They don’t make them small like they used to…
liked the flip-phones with clips to hang them on your belt. no pockets needed. like a pager
I still sometimes think about my Nokia Lumia 730, my first smartphone. It was an absolute joy to use. The live tiles which was implemented so badly in PC looked so cool on phone.
Windows phone was light and fluid unlike the bloated Touchwiz most people used on their Samsungs those days. Things weren’t always rosy though, I used to wait for turns to get my hands on my friend’s android just so I could play the multiplayer games which didnt have a port. Never could follow the latest trending photo filter app , i think one was name prisma. Now I think it was probably for the best.
Held on to it as much as I could but with the app ecosystem not expanding and several services limited to just Android and IOS, I had to give it up.
My htc hero had a track ball. Peak android right there. Also literally the first android in the US if I recall correctly.
I sometimes wish I had my old nokia. the indestructible brick one.
mostly because i fucking hate smartphones and the always-online-ness.
Rip helio ocean, dual slider t9 and keyboard
My old Motorola Razr. I used to like flipping it open like a Star Trek communicator, but it was also just a cool little phone.
The aesthetic on top of the fact that a whole phone could be made so thin was such a lasting iconic (fun) era
When I was a little 1980s kid, my family got rid of a malfunctioning wall-mounted rotary phone which had been installed there since time immemorial. I asked if I could keep it and my mom said no, but she did let me exercise my curiosity by taking it apart to see what the innards were like.
I kept the dial, and it still lives on a shelf of mildly-interesting things in my house. It still spins, though the recoil speed is way slower than it should be
(I also grew up to be a phone phreak.)
Man casually shows off his h dial
I didn’t take apart a phone to get it, but I managed to buy a rotary dial mechanism from a surplus store near where I grew up when I was a teen (maybe thirty years ago?). I think I’ve still got it in a drawer. It’s honestly a very clever design, and the sound is kind of weirdly soothing.
It was such a simple yet fun device. It had really good sound and an equaliser, which was special at the time. Played loads of music on it. Great battery life too. No WiFi, but honestly, that might be a plus nowadays.
The Sony Walkman / Ericcson slide was S tier.
Motorola Droid 2. I just miss keyboard sliders.
The sony ericsson xperia pro was my dream phone because of how it looked with the keyboard slider. Timeless design imo
Are you me?
We might have obsessed over the same phones haha
I think that’s the last phone I had with a flip out keyboard. Man, I miss it.
I had the original Droid and Droid 3, both great phones for the first year then rapidly declined into junk. That first year was great, though!
I had the original Motorola Droid as well. I loved the flipping the keyboard out, but you’re correct, it degraded to junk so fast.
I actually do kind of miss my windows phone LOL
My nokia windows phone was the best. Stylish, great battery, great camera.
Windows phone with the tiles remains the best phone interface by far. Since then i’ve had to make my own custom interface because i can’t go back to ugly ass icons.
I love the concept of that launcher, so much I’ve tried it numerous times.
In the end, a launcher just doesn’t work for me. But that tiled UI is definitely the best approach I’ve seen.
The Nokia Lumias were really interesting
i wish they’d bring those back, i totally missed that era
Me too. I didn’t even have famcy ones. I had the cheap $20 Nokia 520
Same, and it was still a solid little phone, I used it until most of the apps stopped being supported, and even then, it was my backup phone for years, until the networks stopped supporting it.
My Lumia is still the best phone I’ve ever had. It still works, to an extent, despite having fallen out of my pocket at biking speed multiple times. Unfortunately everyone and their dog uses WhatsApp now so when WhatsApp decided to stop supporting my model, it became nearly useless. I’m still angry about it.
One of the few benefits of being American, no one is using whatsapp
Same. It was SHIT but the battery was epic and i used to spend time on it playing shite games on long train journeys.
Omg you know what, when I had one it was still called Windows Mobile, not Windows Phone yet. Games weren’t really big yet!
Haha. It was backgammon, don’t think I had the option for anything more high end.
Nokia with Windows Phone is great. It is still the best interface just right before MS made it worse with WP10 IMO. It is still amazing to me that when I gave one to my mom back when she was changing from a normal non touch screen phone, she immediately gets it and I don’t have to coach.
And I personally also like the design philosophy behind WP 7 up until 8.1. I just can’t get behind WP10 and later.
I had windows mobile 5.0 😆
Seemed so bizarre at the time, but the changeups it had made for a fun experience
Occasionally I miss my old Nexus 5. The screen felt so big at the time and I loved it’s sharp edges
I was infatuated not with the 5, but with the Nexus 5X design in white. That era of android was soo clean
Nexus 5 peak android customization, I had cyanogen mod dual booted with stock android.
I still have mine lying around. Had to switch it out when the WiFi died from experiments with firmware and whatever I did to it in the end. I also remember downloading different camera apps where you could change just about every setting like nothing I have ever seen after that.
Those were the times.
Yes, all my various BlackBerrys.
My Blackberry torch was my favourite phone ever.
I miss my Crackberry. I could touch-type and carry-on a physical conversation. If I could get a reasonable Android phone with a BlackBerry keyboard (slide-out or otherwise) I would buy that for the next 2 or 3 decades. Maybe more.
Same. The Bold 9900 was peak. I’m excited to see what the new Clicks device does.
Have you seen the new Titan 2?
I wanted to get this, but I wound up picking the Fairphone.
Yeah, I’m very tempted by one.
Have you seen the newer Titan 2 Elite?
1961 Bell System Model 554 Rotary Dial Wall Telephone
But the apps sucked.
This one didn’t suck, you blew
Nokia n900 for me, circa 2010. It ran Linux (real Linux!), had a pretty good camera, headphone jack, sd card slot, slide out keyboard, 4or 5 day battery life, xmpp instant messaging natively. It was perfect. It was a little bit chunky, but would fit in a jeans pocket perfectly and didn’t weigh too much.
100%. I don’t miss mine, because I still have it, but sadly don’t use it anymore. Nokia really screwed up, they had the next generation of tech in their pockets and let it be crushed by Windows Phone.
It’s one of the massive screw-ups in tech that anyone in the field was absolutely horrified by back in the day. It was worse than Zuck’s legless Metaverse, or today’s vibe coding changes to production servers. Alright, no, the latter is worse.
LG used to put really good DACs in their phones. So for somebody who uses his phone as an MP3 player that can also take calls, my LG V30 was perfect.
I loved my V50… until it got baaaad screen burn-in. Older OLED screens were kinda crappy tbh
I’m still holding onto my V40, eventually want to use it as a soundboard for gaming or something
I still have my LG G3 with Cyanogenmod on it. Live to boot it up and pretend it’s 2014
I had an LG flip phone with stereo speakers - one on each side of the hinge. Had hours of midi tracks on it, and it rendered them pretty well.
I had the V60. It was a little big, but audio was great. I miss the headphone jack. I’m sad they don’t make phones anymore.
I am gutted that my LG Wing’s USB port is damaged. I can still charge it thanks to having wireless charging so now I always look for phones with one AS A BACKUP for charging.
But it’s the fun quirky spinning slider screen is just amazing. For pure unadulterated brain rot doomscrolling, I can put on a YouTube video or stream on the main screen and hold the phone “upright”, the video will be playing in full screen and I can shitpost in discord or anywhere on the small screen.
Or if I want to shitpost more seriously, I swap the positions and hold the phone 90 degrees and have whatever social media I have on the main screen in portrait and have the video play on the small screen.
It also makes for a great car phone. Have whatever navigation app I’m running on the main, and have the music player on the small screen to easily change tracks. Maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to crack the back open and replace the USB port.
Loved my LG V10 and V20
