retro phone hunt

by Ria
 in , 23 Feb 2009

We've got a challenge for you to kick start the week.

Having followed the events at the Mobile World Congress closely, we were struck by the amount of new handsets demoed during the week. From the LG wristwatch phone to the whopping 12.1 MP camera that is the jewel in the crown of the new Sony Ericsson, handset technology is advancing at breakneck speed. Phones aren't just phones anymore. They're an extension of the office; an entertainment hub; a means to learn and enlighten.

Here at The Feed we've looked at the history (and future) of handsets before, and we're always struck by how far we've come from the analogue Motorola handsets of the 80s. They're so old now, they're become vintage cool. Which is where we want your help...

We want to find the most retro handsets lurking at the back of drawers and hiding in dusty boxes. There must be some classics forgotten and abandoned out there. We've asked the folks in the office to take part too, so dig 'em out and tell us about it in the comments.

We'll collate our results and reveal the most antiquated mobile phone we find in a few weeks. We wish you a happy trip down memory lane...

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comments (49)

  1. I've got one of these at home:
    The Mobira 'Cityman'

    It was my Dads. He even had a custom leather cover made for it.

    23 February, 2009 16:29

    Will says:

  2. A recent clear out of old phones for charity has left me feeling 'phone refreshed', but I couldn't bear to be parted from the old Motorola StarTAC ! that first clamshell was just so desirable - especially with the lovely leather case and ridiculously long aerial ! Happy days.

    23 February, 2009 16:42

    Rebecca says:

  3. I loved my StarTAC 701. It was my first phone. It looked the business but I seem to rememeber it didn't really work very well.

    24 February, 2009 10:26

    Pete says:

  4. When I was 14 I had this phone: http://www.privateline.com/PCS/images/smalljane.jpg
    I hid it from my parents for two years, because the thought that they could track me down at a moment's notice horrified me. They found it when I was 16. And used it to track me down at a moment's notice.

    When I first got the phone, only two other friends had mobiles. We'd send each other tiny texts that you had to scroll right to read on the one line screen.

    24 February, 2009 15:32

    Liza says:

  5. Ah man, it was that green Nokia that I missed - the clacky one from the first Matrix. My wife (then girlfriend) had one and I thought "wow, she's cool".

    I'll get my coat.

    24 February, 2009 16:44

    Alex Light says:

  6. I think the real question should be "what phone did you buy that looked wicked and you got it even tho you knew it was pants". I'm talking about YOU Motorola RAZR V3.
    I still love it even though to use it was as fun as eating lava.

    24 February, 2009 16:50

    Buster says:

  7. i have a philips fizz lookks good even now,though a bit on the heavy side.use once every now and then,i think it dates back to early 90's,happy uncomplicated days when a phone was a phone

    27 February, 2009 09:20

    marvin says:

  8. nokia 3210 the first phone with no aerial outside how cool was that!!!!

    27 February, 2009 09:57

    tom omalley says:

  9. Although far from being my first phone, i had the Matrix one and it wasn't until I was ready to replace it that I'd discovered the little button at the side to make it click slide open! I fell for the phone all over again, but it was too late....doh! so dumb, and funny i went on to own the Razr in gold, Dolce and Gabbanna design which hummed Dolce and Gobanna electronically everytime i turned it on or off!

    27 February, 2009 11:01

    Jax Book says:

  10. nah one of the best phones was the motorola mr201 it took about 6 hours to charge and you got about a days battery life if you were lucky. me and my mates called it the plate breaker because my mate dropped his when he was having his dinner and it smashed his plate into a million pieces.

    05 March, 2009 12:31

    charles says:

  11. 2 x Ericsson GH 688's. I've got the boxes, users manuals, the lot! Great looking retro phone, but I think it's analogue.

    05 March, 2009 12:48

    John Hall says:

  12. I had a Motorola c520. Wish phones would be like this today; simple to use and none of this radio/camera/mp3 player gubbins added on to corrupt it. Had it for ages until the battery wouldn't even last a day, so had to upgrade to a nokia 3210. which I also kept until it died.

    05 March, 2009 13:29

    Mark says:

  13. I have the original Nokia orange fone, and it still works!

    But no I dont use it now LOL! Its massive. A true brick.

    05 March, 2009 13:29

    Saul says:

  14. When I went to Uni in '95 I bought the Motorola StarTAC; the first clamshell analogue phone. At the time, mobiles were associated with "Yuppies". One of the tutors said to me "Students with mobiles, huh". The phone worked really well, but calls were 50p/min peak and 20p/min off-peak, and people who phoned me later complained to me when they saw their bill!

    05 March, 2009 13:41

    Paul R says:

  15. My first phone was a second user NEC P3. I had it on a Cellnet low usage tarrif £15 per month rental 50 pence per minute.

    I thought it was a great phone, it had an integrated antenna that folded flat so it would fit in your pocket, when on a call you could fold it out. Was only decent in cities though, as you went further afield you had to screw the 1/2 wave antenna onto the top.

    Battery life was a fantastic 8 hours standby and around 1 hour talk time, so I always carried a spare. Initially I had a battery eliminator for use in the car, you removed you battery and replaced it with what was a battery casing with a cable to a cigar lighter plug. Later on I got a full car kit, which would even charge the battery - revolutionary.

    One of the great features was you could call any of the numbers in the memory by just entering the 2 digit memory location number followed by send.

    I showed it to the kids recently, they were amazed that a phone could be so big.

    I stayed with that unitl getting one of the first Nokia Orange phones, when Orange first started. £2 a month for unlimited texts messages, but it was limited to Orange to Orange as there were no interconnects between the networks.

    05 March, 2009 13:41

    Pete says:

  16. I still have my Nokia Orange phone, which I bought when I first joined Orange in 1995. I think it's a Nokia 5.1 (NHK-1XA). An amazing phone from the days when you could text unlimited for a £2/mth subscription and a faulty phone had a taxi to your door with a replacement in about 2 hours.

    05 March, 2009 13:59

    Geraint White says:

  17. My first phone was a second user NEC P3. I had it on a Cellnet low usage tarrif £15 per month rental 50 pence per minute.

    I thought it was a great phone, it had an integrated antenna that folded flat so it would fit in your pocket, when on a call you could fold it out. Was only decent in cities though, as you went further afield you had to screw the 1/2 wave antenna onto the top.

    Battery life was a fantastic 8 hours standby and around 1 hour talk time, so I always carried a spare. Initially I had a battery eliminator for use in the car, you removed you battery and replaced it with what was a battery casing with a cable to a cigar lighter plug. Later on I got a full car kit, which would even charge the battery - revolutionary.

    One of the great features was you could call any of the numbers in the memory by just entering the 2 digit memory location number followed by send.

    I showed it to the kids recently, they were amazed that a phone could be so big.

    I stayed with that unitl getting one of the first Nokia Orange phones, when Orange first started. £2 a month for unlimited texts messages, but it was limited to Orange to Orange as there were no interconnects between the networks.

    05 March, 2009 14:41

    Pete says:

  18. Remember the days when Orange covered only the M1 and M5 down to Bristol and you had to wander around and stand on chairs to get a signal? I've still got the original Orange 6volt digital Brick with pullout aerial and double size spare batteries - at least we weren't listened to by people with scanners. . . .

    05 March, 2009 14:50

    rastrickian says:

  19. Ha, Ha, loads of old phones of mine there, The Nokia 5110, possibly the best phone I ever had, huge battery life, brilliant reception, even on some bits of the underground! Easy and simple to use, super. Unlike the Motorola Timeport I replaced it with. Crap, crap crap, useless piece of junk, bad reception, awkward to use and really terrible battery life (what is it about Motorola phones, they always seem really good in the shop....) I still have my Nokia 6310i, I'm amazed that isn't on the video, an absolute classic, still outperforms modern phones as a phone, just doesn't really do anything else.

    05 March, 2009 15:57

    Rob says:

  20. I kept my first ever mobile phone, I have no idea why I kept it, it is still in the leather cover I purchased for it.

    I don't think they come much older than this:
    Sony CM-H333 (often nicknamed the "Mars bar).

    BEAT THAT?

    05 March, 2009 16:12

    kenneth turner says:

  21. I had wayyy back in early 1990's would it ave been ???
    On one of the first orange contracts, MR1 Motorola flip phone ! cool for its day...ya could not text as they were realllly expensive and so were calls depending on day and who you called (isaid i was old!)..haha plus i bought it (get this) back then for £250 on a monthly contract!! that was alot of money back then. I was well overpaid whatever job I was doing! :-)...anywayyy only me and my mate had one, so we only called each other...no-one i mean no-one had one of these, it took a while for mobiles to get popular strangely enough..

    05 March, 2009 16:49

    lisa says:

  22. Quote; #
    Mark says:
    #

    I have the original Nokia orange fone, and it still works!

    But no I dont use it now LOL! Its massive. A true brick.

    05 March, 2009 13:29

    ^^^

    The Nokia 100 ? I have one too !

    05 March, 2009 17:13

    Craig says:

  23. I have a Motorola 8500X with Charger from approx 1987

    I had the earlier one but lost it in an upgrade this one lasted till the Digital conversion which is how come i still have it. and it just about switches on.

    05 March, 2009 17:52

    Sonny says:

  24. Hello, I have still got one of the Original Nokia Orange Phones from day one of the launch of Orange back in 1994

    05 March, 2009 17:55

    Tony Boreham says:

  25. I have loads of old phone bit of anorak really. i think the oldest phone i have is a Nokia Ringo, weighs about the same as a small elephant. I then "upgraded" to something smaller.... lol a Phillips Diga what a phone flashing areals, garishly coloured plastic case's..... oh they were the days of mobil phones..........

    05 March, 2009 18:13

    andy says:

  26. I still have my first phone which cost me £2.49p
    It is a Motorola T.A.C Duo with an aerial.
    Must admit it is still probably my favourite phone.

    05 March, 2009 18:56

    Pat says:

  27. I had a Motorola MR1 then an MR20 - this was exchanged soon after I bought the MR1 form Orange (14 day exchange)as the MR1 was too big!! - these were my first 'phones and absolutely rocked back then with their flimsy aerials and green screens...Then I got a Sony flip phone on Orange (can't remember the model though - orange screen and jog wheel).

    05 March, 2009 19:17

    Staypuft says:

  28. I've still got a Nokia 501 (or 5.1) somewhere in the house.
    Its about the size of a small breezeblock!! It does calls... and thats it. Cant change the ring or anything... back when times were easier!! ;o)

    05 March, 2009 19:45

    Marc Luscombe says:

  29. Still got a Motorola 8800X - weighs about the same as a brick - really. And believe it or not, in 2003 I was in the USA and saw someone still using one!!! I used my one in about 1989.

    05 March, 2009 19:52

    Ian says:

  30. I bought my first phone in 1995, it was "The Phone" NHK-1XA from Orange Hutchinson Telecom. It is the one with the pull out aerial and weighs a tonne!! It cost £150. Still have it in the original box with all paperwork and original receipt. How sad ;-)

    05 March, 2009 20:40

    Liz says:

  31. My first phone was One2One, maybe the M300, the sim card was the size of a credit card and the battery probably bigger than some phones today. It also had a pull out aerial. The tarrif was £15 a month and you got all calls to one2one and landlines within the M25 at offpeak free. Probably not a lot of good for those out of London. The big selling point that year was if you bought it before Christmas all calls all over the world were free on Christmas day. It was fantastic to ring Australia just past midnight on a mobile to wish them a Merry Christmas. Throughout Christmas day everyone was using it to ring friends and family round the world. Guess it was around 15 years ago but as far as I remember it was the first truly mobile phone despite it being a bit of a brick. Not sure if I still have that one but I have the M301 which followed, slightly slimmer if I remember correctly and still in its leather case.

    05 March, 2009 22:44

    Carolyn Gyseman says:

  32. First phone was in 1988/9, a Motorola 8500X, (A house brick with a fishing rod for an aerial and weighed about the same too) it cost £750, I had one, my mate had one too. Whilst out in a pub one night, it rang and the pub fell silent, a man came over and asked if I was a doctor??. It was my mate asking me to ring him back in ten minutes. I rang him back and turns out he was at a party trying to impress a woman, and all he kept saying was sell his shares in British Gas and buy British Steel, he was playing a Yuppie, but back then, no one had mobile phones. Next phone was the Motorola Micro TAC 2 flip. Ordered a car kit for my Land Rover Discovery, and Motorola sent a "Super Deluxe" kit which had a cradle for the flip phone, and a full separate car phone handset, looked well cool!!!!!, Next phone I remember was in the late nineties and was the Nokia 7110 with the slide down front cover at the press of a button, like in the film The Matrix.

    06 March, 2009 00:12

    Steve Cook says:

  33. I've got 2 nokia 5.1's knocking around somewhere, fantastic piece of kit (if a little bulky by todays standards haha) batteries don't last more than about half hour now mind :(

    06 March, 2009 10:46

    Alun J says:

  34. I had one of those ancient Ericsson affairs - can't rememebr what it was called. You could get weird Major-Morgan style slot-in plastic fronts that changed the colour to various primary shades like exciting red, green or blue! Imagine!

    06 March, 2009 10:47

    Gatsby says:

  35. Im still using my 3210 only had it for 9 years and still going strong.

    06 March, 2009 15:49

    Hannah says:

  36. One of the best old phones I ever bought was an Ericsson T28 World. It had Tetris on it and was one of the first flip style phones. I had a little plug in keyboard for speedy text messaging, it rocked! I loved that phone!

    07 March, 2009 00:45

    Simon says:

  37. My first Cellphone, that I bought in 1987 was the EXCELL Pocketphone, it cost me £1,200! I had been wanting to get a cellphone since they first came out in the UK in 1986, when Cellnet and Vodafone started-up, but they were so expensive! The first Motorola handportable, called the 8000x -a classic BRICK with an incredible 8" rubber aerial and a red LED display, initially cost £3000! The EXCELL that I bought was smaller than the Motorola,and had a stumpy aerial, and it actually had an LCD display, and surprisingly, a touchpad keypad (no buttons), but also had a fixed internal battery that could not be swapped when flat, I had it on Cellnet, and it worked fine, (except when there was no signal! -there was poor coverage in those days-. Nowadays it serves as a paperweight !

    07 March, 2009 13:53

    Dave King says:

  38. I have quite a collection of retro Orange phones, including:
    Dancall dc1 : one of the very first Orange handsets, it could only receive and not send text messages and had a very short battery life (~16 hours). Amazingly it supported Line Two. Given to me by a friend who has since died, hence of sentimental value to me.
    Motorola mr30 : my first Orange phone which I bought secondhand then reconnected it to the Just Talk tariff. It could send text messages for free! but only to other Orange users - cross-network texting wasn't available then. Battery contacts became loose, causing the phone to switch itself off.
    Motorola StarTAC mr701 : small, playing-card size flip phone from 1998. I like this one and still use it sometimes. Battery lasts just over a day. Like the mr30, it uses full size credit card SIM cards, the modern ones can be used with an adaptor.
    Motorola Timeport L7089 : the world's first tri-band phone that could be used in Europe and the USA. I bought this phone new on everyday 50 tariff. I paid £80 + £120 for a modem which I later found out I didn't need. I tokk it on holiday to the USA in 1999 but the coverage was limited to only a few places. Very disappointing.
    Nokia nk9000 Communicator : I bought this secondhand in 2000. The brick-sized handset opens up to reveal a QWERTY keyboard and screen with e-mail, fax and web browser. I could surf the web for free, thanks to Orange allowing free calls to 0800 numbers (sadly not any more). Amazing!
    I had some other old phones including an analogue Motorola with red LED display, a Nokia nk502 Matrix / banana phone and a Motorola mr1 on Orange which I wish I had kept - it looked wonderfully retro but it was fairly useless as a phone.

    08 March, 2009 15:43

    Hamid Khan says:

  39. october 2004 for an early christmas present i got the nokia 3220i phone, the xfactor phone. To this day i still use the phone and it still works! I get full signal and it charges but most importantly i still have my own mini raves with the flashing lights on the sides!

    08 March, 2009 17:33

    David Holmes says:

  40. I have a bright green Swatch phone, up in the loft! Think it's from 1995!? You could get them in all different colours! Everyone at college were VERY impressed! LOL

    09 March, 2009 18:54

    mel says:

  41. I had a Nokia 3210 when the everyday fifty tariff first came out. It was a twelve month contract and when it ended I cancelled and gave it to my then girlfriend to use as a pay as you go phone. She promptly dumped me and disappeared to university. I never saw it again :(

    I now have a C902 though, so I guess I had the last laugh.

    12 March, 2009 09:23

    Puckey says:

  42. My First phone was Nokia Orange, great phone stood on it after 4 months broke the screen called Orange New Phone delivered next morning great customer service.!!
    Been with Orange ever since, When up grading after 7 years The guy from orange could'nt believe I had this phone so long he was too young to know the Model.
    P.S. they called me about upgrade or I might still have it.

    12 March, 2009 18:56

    Jim says:

  43. My very first phone was back in 1990 - a Motorola 9600x in the day it was the only phone to have!! Single line LED display. Text messaging hadn't been invented. Looked a bit like a vietnam field radio with a rubber aerial on top. you'd get signal around london, but that was about it. oh and the M25... still being built!
    after that it was some Ericsson (pre sony involvement) i got free in a TV quick magazine - I'd say it was a flip phone, but more a flap. battery life was appauling. 8 hours to charge, two to die. two lines of display and a £2 a month to subscribe to a text service.

    17 March, 2009 12:51

    Lee says:

  44. I took the plunge back in the late nineties (was it really such a short time ago?) and got a contract phone - a Nokia 232. It was the lightest and most sexy looking phone of the day. I thought I was a secret agent and kept hoping it would ring so I could look even more sexy talking on it. Now I hope my work phone does not ring. It a Blackberry and I cannot figure out how to change the ringtone. I think every blackberry in the world still has the same ringtone. I found my Nokia 232 in the loft in it's original box, sporting it's large 'extended life' battery - 32 whole hours standby instead of the standard 14. woo hoo!! It took me a few minutes of fiddling with it to realise it didn't actually support texting (its analog not digital). I cannot believe how fast things have changed.

    26 March, 2009 09:00

    Joe says:

  45. I had an old Phillips Diga on Cellnet - http://www.handydetails.de/images/phil-diga.jpg
    A Brick of a phone, where the SIM card was the whole credit card and the battery was the whole back casing - this was the first phone I had that was capable of text messages - an absolute revolution at the time, although the messages scrolled along on one line at a snails pace making it very annoying and time consuming to read the message, also you could only send 160 or so characters so could only send one message at a time, not like now where you can compile several messages into one long message.... those were the days...

    28 April, 2009 09:28

    Matt says:

  46. i have a nokia matrix phone - spins well on a desk and wakes up sleeping work mates if angled at the temple!

    28 April, 2009 14:23

    simon davis says:

  47. i've had many a good phone. one of the best had to be a bt cellnet own brand i think! sim card was the size of a credit card and slid in the back. only paid 5p a text when everyone else was 10 or 12 though :)

    29 April, 2009 10:16

    kevin says:

  48. I have a 5.1, MR1 and a DC1 at home, along with the nokia 'banana' phone (still like the font!)

    29 April, 2009 14:58

    Jo says:

  49. i had a motorola 8500, saw one the other day in beverley hills cop and the memories came flooding back.they always had reception though and people would think you were a doctor or someone important on call, try and get a contract back then too, very hard as i remember, i was with vodac before they were bought out.
    i also remember walking around heathrow airport with it and being told to turn it off as it caused interference,it probably did,you always knew a call was coming by the dididitting of a nearby radio. ahh the days.

    14 October, 2009 23:39

    martin says:

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