- I remember it like it was, well, 18 years ago.
I had borrowed my mother's cell phone for a day
for some reason, and being able
to call anyone from anywhere gave me a sense
of autonomy that not even getting
my driver's license had.
So I walked into RadioShack, we still had those
back then, and talked to the only carrier that
would sell a phone to an 18 year old with no credit.
Sprint, $129 later,
what I walked out with
was Mr Mobile's first mobile phone.
(light music)
Straight from the Ebay box, the first thing that
comes back to me about the Samsung SCH-3500,
is how futuristic it felt when it was launched in 1999.
Sure, the display was a monochrome LCD with pixels
you could count with the naked eye, but the phone
around it, that was unique.
It made clever use of space by including
a hole in the flip, so you didn't always need
to open it to use it.
Motorola had done this before with the I-1000
but this, this was almost as petite as the Star Trek
communicator I devoutly wished it was.
Sadly, there was no speaker phone on this model,
but the Samsung software did let you customize
the welcome banner, so I was able to sneak a little
star fleet into this thing.
And it packed a futuristic feature for the time,
voice dialing for up to 20 phone numbers.
Great for making calls while driving,
which was probably outlawed in my state
right after I bought this.
Cool thing about dusting off phones this old
is that it conjures up memories of old networks too.
See the word Dual on the front of the flip here?
That means the phone ran on Sprint's digital CDMA network,
oh hey Qualcomm what's up?
But, if it couldn't find that digital signal,
it could also roam on analog networks.
That's part of the reason for this extendable
antenna here, and I remember using analog precisely
once.
A minute of staticky mestering which I heard
fragments of a stranger's conversation,
that's a phenomenon called cross talk.
But couldn't hear the person I called at all.
What order?
Who is taking Genesis?
Yeah, that call cost me a $1.29,
and I never used analog roaming again.
Now staying digital meant I got to use wireless data.
Yeah, even in 2001, five bucks a month got me unlimited
news, weather, text, and instant messaging delivered
at a, hold on to your hat, 100 kilobits per second.
And I used it too, I remember being on a sail boat
race around Long Island and using AOL instant messenger
to talk to my best friend by tapping out words
on the keypad.
And this was before any predictive text.
Why not just call him?
Well, back in these days, phone calls were more
expensive than pizza deliveries to the international
space station, that really happened in 2001 by the way.
My $40 plan gave me only 350 week day minutes per month,
which worked out to about 16 minutes a day.
I had to wait until after sunset or after Friday
to use my much larger pool of night and weekend minutes.
And at this time, carriers would fight for customers by
offering not just more minutes, but how early
those night and early weekend minutes would start.
If it sounds absurd, yeah, it really was.
And the phone calls on this thing weren't even
that great, Samsung had a reputation for poor reception
on its phones until 2004 or so.
And the earpiece on this model was also rather quiet.
Thankfully the ringer was anything but.
(cell phone ringing)
Speaking of that earpiece, who woulda thought
that this old phone would give me a lesson in chemistry?
You've probably noticed how gross this flip is,
and no, that's not something we blame on the previous owner.
Some googling lead me to a site called Polymer Solutions,
which explains that this is an example
of something called rubber reversion.
Basically, before Samsung molded this earpiece
into an comfortable soft touch material,
it started out life as a liquid petroleum product
and it's gotten so old that it's now behaving more
like a latex, slowly reverting back to its liquid state.
Like Odo after too long away from his Bucket.
So the next time someone scoffs at your new phone
having broken too easily, they say they don't
make them like they used too.
You can remind them that none of this stuff
was ever really built to last.
Let's close out on that subject,
lasting, this phone featured a removable battery.
But, as a college student I was always too poor
to buy another one, and because the pack was
only rated for about two and a half hours of talk time,
I remember spending several long calls with
the phone still charging on its cradle.
Could I be any more 2001?
So, at the end of the day I'll always carry
fond memories of my first cell phone.
But I sure am glad I don't still have
to use it today.
(light music)
but you may have noticed a bunch of other YouTuber's
posting their first phones today too.
I'll drop links to their channels and
the description, and thank them for including me
in this fun day of looking back.
You can join the fun, share with me your first phone
experience in the comments below and please
subscribe to the Mr Mobile on YouTube while you're there.
Until next time, thanks for watching
and stay mobile my friends.