# Smartphones of years gone by.



## LeslieB (Feb 16, 2016)

I love looking at this old blog post from 2009
Seeking the smartest smartphones - we look for the ultimate smartphone and look at the Apple 3G, HTC HD, HTC Touch, Nokia N96, Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, T-Mobile G1 and Blackberry Storm

I notice while the Iphone gets good marks, complaints are made about  "the company's power-crazed, control freakery approach."

Nothing much changes there then. But lots else has. An interesting bit of tech history from not that long ago.


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## Pickman's model (Feb 16, 2016)

LeslieB said:


> I love looking at this old blog post from 2009
> Seeking the smartest smartphones - we look for the ultimate smartphone and look at the Apple 3G, HTC HD, HTC Touch, Nokia N96, Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, T-Mobile G1 and Blackberry Storm
> 
> I notice while the Iphone gets good marks, complaints are made about  "the company's power-crazed, control freakery approach."
> ...


arslikhan alive and well i see


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## LeslieB (Feb 16, 2016)

Pickman's model said:


> arslikhan alive and well i see


Eh?


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## Pickman's model (Feb 16, 2016)

LeslieB said:


> Eh?


not a private eye reader i see.


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## LeslieB (Feb 16, 2016)

Pickman's model said:


> not a private eye reader i see.


I've never read it and have no idea what you are on about.


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## Pickman's model (Feb 16, 2016)

LeslieB said:


> I've never read it and have no idea what you are on about.


arse-licking  you're arse-licking


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## LeslieB (Feb 16, 2016)

Mate. If you've got a problem with me, PM me. You'll find me anxious to sort it out. 

If you're still not happy talk to the mods. 

But quit derailing my thread.


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## kabbes (Feb 16, 2016)

A 75%, a 78% and _twelve_ scores between 84% and 89%.  I feel that review page is not making full use of the spectrum of options available between 0 and 100.

Here is a box-whisker plot of the scores.


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## mauvais (Feb 16, 2016)

Are you bitterly disappointed by that, kabbes?


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## Pickman's model (Feb 16, 2016)

LeslieB said:


> Mate. If you've got a problem with me, PM me. You'll find me anxious to sort it out.
> 
> If you're still not happy talk to the mods.
> 
> But quit derailing my thread.


once you've posted it it isn't 'your' thread.


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## The Boy (Feb 16, 2016)

kabbes said:


> A 75%, a 78% and _twelve_ scores between 84% and 89%.  I feel that review page is not making full use of the spectrum of options available between 0 and 100.
> 
> Here is a box-whisker plot of the scores.
> 
> View attachment 83519


It's a bit like Robert Parker's 100 point scale for scoring wines.  Which starts at 80.


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## LeslieB (Feb 16, 2016)

The Boy said:


> It's a bit like Robert Parker's 100 point scale for scoring wines.  Which starts at 80.



I'm assuming Ed had already eliminated all the crap ones like the LG cookie and the INQ phone.


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## kabbes (Feb 16, 2016)

mauvais said:


> Are you bitterly disappointed by that, kabbes?


It's just... upsetting.


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## mauvais (Feb 16, 2016)

kabbes said:


> It's just... upsetting.


You always make things difficult, don't you. If you'd been bitterly disappointed, or bitterly disappoint_ing_, even, I would have given you a very definite 86%. That much is clear. But now that you're _upset_, I don't know what to do.

I'm going to say 87%.


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## kabbes (Feb 16, 2016)

mauvais said:


> You always make things difficult, don't you. If you'd been bitterly disappointed, or bitterly disappoint_ing_, even, I would have given you a very definite 86%. That much is clear. But now that you're _upset_, I don't know what to do.
> 
> I'm going to say 87%.


Ooooooh, now I get it.  You had to ladle it on pretty thick for me there.

I give you a retrospective *like*.  But not an actual one, just a pretend one.


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## skyscraper101 (Feb 16, 2016)

I had a Blackberry (work) and a Nokia E71 (personal). Both were crap for anything useful like web browsing, photos, music. The work blackberry was ok for typing emails though. The nokia was crap for typing anything as the keys were too small. It just looked nice.

Moved to an Orange San Francisco which was a lovely little thing but just didn't have the power in the end to do the all encompassing stuff of more powerful phones. Lasted a year or so.

Then got a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which was great as it worked in the US and UK (and there were all kinds of issues with many others). Was only the fact it started to slow down to the point of uselessness that I upgraded.

Got an iPhone 5s in 2014 and still have it. I loath that it doesn't have a back button and only 16gb of storage but I like facetime/facetime audio, iMessage, and Find My Friends. Apple Maps is actually not bad too these days and the camera is ok.


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## Virtual Blue (Feb 16, 2016)

remember the early 2000s? when it was normal to carry an walkman/ mp3 player and a camera?
i'm still doing that now (and I have an iPhone 6).

Phone that stuck out for me was the Sony Ericsson K800i. Seriously good.


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## LeslieB (Feb 16, 2016)

Virtual Blue said:


> Phone that stuck out for me was the Sony Ericsson K800i. Seriously good.



Yeah I had the K750i  and kept it for years. In 2009 I brought an INQ phone, which was crap and I soon sold it and went back to the Sony. 2011 I got a Galaxy mini, which wasn't great and I flogged that as well and went back to the Sony again! 2012 I brought a Galaxy Y which wasn't much better but the Sony was knackered by this point so I kept the Samsung.

The game changer for me was the Galaxy Ace 2, a massive step up from the Y. I brought one of those on ebay in late 2013 and it was great. Sadly it fell victim to my butter fingers about 6 months later. I had an S3 mini for a while before my sister gifted me her old S2, which I kept until last December, when I got my current Galaxy Prime.

I could probably go back to the Ace 2 if I had to. It was a vast improvement over the previous phones I've had. All the others have been little incremental improvements but nothing I couldn't live without.


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## kabbes (Feb 16, 2016)

Virtual Blue said:


> remember the early 2000s? when it was normal to carry an walkman/ mp3 player and a camera?
> i'm still doing that now (and I have an iPhone 6).
> 
> Phone that stuck out for me was the Sony Ericsson K800i. Seriously good.


I remember that my iPod I got in 2006 could hold my entire music collection whereas my iPhone can't.  That 2006 bit of tech had twice the memory of my 2014 iPhone.


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## twentythreedom (Feb 16, 2016)

Had one of these for a bit, at least ten years ago now 



First full touch screen gadget I had


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## editor (Feb 16, 2016)

Pickman's model said:


> arse-licking  you're arse-licking


Stop it please. It's really uncalled for.


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## editor (Feb 16, 2016)

kabbes said:


> A 75%, a 78% and _twelve_ scores between 84% and 89%.  I feel that review page is not making full use of the spectrum of options available between 0 and 100.
> 
> Here is a box-whisker plot of the scores.
> 
> View attachment 83519


Well, I could have included a Suzinamchi T205T phone from 1993 to being in a 0% score. But then it wouldn't be much of a list of the 'ultimate' phones then.


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## editor (Feb 16, 2016)

I was all over the Palm Treo 650. What a phone that was. And boy did Palm fuck it up


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## kabbes (Feb 16, 2016)

editor said:


> Suzinamchi T205T .


You can't fool me, that's not a real thing.


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## Virtual Blue (Feb 16, 2016)

kabbes said:


> I remember that my iPod I got in 2006 could hold my entire music collection whereas my iPhone can't.  That 2006 bit of tech had twice the memory of my 2014 iPhone.



yes, I had the iPod too - the sound on those were pretty good (as far as portable devices go).
serious music heads still use the original iPod and partner it with a headphone amp.

Does this look cool or what!!


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## Ax^ (Feb 16, 2016)

do you own a beard?


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## sim667 (Feb 17, 2016)

I thought I was the bees knees with one of these at 6th form college..... In hindsight, it was a fucking terrible phone, and if biblical floods had hit, it was probably large enough for me to have rescued 2 of every animal in Gatwick Zoo.


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## Spymaster (Feb 17, 2016)

sim667 said:


> I thought I was the bees knees with one of these at 6th form college..... In hindsight, it was a fucking terrible phone, and if biblical floods had hit, it was probably large enough for me to have rescued 2 of every animal in Gatwick Zoo.



My first _mobile _was one of these:






Sometimes we stuck them in the arse pocket of our jeans and in certain positions the tip of the aerial would tickle the back of your neck.

Battery life was about half an hour so you had to carry a couple of spares around, and each one was about the size of two Mars bars joined together.


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## teuchter (Feb 17, 2016)

LeslieB said:


> Nothing much changes there then. But lots else has.



Do we still like to strut around with the latest gizmos throbbing in our pockets?


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## teuchter (Feb 17, 2016)

My first smartphone - _the_ first smartphone, before most people had even heard of a smartphone.

My dad was still using one of these until about a month ago.


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## editor (Feb 17, 2016)

My first mobile was this badboy, the Nortel m800 from 1996, in a natty shade of maroon. I still have it somewhere.


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## LeslieB (Feb 17, 2016)

teuchter said:


> My first smartphone - _the_ first smartphone, before most people had even heard of a smartphone.
> 
> My dad was still using one of these until about a month ago.


Yeah I always wanted one of those.  

I couldn't afford it so I brought an INQ instead.  Big mistake.


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## uk benzo (Feb 17, 2016)

First phone: one2one Motorola Flare in 1997 (following on from a pager that no one could afford to page me on)






First smartphone: 2001 Orange SPV


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## LeslieB (Feb 17, 2016)

2001. Wow that was early.

The biggest problem with many of these classic smart phones is that the display is small for those of us used to four inches plus. That display looks particularly tiny.


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## twentythreedom (Feb 18, 2016)

Had one of these, first 3G phone I had,  fucking awful thing


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## Dieselpunk2000 (Feb 23, 2016)

twentythreedom said:


> Had one of these, first 3G phone I had,  fucking awful thing
> 
> View attachment 83603


I had one of those. It was one of the worst phones I've ever owned. All early '3' phones seemed to be made to a common design brief- it must be pig-ugly, have a battery life of 8 hours and weigh more than a Hobart M802 planetary mixer.


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## twentythreedom (Feb 23, 2016)

Dieselpunk2000 said:


> I had one of those. It was one of the worst phones I've ever owned. All early '3' phones seemed to be made to a common design brief- it must be pig-ugly, have a battery life of 8 hours and weigh more than a Hobart M802 planetary mixer.


They were so shit  3 did offers on pairs of them (to promote video calling iirc) 

Came with a spare extra large battery as standard. Awful things tbh


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## skyscraper101 (Feb 23, 2016)

twentythreedom said:


> Had one of these, first 3G phone I had,  fucking awful thing
> 
> View attachment 83603



Ugh yeah I had one of those horrid Three phones. I had one of the other models. This one:






The whole experience was shit. I also remember at first Three didn't allow me to port over my existing number from O2 (what?) because, Three.

After I reluctantly agreed to take a new number (while porting my existing one to Virgin PAYG for safekeeping), I tested out all the "3G" features which were very underwhelming, and then kept it for about 7 more days experiencing dropped calls and other tedious service issues. I returned it during the cool off period and kept my other phone with the old number on PAYG with Virgin for the next couple of years. I never returned to Three until about 10 years later in June last year.


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## Throbbing Angel (Feb 23, 2016)

I was late to the smartphone, got a Nokia 5800 in 2008 - it was too flaky to use reliably so it went back - it was good at downloading podcasts automatically over wifi, which was good, but it kept crashing for no real reason, battery would drop from full to near nothing for no reason - bloody thing






Went back to a Nokia candybar/pda(then ipod touch) combo until recently


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## LeslieB (Feb 24, 2016)

Interestingly, phones of years gone by is the featured topic on Digital Spy today 

9 Phones we all had in the '00s, and want back now


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## Epona (Feb 25, 2016)

My first mobile phone was an Ericsson GA628 in 1997.  I thought it was all a bit nonsensical having a mobile phone until I was working away from home staying in a cheap B&B and someone broke into my room one night while I was asleep and tried to assault me, I wasn't hurt (at least not physically, PTSD in the months/years after were a reality though and I would say I still suffer some psychological effects), but would have given a limb to be able to call someone to talk to right after it happened, so I went out and got one the next day and haven't been without a mobile phone since.

Got my first smartphone only last year though, one of the cheaper Samsung ones.  It's pretty decent, but the touchscreen doesn't like my sweaty fingers and I sometimes fail at simple stuff like answering the bloody thing when it rings.


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