By Natasha Lomas, 17 October 2008 15:01
Like most of my contemporaries, my first mobile phone was a Nokia. A solid hunk of greeny black plastic, quiffed with an unapologetic aerial. The screen had an orange backlight - as did the translucent rubber buttons - and a reassuringly basic monochrome display. All told, it was something of a brick, certainly by today's slimline standards but it saw me through my uni years before inexplicably malfunctioning and being replaced, ignominiously, with a plasticy Philips which I exhausted within a year after being wooed by the promise of an FM radio.
The next decade or so would not only establish a mass market for mobiles across the developed world, with phones finding their way into pretty much everyone's pocket, but also bear witness to various evolutions of form and function - as fashion dictated, or manufacturer-cunning created.
What began life as a device for phoning people on the move is today an internet browser, a blogging tool, a media player, a video camera, a navigation device, an emailer - and plenty more besides. (We can only guess what another decade of mass market mobile will bring - though the smart money's on lashings of location-based services.)
Looking back over the last 10-plus years of mobile evolution, which handsets stand out as iconic, as something special in their day - perhaps breaking new ground or capturing the imagination of the masses, albeit for a while.
Here is silicon.com's round-up of the mobiles - chunky and svelte - that have mattered since 1996
Photo credit: Chris Beaumont/CNET Networks
Which mobile hardware do you rate from the past decade? Let us know by posting a Reader Comment below...
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
What no 6310 (or the ealier ones or the i derivatives)? It was the stalwart of the business phone market late 90's and early in the noughties (good use of nipple by the way) loads of car kits, huge battery life pretty rugged and never successfully replaced.
http://www.nokia.co.uk/A4222193
Iain
2. anonymous
What!!
No Analogue allowed ?
The Motorola FlipPhone
The NEC P7 - Best signal I ever had.
Also no HTC's mentioned until the end - you forgot the Organge SPV'/T-Mobile Vario/O2 XDA Mini-S and other similar offerings...with the original hidden keyboard. Phone, PDA and (TomTom) SatNav in one smallish device.
3. oliver matthews
The T28 still remains my all time best phone, it's a shame Sony came along.
4. Simon Allen
I agree that it's a great shame that they got involved with Sony.
I cannot deny it's made them loads of money to do Walkman phones but the phones are not as good as they were.
The Smartphone p990 has several benefits over the p910 but it's flaky in too many areas and I doubt that I will buy another.
I have only ever bought Ericsson and S/E phones for my personal use for 15 years but they may have finally managed to get rid of me.
5. Richard A
Best mobile ever = Nokia 6210 without a doubt. It was iconic, hugely popular, and built to last. As for fulfilling its core function of being a mobile telephone, it remains unsurpassed.
Interface was a dream, keys of tactile rubber, excellent call quality and a battery life measured in weeks not hours. Oh, and very rugged - mine survived being accidentally marinaded in olive oil and soldiered on for another 3 years.
When my beloved 6210 was finally lost this summer I was gutted to learn that Orange Cover no longer supplied them, insisting I accept nasty a colour screen cameraphone instead. After 10 days of negotiations they finally agreed to supply me with a magnificent refurbished 6310i instead.
Sure, it has a few too many frills and fripperies and the build quality isn't quite up to its predecessor but it is still everything I want from a mobile phone.
6. anonymous
I can think of many omissions to this list, but by far the most glaring one is the Motorola Startac. It was pretty much the top of the line in cell phones in the late 90's. Sure, the antennas were the weakest I've ever seen, but the Startac was the status symbol of the day. They cost around $300 with a contract back then. I sold phones for Ameritech (which merged with others to form Verizon) from the late 90's until 2002.
There are other phones that bear mentioning, but you have to put the Startac in there
7. Andy Fox
Had severasl of these, fantastic, Broke my Blackberry. Dropped 2 ran over one, kicked one (accidentally) into the manchester shipping canal!
8. Andy Fox
Hmm.. Blackberry Pearl, because everything else before or after is just a toy!