across the city, I used to spend my half hour bus ride to school and back making ringtones.

94/95 and I remember being embarrassed when it rang because people would turn and stare (small town, even smaller minds)

March 2000. Before that, the pool car I used at work had a car phone for emergencies, and that came in in 96 I think. But my rowing coach in 88 had a car phone which we thought was amazing

1998 for a personal one, but we had one of the Motorola brick ones for ages