I have a blatant historical experience on Mobile phones. During this period I had a terribly fluctuating set of interests, which kept on changing time to time. It is worth noting down the story- a travel through my phones.
Firstly, to be frank, I never imagined of me using a mobile phone. I thought of it as a luxury item. It happened when I stayed out from home, during my first year of engineering studies. While we were planning to move out, I thought of taking a land line (Did I say landline), my friend thought of taking a mobile phone connection. My stand was that it is a terrible luxury. Well, he went on with the plan, and some one in my class(I am not going to mention the name) proposed a rental scheme by which we have to pay some amount and can borrow his brothers handset. I havn’t seen a handset properly till that date. One of the peculiarity was that, I did a diplomatic, negotiating stand between my friend and the classmate. Finally, we got the handset for very fair rate. The mobile was a Mitsubishi Trium. Our next challenge was taking a mobile connection. So, we went AIRTEL, ESCOTEL(idea) to get a SIM, And the rates were so terrible, which as equal as the current ISD rates from UK to India (around 5p.) At that point of time, BSNL had a huge demand on Prepaid SIMs. Fortunately one of my friend gave it us for a period of time, which after 6 months, I got it from him for 300Rs..
Mitsubishi Trium was an amazing phone. But it weighed around 1/4 kg. It was like a codeless phone, even bulkier than that. It supported text messages of 160 chars only. No polyphonic ringtones, No MMS, A single band GSM set. Not even the good old picture messages. Only characteres can be sent, no ringtones can be forwarded. We were able to add upto 100 contacts or something in the phone. One of the best feature, that I have found and have never ever found in other handsets was the call clarity. It had such an amazing clarity without any noise or disturbances. If you believe it or not, That was the first handset in college.
My first handset - Mitsubishi Trium
I used Trium for around 6 months. By the end of this period, people started buying mobile phones. But I had a heroic connection and that was the BSNL prepaid, which was so rare, and the cheapest one. During that period, the price of a BSNL SIM in the black market went even upto 8 times that of its original cost. And people were even ready to buy for that price. And the trendy handset during that time was the famous Nokia 3310. So, I thought of buying a new handset, and I got a new Ericsson A 3618( I am not sure about the model number, But I am sure that it is Ericsson, not the SONY ERICSSON.)
Ericsson A 3618, My second handset
Ericsson A3618 was disaster, It had lots of complaints. But while it worked it was a super hero. With polyphonic ringtones, ringtone composer. Blue screen and Orange screen displays. Which people in my college haven’t seen before. I loved the games in it too. Unfortuately I lost plenty of money repairing it. So, I thought of buying a new handset. And it was the first colour handset in the college.
Motorola C350i
A motorola C350i . It was an amazing handset. Multiple messaging features, and it had GPRS feature too. With polyphonic ring tones. picture messages, emote icons, etc. At that time, to download a wall paper to the phone, it costed around 12Rs. which is free now. And for ringtones it was around 7Rs. So practically, GPRS feature was useless and not affordable. I think during this period the revolution of mobile phones happened in India. Call rates were down, and plans were filled with goodies and packs of free calls and SMS.
I used it for 2-3 years. And people started buying modern phones with lots and lots of capabilities. I took a mature stand and decided not to join in the competition. And during that period I took a Hutchinson Essar connection I used a Panasonic handset (one of my friends), which was so tiny. But it was powerful and simple.
Nokia 1110
When the performance of the Motorola set was diminishing, I was terribly in need of a new set. And I took a Nokia – 1110 which is presumably, the worlds most cheapest handset. As a handset for calling and basic messaging, the performance of the set was astounding and i used it for around 2.5 years. When I came to UK, I never used mobile phones as I used while in India. But now I think, there is a great need for me to buy a new one. And today I will order it. And the new handset will be Nokia E71. And I write about it tomorrow.
Trium was my first phone too. It was so precious for me, I used to hide it in my bag whilst in school (11th in year 1999.) I used it for 3 years and then bought 3310. Now I use a Chinese set that came with my phone contract.