[@NickyColman]

I was sat the other day reminiscing about times gone by in world of mobile communications when a few memories came to mind. . . Genie Mobile . . . Three's old 'Walled Garden' . . . My first wap phone!! Ahhh.

So I thought I'd set up a wee thread where we can all remember the times gone by. From the networks that are no longer with us, to the barmy deals offered to snare customers to the handsets that set world alight with their amazing WAP technologies!!

I might as well start it all off with the previously mentioned 'Genie Mobile'. I remember fondly this subsidury of BT Cellnet in the days when you topped up and got 300 texts and lower call rates on weekends. Ha! I send more than 300 texts before I get out of bed!!

I also remember the short lived Genie Messenger that went with it. It was like a poor mans Windows Live! Messenger.

But, as happens in the world of mobile, I had the sim mere weeks before "the bubbles" started appearing in every shop window, bus stop and tv set! Before I knew it I was seeing what I could do with an O2 Online sim as it was called.

It may sound daft, but I think of Genie as a really good thing to have happened to mobile in the UK. Without it, it may have been years before Pay & Go users were given free allowances and treated like their Pay Monthly brethren. Was Genie Mobile the catalyst? Who knows?

[solo12002]

Well I can recall buying an up front package were I got a NEC G9 mobile and £5 pounds worth of calls every month for the one of yearly price of £120 pounds with BT/O2 at the time.

It was class.

[chaslam]

Funny you should bring that up. I was in the Science museum the other day in London and I went to the upstairs part, and I actually saw my first ever phone! http://www.gsmarena.com/bosch_com_509-140.php
The Bosch com 509! I couldnt believe it. Those were the days.

[Ben]

Lol cool :D This was my first: http://www.gsmarena.com/philips_savvy-146.php

In black though. Hell, Biocalendar should be a feature of every phone! :D

And yeah, I do think Genie made a big impact. It's what started O2's younger audience targeting IMHO.

[chagle]

I think I bought my first mobile from 'Peoples Phone' -- I think that's what they were called! Lost about a month into the contract, I lost the phone!

I do remember Genie Sims, used to get them free and when I had them it was totally unlimited text. In those days I used to send 100's of text - now I'm older my fingers aren't quite so nimble! .. an age thing! LOL.

[miffed]

My first phone (EVER !!) was a little analogue NEC for work on Cellnet , - it was actually pretty good considering the lack of features. My mate had the sony mars bar , which seemed far more trendy ! and a few other mates had those awful "transportable" mobiles that were like a small toolbox :D
The first one I actually paid for myself was AFAIK the first PAYG phone available in the UK - it was a People's Phone PP800 - IIRC I paid something like £150 for the phone, and then all calls were a flat rate of £1 per minute (no prices for SMS or Data or voicemail , as none of these existed ! ) You got a "Vodafone Pre Pay" card , which you took into a post office and could top up £25 a time !
It was OK TBH , came with a cradle and two batteries - one could be charged off the handset while the other could be placed in the cradle and charged as per normal. CS was good , I actually dropped it while cycling once ,and the phone was in at least 4 pieces , - the girl in People's phone winked at me and saind "So , it just stopped working then , I'll issue you a replacement " , even though it was bviously accidental damage !! (pretty good I thought )
I then got bored with the idea of mobiles, and didn't respark my interest until PAYG really took off - I bought a Panasonic (quite an early one ! - see pic ) on Vodafone , then a Little Erricson flippy thing -then a Trium Mars , then a Nokia 3330 , followed by a Samsung T100 (colour screens eh ? ... Cool ! )
...The next handset was the one (for me ) was the one that increased my expectations of a mobile device , and that was the Nokia 9110i - I absolutely loved it , and owned pretty much every Communicator since then except the 9300/i .
I also took an interest in the o2 XDA at that point , and still feel that the XDA was a groundbreaking device - and probably the first true smartphone IMO.

[miffed]

Few more photos

[Ben]

Did anyone ever encounter WAP porn? Drawn in ASCII?

I wonder why that didn't catch on?

[miffed]

Did anyone ever encounter WAP porn? Drawn in ASCII?

I wonder why that didn't catch on?


LOL ! funny the second I read this I was reminded of the Nokia 7110i !

[hecatae]

waporn.ru i believe the address was :rolleyes:

[@NickyColman]

@Ben! Yeah i remember that, and the horrid quality of the short smutty stories LOL!


My first phone was the sexy Motorola (attached). I got it for my 14th birthday i think it was! I was amazed by it. It was on Orange and back in the day you could only send 10 texts a day. They were free mind so it wasnt all bad.

I even remember the first text message i ever received. It was from a girl in my class called Gemma and read "Hi. How r u?" and that was it! The love affair with text messaging was off!

[miffed]

LOL ,I remember those - they were pretty popular at one point. I remember seeing them everywhere at one point.

[Ben]

Yeah I knew a few people with the Moto. I was stuck with that Philips for a while until I got my hands on a Nokia 6150e: https://www.unlox.co.uk/i/phone/Nokia%206150e.jpg

Loved that phone :) To death, as it happened :D

[Hands0n]

I wouldn't know where to start really, except at the beginning.

My earliest mobile phones, back in 1985, were all company owned. But they would be at £2,400 for a carphone and a similar price for a mobile [!!] handset - the old housebrick with the rubber duck. I still have one that I rescued from being sawed in half when we were destroying them back in 1987.

I've lived through the original TACS and ATACS.

Then came GSM and I recall having had a Motorola "flip phone" MicroTAC way back when. This was an incredible small device which took the entire credit card-sized SIM. It was a monster by today's standards, although it is somewhat gratifying to see the Americans still using huge behemoths like these even today! That market really stagnated as the US mobile ops gained a vice-like grip and formed their cartel. Good for the customer, not. I digress.

Things changed dramatically when One2One arrived on the scene with their 1800Mhz PCN network. I recall the first handsets from this company worked fine generally, but wouldn't work by the Thames because of radio reflections from the water (they claimed). These handsets were the smallest ever, although huge by today's standards. The poor network coverage almost consigned One2One to the scrapheap of history, but around then Orange arrived, invested heavily, and T-Mobile formed out of One2One (I can't recall how that came about).

I went through a series of company-owned handsets - I still have a very flashy chrome Nokia 8810 slider that dates around 1992 iirc.

Personal ownership of a mobile came about only in the mid 1980s when I bought my first Vodafone Samsung T100 (I think) clamshell. It was a delightful colour handset and being one of the first full polyphonic ringtone device. Soon after the likes of Jamster came about and ruined the possibilities with their near-fraudulent business practises. Talk about kill the golden goose with their apparent greed!

I'll stop there as we are fast approaching modern times seeing the likes of the SonyEricsson T610, and their W900i (still have them) and onwards to the Nokia N95.

I would say that the most striking thing that has happened over all of these years is that only in the last few has alternative use for mobile phones come about. It seems like ages, but really it is only a few years now that we have started to come to terms with using mobile phones for other things such as taking and sending picture (still not videos to any large degree) and latterly accessing the Internet with consummate ease.

The quiet revolution continues ...

[Ben]

Hehe, the Nokia 8810 was ~ 1998 I believe - 1992 would have been one hell of an achievement! That said, 1998 was one hell of an achievement, too! The early days of mobile were so interesting, wish I could go back and experience just a snapshot!

[miffed]

The thing is , the whole "scene" just wasn't appealing like it is now - When you look at todays handets (or pretty much anything 1999 onwards) , you have a list of features to either get excited about or ignore - Whereas "way back" you were simply getting a phone without a bit of wire attached to it , that made ridiculously expensive calls.
In fact , I don't think people even chose phones based on what features it offered , they simply tookl the handset that their retailer could offer them , and then discovered "all the features" (phonebook , choice of 2 ringtones) afterwards.
I actually remember the EXACT point when things took a turn (or the point that it caught my attention ) - I was sitting in a pub in Whitstale, when my mate Berni came in waving his new phone, his Nokia had just broken and he had been given a Maxon with ............ MONOPHONIC MUSCIAL RINGTONES !! we were amazed and had fun with it for ages - We then discovered we could change the text on the screen when it boots up - so in respect of this amazing new device he changed it from "Welcome to Cellnet" to "Creme de la ********"
Ah , such good memories :D

[@NickyColman]

@Miffed - Similar thing happened with me. I couldn't care less about spec until the Trium Geo AKA the first WAP enabled phone on good old BTCellnet.

My dad brought it in for me and showed me what it could do. I was amazed to say the least - the "internet" on my phone LMAO! I could check the lottery results, the news, even a joke or two. It was the future.

Shame the phone lost signal every time it went in my pocket and used to over heat regularly. Couldn't wait to get rid in the end. But that was my first taste of SPEC!

[miffed]

The Geo was both groundreaking and crap at the same time (LOL) , you could always tell the look of disappointment when people first saw "The internet on a mobile phone !! "
My mate had the Geo , and got the Mars , which was an Identical OS , but in a small oval case - I remember being amazed by the little butterfly on the homescreen , :D , but realistically the screen on the Geo was about right , the tiny screen on the Mars made it all a bit silly !
I oad £39 for the Mars on Vodafone PAYG , TBH it was an amzing price for the functionality of the thing , but all my mates with their Nokia's laughed at it. I must admit , it did have a "toy" feel about it , moreso than the Geo.

I remember the first phone that made me think "Hello ? I want that !!" Was the Sony Ericsson T68i - I never did get one :(

[Hands0n]

Hehe, the Nokia 8810 was ~ 1998 I believe - 1992 would have been one hell of an achievement! That said, 1998 was one hell of an achievement, too! The early days of mobile were so interesting, wish I could go back and experience just a snapshot!

Was it really as late as 1988! Wow! It all felt so much earlier ... but truly [obviously] I cannot recall the precise year - I don't do time, as the Mrs. :D

The 8810 is still a thing to behold, although it is so basic - as miffed says, it is a phone without a wire - that it is quite painful to use, even to make a phone call. It just feels so ... so .... so old! It would not look out of place made of Bakelite than chromed plastic LOL ;)

[hecatae]

My first wap phone was a Siemens C35

[miffed]

anyone remember this retro beast from the early 80's ..?



.... Oh wait - it was 3's "revolutionary" , "new" ,"hand"set from 2003 :D

[Ben]

anyone remember this retro beast from the early 80's ..?



.... Oh wait - it was 3's "revolutionary" , "new" ,"hand"set from 2003 :D
LoL I never understood that thing. WHY?

[miffed]

I think they envisaged executives having them sitting on their desks enjoying video calls .... but the reality was , no one would let any of their devices within a 100 miles of their businesses !

[Hands0n]

Not only that ... but the entire industry priced Videocalling out of existence. Still majority of 3G handsets are Videocall capable, but industry clearly doesn't want the technology used.

Those NEC handsets, all of them, where gross caricatures of what a handset should be. I was quite pleased when NEC stopped producing handsets, they clearly had no idea.

[miffed]

To be fair though , Nokia and Motorola produced some hideous beasts too (a830 , 7600 ? ) - I think it was all a bit premature at the time - the only company that seemed capable of producing a "nomal" 3G handset were LG !

To be fair to NEC , I got a couple of later models (e616v and e228) and while they weren't outstanding , they were "OK".

I get the impression that these early handsets were very rushed !

My first 3G handset was the , erm ..... interesting e808y

(Worst phone I ever owned ! Don't think I ever recall such a dissappointment from ANYTHING , EVER !! , I thought I was getting something to replace my Nokia 9210i Communicator )

[@NickyColman]

LMAO ! Just remembered this. . . .one word. . ."iMODE" ! :D:D:D:D

[Ben]

http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,KB=Companion,T=i-mode,question=ref(User):str(RelatedHelp),CASE=9521

Since we launched the i-mode service, customers have been satisfied with the availability of good content. However there's a limited range of handsets which is restricting our ability to grow the service, and we don’t expect this situation to change. So, from 31st July 2009, i-mode will be switched off.
RIP! :D