Every mobile phone I've ever owned #PhonesIveOwned

Earlier today I got into a conversation with Pei Chyi about the mobile phones we’ve used before. I’ve only ever used Apple and Nokia phones (with 1 anomaly on the list) and if I couldn’t have an iPhone today I would still use a Nokia. Windows Phone is more appealing to me than Android.

It’s fun recalling the epitome of consumer technology of years past as the exercise makes you appreciate what you have now even more. Without further ado, I present to you the complete list of David Wang has ever owned.

Nokia 3210

Nokia 3210

My first ever mobile phone was the venerable Nokia 3210, arguably the best mobile phone ever made. Acquired after Sixth Form in 1999, it wasn’t the latest and greatest but it was my old faithful. Since there were no apps to buy, I spent money on different coloured covers and keypads – mine was red with gel buttons. And who needed apps, when you had Snake? Battery life for SMS and Snake was incredible too, especially since it only had a monochrome 84 x 48 pixel / 32 x 22 mm screen.

Nokia 8250

Nokia_8250

My next phone came into my possession through some rather dubious means… I found it on the sidewalk, really! I was really happy to have found the phone too, since it was the bee’s knees with it’s butterfly-shaped button and blue backlight! Don’t remember anything else about this phone though.

Nokia 6220

nokia_6220

My next phone was my first camera phone. On top of that it had a color display! It wasn’t a very popular model, but it was in my opinion better than the silly Nokia 7260 or Nokia 3200 that were it’s contemporary peers. I remember snapping crappy pics every opportunity I could but everything else about the phone was pretty forgettable.

Nokia 6600

Nokia-6600

I inherited the last Nokia phone I ever used from my dad. The Nokia 6600 was a Symbian phone with a rounded shape (which to it’s nickname, “the bar of soap”). I remember checking my email with it and browsing WAP sites on a crawling GPRS connection. The best thing about this phone was the ability to play the Mosquitos game.

Sony Ericsson W810

sonyericsson-w810-00

After 4 Nokia phones I had grown tired of unmemorable 4-digit phones and was looking for something different. The SE W810 caught my eye as a Walkman phone with a 2.0 Megapixel camera. It even had EDGE so I could upload my cameraphone pics to my blog! It was also not as garish looking as some of its contemporaries as the major phone manufacturers competed to differentiate themselves with gimmicky designs and features. It worked pretty well, and was the first phone I remember using mobile data pretty significantly.

iPhone 3G

iPhone 3G

After the W810, I had fell out of touch with the new phone models being introduced every other week. It was boring – every model would have a 3- or 4-digit model number and was only incrementally different. So when Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone at Macworld 2007 I knew my next mobile would be an iPhone.

I will always remember my first iPhone with much fondness. After drooling over the original iPhone and putting up with my old phone for more than 2 years, I decided, “iPhone or bust!” So when the iPhone 3G launched in Singapore, I actually signed up for a Singtel plan to be an early adopter of the first internationally available iPhone. Mine was the 8GB black model, setting the trend for all-black iPhones since.

iPhone 3Gs

iphone3gs

Lucky me managed to upgrade to the 16GB S-variant of the iPhone 3G a short year after the previous. Despite being a minor update, the speed upgrade made the phone much more usable and was definitely worth it.

iPhone 4s

iphone4s-black

After 2 years with the 3Gs, the iPhone 4s was a welcome upgrade. I loved the elegant metal and glass finish of the phone, but my favorite feature by far was the Retina display. Text on web pages never looked better on a mobile display. Siri was useful for quickly adding reminders, but not much else.

iPhone 5s

iphone52-gray

This is my current phone, acquired in October. I got the space gray 16GB model, while Pei Chyi has the silver. I love the camera and super fast performance. The fingerprint sensor TouchID makes me feel like I’m living in the future.

Make your own list!

Have some time? Compile your own list and share it with the hashtag #PhonesIveOwned. Instead of a blog post, you could also organize some images into a Facebook album. GSM Arena’s phone database is a useful resource if you can’t remember the model number of your phone.


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