When did you get your first cell phone (for fun)

[DawnM]

I am watching an episode of Seinfeld and it was 1994 and no one had cell phones (George gets stuck and can't go pick up Jerry and Elaine and can't communicate with them.)

It got me thinking.  I got my first cell phone in 2000 I think.  It was a clunky thing, and I think I paid $30/mo for like 20 minutes of talk.  I only used it for emergencies.  But I had 2 babies and wanted the security of it.  I rarely used it.

Then I had:

various small flip phones

then a slide phone with a keyboard/querty

then a blackberry that had the slowest internet you could ever use

then a semi smart phone

then a smart phone (iPhone 3 a couple of years after it originally came out). I have been 2-4 years behind the times since.....but that is enough for me.

You?

[Meriwether]

I got a flip phone in 2009 and a smartphone in 2017.

[hippiemamato3]

1995 - my mom called me on it in class my junior year of high school with the OJ verdict. I was devastated. 

Edited July 17, 2019 by hippiemamato3
wrong year

[Lanny]

I think that was in 1985?   It was installed in my car and there was an antenna on the roof of the car.   I remember having to pay for both outgoing and incoming phone calls. Sometimes the incoming calls were wrong numbers or SPAM calls. Do they still charge for calls in both directions? (Here the caller pays for the call). Probably 2 or 3 years later, I also got a phone that I could carry with me. It had the same phone number, so I could use the phone number either in the car or on the handheld.  It was huge compared to my current SMART phone.

ETA: The first cell phone we got here, was about 1997 or 1998. My wife and I shared it. Like the OP it had approximately 30 minutes of talk time included in the least expensive service which is what we had then.  How times have changed... 

Edited July 17, 2019 by Lanny
add ETA

[hippiemamato3]

3 minutes ago, Lanny said:

I think that was in 1985?   It was installed in my car and there was an antenna on the roof of the car.   I remember having to pay for both outgoing and incoming phone calls. Sometimes the incoming calls were wrong numbers or SPAM calls. Do they still charge for calls in both directions? (Here the caller pays for the call). Probably 2 or 3 years later, I also got a phone that I could carry with me. It had the same phone number, so I could use the phone number either in the car or on the handheld.  It was huge compared to my current SMART phone.

We had one of the box car phones too!! 

[Noreen Claire]

When I was pregnant with DS23, so in 1995. An actual lifetime ago!

[JustEm]

When I was a senior in high school in 2004.  I only bought it because I had a growing pet sitting business that made it necessary.  I paid for it and the minutes with my own money. It was not a flip phone, it was some weird slide phone.  I got my first smart phone in 2016.

[Junie]

My mom made me get one when I was in my last year of college.

My car broke down on the Baltimore Beltway and it was kind of a fiasco*.  A cellphone would have been useful.

 

*I was travelling with a friend to visit a friend who lived in Maryland.  My car broke down on the Beltway.  At night -- probably 10ish?  I pulled onto the shoulder and put on my 4-ways.  I told my friend to pray.  (I was shaking.)  She prayed for a minute and before she finished a tow truck pulled up behind us!  He loaded up my car and then told us that he wasn't allowed to take passengers!  Are you kidding me?!  His plan was to leave us on the side of the Beltway -- without phones.  (Neither of us had one yet.  It was the mid 90s.)  I told the tow truck driver that he had two choices: He could take us with him or he could read about us in the newspaper in the morning.  He looked at us and said, "Get in."  Our friend eventually came to rescue us from the garage where my car was towed.  It was a long weekend...

Edited July 17, 2019 by Junie

[Guest]

I can’t be perfectly certain what year it was but it was definitely a Nextel with a radio “click to talk” relay. I think it was approximatly 1998/1999. It was about 7” long and 3” thick and had a clunky belt clip to hold it handy. I very frequently took it off the holster, because that was hugely clunky, and then dh would get bent out of shape because he alerted me but I didn’t hear it! 😄 We had Nextels for a few years, then flip phones, then even tinier Motorola flip phones, then Blackberries with a querty keyboard, then iphones. Currently I have an iphone 8 and dh has an iphone 6 which he is about to upgrade because he just seriously damaged his with water. 

When I had the Blackberry, I basically never used it for internet unless it was totally crucial because it was so tiny and hard to see. 

[Clemsondana]

2006 or 2007.  I had a young child, a frequently-traveling husband, and a car that randomly didn't start sometimes.  I just upgraded to a smart phone this year, and still won't get a data plan so unless I'm somewhere with wifi or we've gotten me a by-the-week plan ( the rare occasion when I'm out of town and might need maps without husband, who is glued to his phone) I can only use it for calls and texts (and not many of them with my cheap plan).  My husband and mom both will sit at ball games that we bought $ tickets to and be on their phone, so I keep the phone plan minimal in an effort to force myself to be more present.  It seems to be working - enough phone to do what I need, but it's not a constant distraction.  

[Arcadia]

1991 Motorola GSM MicroTAC international model (Asia). School of Engineering pay phones smell of cigarette smoke and that is my main asthma trigger. So paid more than US$1k for a cellphone. I tutored in college and earned more than US$1k per month so cellphone bills wasn’t too painful to pay.

All Motorola’s in between but can’t remember all models and years 

1999 Motorola Timesport L7089 triband  (Asia)

Motorola non-flip small quadband phone (still have the box in storage, Asia)

2007 Motorola Razr3 (US, prepaid)

iPhone 5

iPhone 6 

I prefer phones the size of an iPhone SE. 

31 minutes ago, Lanny said:

 Do they still charge for calls in both directions? 

 

Mine is AT&T prepaid so they do charge for both incoming and outgoing calls.

Edited July 17, 2019 by Arcadia

[ScoutTN]

2007, a gift/hand me down from my MIL. In 2010 upgraded to a flip phone.

Got a smart phone in 2015

[Laura Corin]

1997 I think. I was living in an outlying island in Hong Kong, and went to the big city by ferry to buy it.

[DoraBora]

1998.  It was the size of a fairly hefty burrito.  (Chipotle restaurants have given new meaning to hefty burritos -- it wasn't THAT big!)

[Ailaena]

High school, early/mid 90s.   My dad had some plan through his work that was $0.25/minute so he figured for emergencies, it would be great.  

Turns out that calling your friends to come out to the car when you’re picking them up doesn’t qualify as an emergency 😜

[athena1277]

DH and I had only been married a few months when 9/11 happened.  He was in the military, traveling with some other guys to Atlanta for some training that day.  I watched things unfold on TV and had no way to contact him.  It was scary because they said Atlanta and other big cities could be hit next (so much we didn’t know that day).  Thankfully one of the other guys had a cell phone and someone called them, so they decided to head back home.  

We got our first cell phone soon after.  We shared it, something unheard of today. That phone number is still the one I use today, even though we’ve moved several times since then.

[Scarlett]

It was a bag phone and I am pretty sure it was 1997.  The provider was Alltel then and Verizon eventually bought them out and so I am with the same carrier since the beginning. 

[Shellydon]

1998

[Wheres Toto]

Mid to late 90's.  It was from my job.  First I had a pager, then a blackberry, then a phone.  Basically almost every job I had after that supplied a cell phone, so at times I've had two = one for work and one personal.  I've had the same cell phone number since my first personal cell phone back in 2000 or so.  I know I had one by 9/11. 

[maize]

I got one of those candy bar phones around 2007. Yes we were long term holdouts.

[DawnM]

My first phone looked like the one above.

Below was the cell phone my uncle had in the 80s.  I thought it was so cool!  And it was $1000.

 

[mumto2]

I had a car phone in 1988.......it was dh’s and when he gave me his car I got the phone too.  I intentionally used it maybe a dozen times.......his clients used to call me to get me to find my husband.  I disliked that phone so much!

[Jentrovert]

Sometime after 1995 . . . maybe 1997 or so? It was just like the flip phone pictured above, through US Cellular. I knew one person who had a car bag phone. Other than that, I was the first person in my social group to have one. It was mainly for emergency calls. 

[Lanny]

2 hours ago, Arcadia said:

<snip>

Mine is AT&T prepaid so they do charge for both incoming and outgoing calls.

 

Thank you for that information!  My plan is for DD to have service with an MVNO that runs on the AT&T Network. So, they will probably charge her for calls in either direction as your AT&T Prepaid service charges you.

However, a "plus"  of running on AT&T is that one can call 70 countries free, so if that works for DD, she can call our Landline number or our cell phone numbers, free.

When I had cell phone service in the states, many years ago, it wasn't Prepaid, but they did charge for calls in both directions, which people here would find very strange.

[SKL]

Probably about 1993, I bought this huge mobile phone - as big as a shoebox.  The reason was that it was cheaper than calling my parents long-distance.  (You all remember long distance phone charges?)  My folks only lived 60 miles away, but long distance to call them was prohibitive on my budget.  The huge cell phone could reach my folks' area, while the smaller flippy ones could not.

I was in my first post-grad-school / full-time professional job.  Prior to that, cell phones were way too much of a luxury for me to dream of.

My first cell phone was kinda like this:

  https://www.flickriver.com/photos/madatechhc/8473483171/

Edited July 17, 2019 by SKL

[Just Kate]

I had a bag phone when I was in college, so probably 1996 or so? My brother worked for a cell phone company in sales (which was a big, well paying job back then) and he got it for me. I was only allowed to use it if there was a serious emergency when I was away at college because of the roaming costs. If I remember correctly, I could use it a bit more often at home (maybe I got so many free minutes?). Because I was the only one of my friends with a cell phone, I loved to pull outside their house, pull out my gigantic phone and call them. I’d say “look outside!” and they’d be so surprised. Lol

[catz]

1998.  It was after I got into a bike accident and ended up pushing my bike 5 miles on a hot day with a flat tire and some minor injuries.  

I always had BEHIND technology/cheap plan.  I don't think I've had more than 5 phones since then.  I've only had texting since 2013 when my oldest became a teen and needed a phone and we switched plans. In fact, we just got small data plans for the first time last fall.  And they are SMALL.  Just for basic communication and maps.  

[dirty ethel rackham]

1994.  I went back to work about a year after my oldest was born (30 hours a week) and I was an hour away from home (and the daycare), so we invested in a cell phone (a big clunker - the size of a shoe)  so that I could call if I got out of work late or if there was a traffic jam.  That way, dh could get a heads up to pick up our kid.  Dh got his first Blackberry in the later 90s.  

[J-rap]

We got a shared family flip phone around 2009.  I got my first smart phone in 2012!

[Sherry in OH]

I got a Tracfone flip phone in 2005.   I didn't use it much, but I was pregnant, pay phones were disappearing, and dh was nervous. 

[lynn]

1995.  We moved and did not have service in our new state and the motorola charged $$ if they didn't get the phone back.  It was a PIA but everything worked out.  I did not get another one until 2000 I think.

[HSmomof2]

1995, big Motorola phone. We were living in a pretty rural area, and I had a long drive to work, so dh wanted me to have a phone. 

[Ellie]

1996. 🙂

[Jenny in Florida]

It must have been 1998/1999. It was right around the time we moved to Florida. My husband got a cell phone when we moved here because we didn't have an apartment or anything lined up, and he needed to be reachable by potential employers. Once he got a job, he handed the cell phone over to me so he could reach me while I was running around town with the kids. It was a big, clunky thing, and service was pretty spotty.

[TrixieB]

2000.  My dh got it for me because he didn't want me to be stranded somewhere with a broken down car and a toddler, unable to call for help.  He also got an external battery pack for the phone - that was pretty clunky.

[moonflower]

We got flip phones in 2003 or so when we went off to college and I remember thinking we were so rich and cool (living in our one-bedroom apartment and eating takeout pizza every other meal, hah).  

We still have flip phones; we don't use them for anything beyond the necessary, and we don't text unless someone requires it for some reason.

[moonflower]

I still vastly prefer a landline at home but we move a lot and rent, and landlines are A. expensive and B. expensive to install.

[katilac]

I had it by 1994 to 1995 for sure, because I remember fussing with work about them wanting to call me on it when I was traveling because they didn't pay for my minutes, lol. I haven't the slightest idea what kind or how much we paid for anything. 

I had a laptop by, hmm, 1996 at the latest. I can't quite remember if I had one in Florida or not.  I was a very hip mid-90s girl. 

[Lizzie in Ma]

After the 3rd time I ended up in the ER all day with the kids and no money to use the phone.  2001 I think?

[gardenmom5]

I don't remember exactly.  late 90s?  2001 at the latest.   we were doing the unemployment thing and it was just too expensive.  then there was really limited talk time, unless you called very late or very early.

[AmandaVT]

We had a bag phone in the car in the early 90's. Then I got a flip phone in 96. I started working for a Nextel dealer in 97, so I had all Nextel phones from then until maybe 2003. I loved those phones. Flip phone or similar after that until 2013, when I bought an iPhone 5s. I've had an iPhone since - upgrading about every 3 years when the battery starts to crap out.

[elegantlion]

Probably 1995. I remember having to find a pay phone when I called then-dh to tell him I had cancer. I was too devastated to drive home at that point. I think he had one then. Later he worked for a cell phone company so I had a phone by 1995. 

I don't remember what kind, for a while it was his hand me downs. So I've had a cell phone for probably 25 years. Yikes! We got rid of our landline about 2008, I think. We currently have a landline, but it's my mom's phone, I never answer it or use it. 

[TravelingChris]

1999. when we were moving, both dh and I got ones- those were on Sprint.  I do not recall the manufacturer but they were flip phones, I think.  We had similar type phones until we got Smart phones in late 2010.  We have been with Verizon since we moved to a Florida island where we were having the experience of talking outside by the trash cans.  Over here, Verizon is still the best carrier for the rural areas where my dh and ds go caving a lot so no reason to change.  

[Mabelen]

September or October 1999. We had just relocated from the U.K., my husband had frequent work related travel, I hardly knew anyone or the place yet, and I noticed i couldn’t see regular pay phones. I bought one with very few minutes for emergencies only. 

[MeaganS]

2003. I was 17 and paid for it myself. The plan was $45/month for 500 mins and free night/weekend minutes locally. 

[Bambam]

Probably 1994? 1995? I didn't use it much - just kept it in the car as I drove over an hour to work. I did use it once when I ran out of gas. 

It was big and bulky. It was ugly. 

Edited July 24, 2019 by Bambam

[Heathermomster]

2001....