- The world of 10 years ago can sometimes feel
impossibly recent, even idealic compared
to what you've got today.
But like an old TV show that's mostly held up well,
the illusion crumbles when technology
comes into the picture.
I'm Michael Fisher and 10 years ago
the phone housed in my holster was the HTC Mogul.
This is the Mr. Mobile Retro Review
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(uptempo music)
So this big 'ol meatball was more than just old,
it was in fact one of the last phones of its kind.
Behind the aspirational names, the carriers,
and marketers gave it, Mogul, Titan,
this was the PPC 6800.
An iteration on an idea that had been around awhile.
In an era when four out of five Americans
were still buying dumb phones, this was a pocket PC,
and it lived up to its personal computer namesake.
For better or worse.
Donning my rose tinted glasses for a moment,
I still remember the smug satisfaction I got
from loading full websites on this thing
at a time when commercials had convinced many
that the only phone capable of such things
had an Apple logo.
And the contrarian in me, appreciated how the Mogul
bucked the minimalist trend that was just then taking hold.
In 2018, you're lucky to get a dedicated
camera key on your phones.
In 2008, this thing had 19 hardware buttons on its casing.
Not counting the pop-out keyboard.
(snickering) You turned on wifi with a switch.
There was a jog dial for Blackberry converts,
a D-pad for dumb phone ex-pats, a touchscreen
for everyone else, and a stylus
to hit the tiny targets on it.
That display was resistive, super scratch prone,
and less than three inches across, but I guess
with double status LED's, who needs a screen, right?
Just like a PC of the time, there was plenty of IO,
mini-USB, trans-flash, and an IR port that today
is almost as rare as the removable battery.
I got to know that battery pretty well
because I frequently had to swap it for a fresh one.
Endurance was not great and since there was
no fast charging to speak of, carrying a spare was wise.
Considering the retail price of this thing at the time,
that was a big disappointment.
And for all the capability of Windows Mobile,
it was effectively eight years old when this phone launched,
with parts of its code base dating all the way back
to Windows CE in 1996.
Yeah, it was powerful but it's instability
and a very sluggish interface made it hard
for me to avoid the siren song of the iPhone 3G,
launched in July of 2008.
That phone is the one I left the Mogul for
and I was hardly alone.
By the end of 2009, Microsoft had lost almost a third
of its smart phone market share.
While Apple's grew by 32%.
I ended up leaving the iPhone pretty quickly,
but not so I could return to Windows Mobile.
By then, Palms Web OS, Google's Android,
and Microsoft's own Window's Phone 7 Series
were so much more usable than the old Windows Mobile
that returning just wasn't in the cards.
(uptempo music)
I do have fond memories of the Mogul.
Its GPS navigated me from Virginia to Boston
to start my first career out of college,
its big keyboard kept me in touch
with the friends I left behind, and its
two megapixel camera documented the transition
well, as best it could.
But remember, nostalgia is an unreliable narrator.
I was active on Howard Forums at the time
and here's what I had to say about the Mogul
shortly after leaving it in 2008.
"It could do everything but it could do nothing well.
Crashed all the time and I had to soft reset it
at least once a day to keep the damn thing working.
GPS wouldn't get a fix, OS was ugly,
lagging, prone to memory leaks.
What a disaster of a phone."
Man, nothin' like a firsthand account
from past you to slap you outta that sentimental haze, huh?
So, I don't mourn the Mogul as I do devices
like the Palm Pre that died before their time.
And I'm really not sorry that the iPhone's debut
hastened the demise of Window's Mobile
because it made room for so many better things.
I don't much like ending on a cliche,
but this video seems to need it.
Somethings should indeed stay in the past.
Things that also belong in the past,
terrible Internet ads on your smart phone or tablet.
They eat up your data, burn your battery faster,
and they can even open you up to viruses.
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Until next time, thanks for watching
and stay mobile my friends.