Friday Fun: what was your favorite phone?

[Dave Liao]

Happy Friday, y'all! 👋

For some reason I've owned way too many phones. Are there any phones that will always be your forever favorite, or deserve a special mention for posterity's sake?

Right now I use an F(x)tec Pro1 to manage Jira projects on the go:

[Dave Liao]

Honorable mention? One of my favorite phones to use was a tiny Palm device, but I can't remember its model name. I had to buy an extended battery for it because it came with a really wimpy (but removable) battery.

Found it in a drawer a few years ago, and plopped it next to a can of cat food for comparison:

[Matt Doar]

That is one of the smallest keyboards I've ever seen!

[Dave Liao]

I never could touch type on it, but it did the job. It was a step down from a Treo, but a step up from Palm's Graffiti interface. When I upgraded to a BlackBerry, I never looked back!

[Darryl Lee]

Oh man missed this thread! I worked for Palm when they produced this phone - one of my favorites - the Palm Centro.

If you want tiny though, check out the Palm Veer:

Wow. $99. Remember when companies competed on price? *SIGH*.
https://www.everythingtreo.com/hp-veer-4g-review/2011/05/09/

I forgot that it was so compact, you had to get an adapter for a headset jack. Remember headset jacks? *SIGH*

[Dave Liao]

@Darryl Lee - I wanted a Pre 2 or 3, I forget, but when they came out they were Sprint-only (and I wasn't a Sprint customer at the time, nor did I want to switch).

Those phones were ahead of their time. When I got my first webOS device, I signed up for Toodledo just so I could sync my to-dos with it. 

[Darryl Lee]

I finally came back to that Chrome tab I opened when I saw your F(x)tec phone and thought "What. Is. That?"

Very very cool. As I mentioned, I was lucky enough to work for Palm/PalmSource/Palm/HP for a good number of years, and so phones were not hard to come by. And then later I won that weird Pantech Android phone in an online contest.

Anyways, I love hardware keyboards. Here's some of my moldy collection:

[Monique vdB]

I miss this one specific ringtone from a Sprint flip phone from way back in the day. (Was it the Sanyo Katana II? Maybe!)

I can still sing it and it goes like this:

Doo doo da doo, doo da doot da doo RRRROOOO ROOOOO!

Doo doo da doo, doo da doot da doo RRRROOOO ROOOOO! 

Doo doo da doo, DOODLEY DOO!

I've been trying for years to find a downloadable ringtone but turns out it's not so easy to Google. 

[Dave Liao]

@Monique vdB - I love retro ringtones! I remember when you had to buy them to get them on your phone.

I have a classic Nokia ringtone on my phone - it went off accidentally once in a quiet classroom a few years back (I usually have my phone on silent/vibrate) and it got a good laugh from those who probably remembered that jingle.

[Matt Doar]

My wife and I had matching red and blue Nokia phones at one point long ago. We liked their size and the games. Yes, they had games.

[Dave Liao]

@Matt Doar - I remember playing Snake on my Nokia candy bar device. I think I had the model before this one? I was terrible at that game... 🐍

[Ivan Lima]

I had the same one. Classic! I loved the snake game. I remember spending hours playing it.

[Malka Jackson _Isos Technology_]

my husband and I had these. I think this might have been my first cell phone after having pages. I got the red one and he got the green one. We even splurged on the matching leather cases. Not that these things needed protecting. Only thing i don't see on this one was the hard rubber antennae. I did manage to knock that thing off once when getting up from a table. caught it on the underside of the table and just guillotined it right off.

[Dave Liao]

@Malka Jackson _Isos Technology_ - I forgot that I had a leather case, too! I realized the phones were built like tanks so I eventually didn't bother with carrying the case with me.

[Malka Jackson _Isos Technology_]

@Dave Liao I gave mine up too because the cases were so loose they just scooped up purse schmootz and trapped it between the case and the phone. So I spent more time cleaning the phone with the case on it than without a case.

But I just HAD to have the accessories when I got a new phone! lol

[Hana Kučerová]

I miss my old Sony Ericsson w595. I must admit I liked it basically only because of the flower design... I'm a girl, so, you know... :-)

[Jimmy Seddon]

Not the flower design one, but a Sony Ericsson was the brand of the very first mobile phone I owned.

[Dave Liao]

I recall those having an interesting white/green design. Their media playback abilities were impressive for the time - who realllllly needed an iPod, right? 😜

[Soumyadeep Mandal - SaM]

Hi @Dave Liao,

Used a lot of mobile devices for the last couple of years but the most unbreakable phone I have used a long time back was Nokia 1100. I will consider it as my favorite phone.

Nowadays I using many devices and there is no specific one because every day there was a new phone is being launched and I'm testing them all just for knowledge, use cases & fun.

[Dave Liao]

SaM, are there any phones you're looking forward to trying? I've been wanting to try a foldable phone (but wouldn't actually buy one, they're quite expensive). 😅

[Soumyadeep Mandal - SaM]

Hey @Dave Liao ,

I don't buy all smartphones! (They are too much expensive)  😂

There are my few friends who give me the phones for 2-7 days to use when they bought them. They know how much I love technology. 😄😎

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Can't say I have a "favourite", to me, a 'phone is a tool for making calls and short messages (literally SMS).  So as long as it does the basics, I don't really form any feelings about it.

I've had a mobile since the late 90s and been through a few, none of them being particularly memorable.   I remember watching "The Matrix" and saying "hey, that's my old 'phone", and I'm pretty sure my nokia 3310 probably counts as a favourite simply because it worked well and I had it the longest - good voice, good connection and a week between charges.  And surviving  a daily battering on the 130 mile commute for years.

Since smartphones arrived - meh, none of them stand out as interesting.  Can't even tell you what I've currently got without looking at it.

[Dave Liao]

I was really good at tap-tap-tapping (was that T9?) on Nokias.

Miss the days where a phone could last a week between charges - as soon as I got a Handspring Treo (I think that was my first smartphone), those days were over.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

For me, the smartphone is good and bad.  It's traded "having an internet-enabled computer in your pocket" for "having to worry about charging the bloody thing all the time".  Excellent multi-tool, but annoying to have to charge it daily instead of weekly.

Must admit though, I had to dump my first one because it wasn't surviving the physical abuse, the worst part of which was being plugged in to charge and then not.

I will never again buy a smartphone that does not have wireless charging.

[John Funk]

I don't really have a favorite either - probably just the one I have at the moment because it will most likely be the most update and capable one. 

[Dave Liao]

Any old phones that you absolutely would never use again?

I miss my Motorola StarTAC - flipping it open made me feel like I was on Star Trek.

[John Funk]

Hahaha - gotta admit I did like the coolness of the flip phones I have had. 

I can't think of a phone that I would not use - other than if there were some ones that where hard to type with. I also have to admit that I have never like the look and feel of Blackberries. That's probably going to give some people some anxiety. But they just weren't for me. 

[Dave Liao]

Even my worst flip phone (terrible battery life, and it ran two (!) OS-es) had a satisfying flip noise when I'd unflip it.

Happy Saturday!

[Jimmy Seddon]

Great topic @Dave Liao!

I'm a big fan of smart phones!  From the various ways to communicate and receive news and updates to the ability to play games that look better than my original Nintendo.  I will never want to go back to a phone that pre-dates the smart phone era.

However, my favorite phone from that era, was my Motorola Razr:

[Dave Liao]

I wanted a RAZR pretty bad back in the day - the newer touchscreen version looks pretty amazing (the second iteration "2020 model" of it, anyway)!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ohh, I think there are two of them in our "random gadgets we've stopped using" box.  Not my thing (I bimbled along with a nokia 3310 until smartphones arrived), but Chrissy loved both iterations she had, and they were at the top of my list if I lost or broke the nokia. 

My only complaints about them were that:

• the spring was a little too strong, so it was hard to flip them open with one hand
• they didn't come engraved with a Starfleet logo 
• there was no way to make them do a communicator noise when you flipped them

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

@Dave Liao  yeah I was so stoked for the second iteration of RAZR! That ad made me drool but still sticking to iPhone SE 2nd gen... 

[nina_schmidt]

My first phone was an Alcatel one Touch easy in orange...approximately 20 years ago 🙈... than I had a Nokia 7650, a Motorola RAZR and of course a Blackberry Pearl 8110... but since about 13 years now I am an Apple addict 😊 Iphone 12 pro max in Blue right now and I love it 🥰

I have just realised that I have a soft spot for unusual colours. 😃

[Dave Liao]

At one point I got a red phone skin (to protect from scratches, I guess) - I really loved it! It even had a cutout to show the BlackBerry logo on my device... 

[Monique vdB]

@Dave Liao my signature phone case color is mint!

[Dave Liao]

How minty?

I asked my friend (@sblarts on Instagram) to illustrate me with a cat, and I got it printed on an iPhone case. My friend picked a shade of green (?) that I didn't request, but worked well with my yellow t-shirt:

[nina_schmidt]

@Dave Liao that case is absolutely gorgeous! 

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Good topic @Dave Liao  

I always like my Ericsson T28 flip phone. Got as a work phone when I started working for the company I still work for today 1st of July 2000. Small, sleek, and thin. Fitted well in my pockets :)

[Dave Liao]

Wow, look at the antenna on that! It reminds me of a walkie-talkie!

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

I once key'd in the Simpsons ring tone on this for a kid at school.... suddenly everyone wanted the same and I spent weeks learning it on all sorts of different phones. LOL

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

Hi @Dave Liao , 

Thanks for the topic :) I like my Sony Ericsson, it's real nostalgy, where I changed a bytes and open decompiler (+hexviewer) to change a behaviours of java applets. 

I love like this sites (no-scripts and material design staff, other new things like React, Angular):

Only hard core HTML, pure JavaScript, no ajax :) 

[Dave Liao]

Crazy, I remember sites like this! I used to spend a lot of time customizing my old phones...

[Fabienne Gerhard]

Oh yeah loved this one so much - first one when switching from Nokia to Sony Ericsson

[Nicole Reichert]

Late reply but oh my god!

I truly miss my parent hand-me-down Nokia N97, with it's own Nokia services that no one knew about and the OVI app store that had.... a really bad 3D port of snake. I felt like a god when I had a synced calendar on this bad boy (and I could make the phone such a pink eyesore)!

[Dave Liao]

@Nicole Reichert - Ooh, how was the keyboard on that?

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

Yeah, it was great period. I thought it was a future

[Danny Lam]

Ahh I miss my favorite black’crack’ berrys.  I was only ‘forced’ to get an iPhone bc my company was using them - but I miss the corporate feel of using one of those devices. I miss pushing actual buttons and having what felt like an actual mobile phone. It just seemed it was lost just too soon

[Fabienne Gerhard]

Of course I'm again late for the party .... many phone brands already mentioned but let's not forget the all time favorite MATRIX phone Nokia 7110  

After seeing the movie I needed this one so badly (let's better say stupidly) even though it wasn't actually the one they were using... Teeny coolness overload - NOT 😅 Still no idea how anyone could think this swoosh function thing is cool....

[Dave Liao]

It's the best!! I think a YouTuber reviewed the device recently too... 

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

@Dave Liao 

You legend! What a great Firday Fun topic.... I never dreamed that these Memes would come in so handy so quickly again... hahaha! THX 

[Dave Liao]

@Andy - PTC Redundant - haha I couldn't have planned this better - and to those conspiracy theorists out there, Andy and I didn't plan this. THOUGH THAT'S WHAT SOMEONE WHO CONSPIRED WOULD SAY, RIGHT?

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

My favourite phone is THIS type...

My parents had a proper vintage one. Unfortunately it was obselette due to changes in cables/infrastructure/dial-tones/etc. but I had so much FUN as a wee nipper playing with it again and again, pretending I was calling people with the most random and long numbers ever.

"HELLO!? YEAH... I'M AT HOME... NAH... IT'S RUBBISH... CIAO!" (Dom Joly... legend!)

What I miss the most about phones from that era is being able to slam the fuckers real hard when you were totally done with someone.....

"I completely disagree with your point of view. Thanks for breaking up with me over phone. Conversation: OVER!" SLAM! Boom! hahaha

[Dave Liao]

@Andy - PTC Redundant - I don't recall ever having owned a rotary phone, but it's super cool how dialing a number on one of those. The earliest phone I remember having in the home was a cordless phone, and that was only because my dad loves new gadgets and went out of his way to get one.

(not the actual device we had, but it was basically the same)

[Jimmy Seddon]

I much like @Andy - PTC Redundant also grew up with a proper rotary phone.

One other funny thing I remember is that when my parents switched over to a push-button phone, one of the upgraded features my parents got was an extra long cord, because wireless phones weren't a thing then :D 

[John Funk]

Grew up with a rotary phone as well - one that was mounted on the wall in our hallway. The cord was always getting stretched out hahaha

[Dave Liao]

I remember tripping on phone cords back in the day. I don't miss that at all 😜

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

OMGoodness @Dave Liao : just LOOK at that beaut! What a great advert as well. Love it!

Hahaha. Yes @John Funk - I really couldn't stand that. Hated the fact they never ever recoiled back to their normal awesome twizzly shape once damaged!

@Jimmy Seddon - totally!! We had that too. Getting an extra long phone cord in the 90s gave me the same kind of feeling that a 5m iOS lighting cable gave me in the 2010s... OH THE FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

[Sharon Helms]

I loved having this phone, and felt extra-fancy with my own phone line as a teenager.  Though I can't imagine going back to answering without caller id! and no voicemail!

[Dave Liao]

@Sharon Helms - when Caller ID came that that was a game changer!

[Ryan Rosado]

This was my favorite phone, the Droid Pro. While everyone was transitioning to the all-touch-screen and playing the latest games on appstores, surprisingly I was still able to play a few apps like "Draw with friends" with this bad boy!

[Dave Liao]

@Ryan Rosado - WHAT - I had that too! I gave it to my friend to help with his Android app testing efforts. If I could root it I'd probably still be using it today.

[Tom Kakanowski]

Well, sort of on the edge of this discussion, in the mid '90s, before the advent of smartphones, I had my Motorola cell connected to this Windows CE based Cassiopeia A11 - I cant count how many times it saved me by being able to dial in and telnet a connection to do some remote work.  At the time it was cutting edge!

[Dave Liao]

I wanted something like this pretty bad. Windows CE's UI was pretty polished compared to other mobile OS-es at the time.

Speaking of mobile organizers, I'm waiting for Planet Computers to come out with their Astro Slide 5G Transformer (a terrible name for a product) - it'll arrive sometime in 2021, I hope!

[Dave Liao]

p.s. glad to see you on the Off-Topic Discussions section of Community - I knew I recognized you from your intro on Enterprise!

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

Me now: Wow... so nostalgic. I love it!!

Me back in the 90s: Does it have snake? 

[nina_schmidt]

Ohhhh... I always wanted one of those 😂🙈 embarrassing 😂

T-Mobile Sidekick 

[Dave Liao]

What did you end up with? The Sidekick had an impressive flip mechanism

[nina_schmidt]

See answer above... no flips 😂

[Dave Liao]

Oh riiiiiight - the bright orange unit! 😂

[Dharma Ramos]

Oh man, what a trip down memory lane. One of my first jobs was selling cell phones for BellSouth Mobility, which became Cingular, which is now AT&T. Way to come back full circle from trying to break up Ma Bell, but I digress.

I started selling those when the only options were a Car phone or a Brick Phone, I know, I know, I am dating myself. When this thing came in the market, it sold like hot cakes:

Then came the Nokia's and Ericsson's, but when Motorola dropped this baby, this was the sign that you had money to burn, lol

I don't know which one was my favorite, I really liked the Razr, and just about every Nokia I had.

[Dave Liao]

The StarTAC was one of my first phones! Can't remember whether I used that or a Nokia candybar first, but texting was a bear. 😅

[Esther Strom]

I had that top one!

[Taranjeet Singh]

I am an big fan of Samsung Smartphones, I started from Galaxy S2, and currently own a Galaxy S20. Will soon plan for S21! These phones have never disappointed me.

[Dave Liao]

I just wish I could turn off Bixby! 😜

Love their screens - I had a few older Samsung phones but never liked their plastic-y bodies. The latest ones are pretty impressive, glad to see them stepping up their game!

[Malka Jackson _Isos Technology_]

Bixby must die! I can't believe they invested a hardware button on the darn thing. I still haven't set it up on my Note. The only time I stumble across it is when trying to take screen shots. 

"One, two, three, press.....DAMMIT BIXBY!!" 

[Clark Everson]

I'm so late to this post. The iPhone 3G. It was my first smartphone. I actually even went off my parents cell phone bill because I wanted one so badly. Now I have the 12 Pro, though I did have an android at one point.

I just like the ease of Apple Services at this point and I am just way too engrained in the ecosystem

[Dave Liao]

@Clark Everson - nothing wrong with being late to the party! You're still at the party, after all... 👋😄

Wow, the iPhone 3G - was that the model that shipped with a version of iOS that couldn't copy/paste text?

[Clark Everson]

@Dave Liao yes it was. though there were ways around it. Copy and paste was huge

[Esther Strom]

I'm pretty happy with my Pixel smartphone, but I really loved being on the bleeding edge about 20 years ago with my Treos. I had two; the first was the one on the left, when the devices were still produced by Palm - no physical keyboard; there was a small area where you used a stylus with a very stylized alphabet to input.

The second one was the newer, fancier model with a color screen; I got one as part of the beta program thanks to a family friend who worked for Handspring. 

[Dave Liao]

@Esther Strom - nice, I'm pretty sure I had both the keyboarded and Graffiti-versions of the Handspring Treos. I had a Treo 600, but hated its screen. The 650 was the best, though!

[Esther Strom]

Graffiti! That's what it was called. It was driving me up a wall that I couldn't remember. 

[Malka Jackson _Isos Technology_]

My favorite non-smart phone was my LG enV That thing was a beast. I could drop kick it across the packing lot and it would thank me and make a call happily right after. I gave mine to a friend who needed a phone once I upgraded, and saw it four years later with some duct tape still holding it together as he continued to use it. 

For a smart phone, I loved my Note 4. I held onto it with a death grip as they started recalling them. Exploding batteries? pshh no big deal, that phone was worth the risk. lol 

I am now on a Note 8 and sad that the Note line is going away from built in styluses (stylii?) in the near future as this keeps me from losing the little buggers.

[Dave Liao]

@Malka Jackson _Isos Technology_ - your post made me laugh as I read "drop kick". 😂

[LarryBrock]

The Nokia 6820 is the phone I look back on most fondly - it was rugged, functional, and had incredible battery life along with the features I needed. Thanks for a great topic @Dave Liao - it's been a nice walk down memory lane as I've carried many of the phones mentioned since they replaced the on-call pagers I started out with way back in the last century. :-P

[Dave Liao]

I remember playing with one of these - early Nokia phones were ridiculously hardy.

I think I saw a YouTube video showing someone running over (with a car!) a Nokia candybar phone, and the phone surviving... ah, here it is