My 'Celly (Nov 2000-Present)

Isn't it fun to think about the history of your cell phone ownership. Where did it all begin. Were you late to the party or ahead of the game? Which ones were booty? Which ones were so fly?

Here is my story...

Way late to the party (November 2000), I just started a new job as a Jr. Accountant and decided to stop by that awesome Cingular store (no longer do I think it is awesome.. this was pre-celly times) to see what I could see..

On second visit to the store I came out with a totally sweet Motorola V2288.. complete with 2 plastic skins for me to change the phone's look according to my mood that day and a one year contract to a crazy plan where I was granted 100 included minutes fo r$29.99! DOH! What I really came out with was a dispicable phone with janky sound quality (I could barely hear people), pooty battery life (one whole day if I stayed off the phone) & not enough minutes to even call every one quickly to let them know I had joined the cell phone brigade. The worst part of all was my coverage. The phone didn't work in my house. Talk about convenient. Why couldn't Cingular make a network as cool as its commercials?


Fast forward to November 2001..

So excited to be out of my 1 year contract I decide to jump in head first with Nextel based on great reviews from my walkie-talkie toting friends..

Low and behold, I dropped $200 big ones on a Nextel i90. Good reception, better battery life, sleek for the time, did the job. But the best part of this phone was selling it on ebay 2 YEARS LATER for a full $200 thanks to Nextel not making any forward progress on phone development during those years. What a joy. By the end of my Nextel days I was seriously disturbed by the walkie-talkie beep.. Heck I hated the walkie-talkie all together because it never sounded as good or clear as a phone call. So, the old unlimited walkie turned into having to use precious minutes (by this time I was at 1000) for menial calls. Doh! Nextels pricey plans just were not worth it when their walkie-talkie was so non-functional. This was the best network I've ever experienced for phone calls though. I hear it's not as good anymore. For shame.


December 2003

Lured in by the fanciful promise of bluetooth and a gsm network I left the comfort and care of Nextel (and an essentially free phone after selling on ebay for what I paid in 2001) I became a lab rat for AT&T's newfangled gsm network... complete with spotty coverage, dropped calls, etc.. But at least I have my color screen, joystick weilding, battleship playing Sony Erikkzson t68i. No the bluetooth never impressed me in real life - though i did sync the phone with my Mac. Yes, I even convinced my wife to get one too and leave her Nextel days and pricey plan behind.. We were riding high on 1000 mins for $39.99. After rebates the phones were a good deal thanks to Good Guys (r.i.p.). Yeah, the fun of it lasted about a month.. just long enough to not be able to return it. And we did get new #'s at this time as number porting was not a reality yet. During the following year my phone would break and get replaced under warranty.. my wifes phone would also break and get replaced under warranty yet by that time they had no more t68i's so she got the much improved Sony Erickzon t610 (including camera, larger screen, better sound, better reception) for free. I promptly traded her my recently replaced (2 months) t68i for her t610 citing the difficulty in learing a new phone with features she probably wouldn't use vs. the comfort of a phone she already knew. Yeah, it was wrong. She knew it, I knew it. But she loves me so she let me have the cooler phone. What can I say, we'd only been married 6 years.. i was still young.


December 2004

Goodbye AT&T hello T-Mobile!

Yes, I left the 1000 AT&T mins for $39.99 for 3000 T-Mobile mins for $49.99 and a much worse network. But boy was my screen bright on the Samsung e105 they gave me for free after rebate. This tiny clamshell phone was great except for phone calls. T-mobile was so bad I started counting the days till my contract ended after only 4 months. Sad. You get what you (don't) pay for sometimes. Biggest complaint about the phone specifically was the IR port which you can not use to transfer contacts from your old AT&T phone because Samsung only designed it to be used with a Windoze pc IR port.?!


October 2005

Yet with only 2 months left on my Tmobile contract and plans to go to Verizon (the best network in my region) my good friend who worked at Palm hooked me up with a loaner unlocked Treo 650 (the model w/out camera). What a revelation. The ghetto t-mobile network went "from one of my complaints about life to something I never thought of again" thanks to Treo 650 insano antenna. Yeah, it probably killed brain cells and gave me future cancer, but i made some serious calls on that phone. I also snagged the sick Covertec tan/light tan leather holster complete with magnetic clasp to enhance my Treo experience


May 2006

After 1.5 years of good times carrying around the Treo 650 BRICK I left querty keyboards behind in hopes of a lower profile look with the T-Mobile SDA. This badboy runs Windows Mobile 2005. A far cry from the Palm OS but with some advantages regarding Outlook sync and installable apps/games. I have enjoyed hacking this phone both in interface and function. But, it's still Windows. Takes almost a minute to start up. That's when you know your phone is more computer than phone. Reverse evolution. Thankfully this phone fits in my old Treo holster, gets great battery life & incredible reception. Complaints are 1) not as tiny as a razr 2) windows crashes on occasion 3) i miss querty whenever i need to type something like a web address, message or name. Great phone but definitely not a user friendly menu system/user interface.



The Future

Bluetooth will come to mean something completely different as my ultimate future phone is the Jawbone Phone - with Goldtooth (instead of Bluetooth). This comes years from now, much after phones embedded in the earlobe go out of style. The Jawbone Phone, implanted in your lower jaw (or upper if you have TMJ) has a self-preserving powersource that is actually powered by my own saliva. The only problem with going bionic is letting someones else borrow my phone - impossible.

How did I survive in the pre-celly days? Easily. Less money was spent to talk, less cancer was caused & more time was spent on my large comfortable home phone (not wireless).