#Throwback Thursday: 7 Mobile Phones from the Early 2000s

Happy Throwback Thursday! Nigeria’s been said to retain the number one spot as the most mobilized country, well, there’s no surprise here because ever since mobile phones were introduced we don’t seem to get enough of them. Mobile phones have found their way into every sector of the society, from the high-end smartphones to the simpler but equally vital handsets that populate our cities, and to the ones made available in developing areas. In the history of cell phones, they have certainly gone through lots of modification, but what’s yet to be determined is if most of the changes are better compared to what we had in early 2000’s or just worse. Regardless, we all can agree that mobile phones have become an essential part of our everyday life. That brings me to this question, how old were you when you first got a mobile phone? Times have definitely changed, right? Now you see kids of 10 years or less walking around with high-priced phones and I ask myself what they seriously need it for. I can’t  really remember when I got my first cell phone in secondary school – probably ss1 or ss2 then – a Samsung, that phone blew my mind, I stayed up all night putting in the catchiest ringtones – horrible ringtones that were hot then, adding pictures, going through the games, in fact, it was so cool, well until it got lost and I cried my eyeballs out. Although I’ve since gotten over that heartbreak, it still took me down memory lane reminding me of all the many hip phones I’ve had throughout the years, which almost everyone couldn’t get enough of, asides from the memories these vintage phones represent.  In my opinion, they are better than the current mobile phones we have, especially when it comes to durability. Looking back, which of these phones were your favourite?

Nokia phones

Ok, so almost everyone joined this bandwagon and why not? Nokia was, sorry it still is, highly commended, when it comes to the battery life. It had the best battery life in history, it would last a week or more without charging, and oh, if it fell, you won’t have to be bothered because the only damage that would occur was to the floor, plus, you could read the screen in direct sunlight (since it featured the first-ever monochromatic LCD mobile display), extra bonus: favourite feature – the snake game you could play all day long. We sure loved that mobile phone, guess that’s why it sold over 120 million pieces.

 

Motorola RAZR3

Before iPhone, Apple, Samsung, and the rest took over, there was the RAZR, this phone basically dominated the market in the 2000s, as they first hit the market in 2003 and became the best-selling flip phone model of all time, selling over 1 30 million pieces worldwide in just four years. They came in black, silver, and pink – my favourite, with a small preview screen on the outside, and a regular screen on the inside. The slim shape combined with the dual screen and killer camera made it a must-have, even the name was cool, wow, the best way to express your anger in a fierce way then, was by shutting the phone so hard and flipping your hair, as a girl that is LOL, and for a guy that owned one, boyfriend material 100 yards no jokes.

Sony Ericsson

This cell phone was probably among the first phone for anyone just joining the league as a mobile phone user back then. It had a 2-Mpixel camera and the colour was nice too. Later models like W900i were introduced, like the Ericsson Walkman.

The Ericsson Walkman wasn’t the first mobile phone with MP3 capabilities, but since it was introduced, it took over the popularity of the dual cell phone/mp3 player. It’s hard to imagine right now a phone that didn’t play music.

T-mobile Sidekick T-mobile Sidekick was the perfect combination of cool and useful and was the “it” phone to have in the late 2000s. T-Mobile’s devices were GPRS/EDGE smartphones manufactured by Danger Incorporated. The OS software run on the phone was called “Hiptop,” and the company eventually partnered with Sharp. The phone included downloadable software applications, e-mail hosting, instant messaging, and Internet capabilities. The Sidekick revolutionized texting, as it flipped around to reveal a full-sized keyboard – the flippy thing it did was really cool by the way.

 

SAGEM

Sagem My X5-2 or My X5 was one of the earliest camera phones to go mainstream in the Nigerian market. Recent smartphones make it look like an embarrassment to what a phone can do, but having a Sagem in 2004, when it was released is the equivalent of having a Samsung Galaxy S7 or other high-end phones today. It had a camera quality of 0.3 megapixels, yeah, it is nothing compared to what we have now, however, snapping pictures with them gave us so much joy. It didn’t have Bluetooth, wifi and the rest, but we can’t deny that the Infrared was still on point. Let’s not also forget the removable Li-ion battery had a standby time of up to 300 amps per hour, and talk time of up to 5 amps per hour – I still wonder why the overpriced phones we purchase now can’t last half a day.

EnVVX9900

Verizon enV was manufactured by LG with an LCD display, 2.0-megapixel camera with flash, Bluetooth, and USB capabilities, the Env appealed to many consumers. The face of the phone reminded one of the classic Nokia, but the inside revealed a large screen with a mini-sized keyboard. It also had the option of a purchasable web browsing plan. The first enV in the series sold so well that enV2 and enV3, enV touch models were released.

BLACKBERRY

Ok, Blackberry might not be that old,  feels sad putting it up, and never thought I would leave this ship but hey, frankly it’s going out of style pretty fast, so here’s to remind us how remarkable Blackberry actually was. RIM launched the Blackberry 7210 in 2003 as its first colour-display device. It had a resolution of 240 x 160 pixels, 16 Mbytes of storage, and 2 Mbytes of RAM. Users could open documents, Excel, PDFs, and PowerPoint files since it had a Java platform and browser. The battery usually lasted for two or three days – at this point battery life started struggling, still, it was gorgeous. This model for its time wasn’t that bad!  

 

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This article was first published on 7th December 2017

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