New Cell Phone Category

Readers, I am introducing another new category to the Someone Elses’s Kids Blog today. It is going to be devoted to discussion of cell phones. (Don’t worry, parents, I haven’t forgotten about you. There will be entries specifically dealing with issues about kids and cell phones.)

Cellular phones are such a good topic to discuss. Besides computers, I can’t think of another item that has so invaded our lives and become ubiquitous over the past ten to fifteen years.

In fact, let’s go back fifteen years to 1993. Most people did not even have cell phones. Wealthy people had what they called “car phones” or “mobile phones.” (In the UK, that or simply “mobile” are the preferred terms to this day.)

The car phones were just like house phones. There was a base unit with a handset and a cord. The only people I knew who had them owned a high end Cadillac and a Mercedes.

Then in the mid-90’s, the next innovation was the bag phone. Again, there was a base unit with an antenna and a corded handset, but the difference is that it didn’t have to be tied to the car (literally). The unit was in a shoulder bag and you could take it around with you. That was the first kind of cell phone I bought.

I really only got it for emergencies because it was kind of ridiculous to lug that phone around everywhere. Also, in addition to the monthly fee, it cost .23 a minute to use. You can imagine it was not for idle chatter.

In the late 90’s, I moved on to the original Motorola Flip Phone. I think it was model 550 or DC550 or something like that. It was the first realistically portable cell I had phone since it didn’t require its own mini backpack or shoulder bag. Still, in comparison to today’s phones, the battery on that Motorola Flip was at least three times the size and weight what the entire phone would be now.

I liked that original flip phone so much that I kept it well past its prime. My friends made fun of it every time they saw it! Typical jibes were, “That thing belongs in a museum,” and “Were you raising dinosaurs as pets when you bought that thing.”

I didn’t replace it until 2004, long past when every one else had moved on to cell phones that could easily fit in the palm of your hand. (What made it even crazier that part of my job at the time was overseeing the contracts and relationship between cell phone companies and a huge corporation. The contracts included about two thousand cell phone lines. I used to show the reps my old phone to prove that I wasn’t impressed with new technology just because it was new.)

I definitely made a good choice when I switched to the smaller phone in 2004. At that time I bought an LG model. Read the next entry in this category to find out what happened with that phone.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Cell Phones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.