Shop Talk
What's the oldest portable handset you remember seeing in use?
And by 'portable', I mean, not a bagphone or a built-in.
From my days at Radio Shack, I remember the Q-Phone, made by Qualcomm in Sprint's early days in 1995-6 - one of the first all-digital handsets. Going even further back, I remember Radio-Shack branded handsets, used through Cellular One, I believe. This would have been in the early-to-mid 1990s. They had a penny-phone, you got 200 minutes, no N&W or MTM, no data, no text, no nothing, for about $80 a month. I could be wrong about the airtime, it was a long time ago. Just a phone, a charger and a manual you could use to crack someone's skull with.
I remember the Nokia 252 & 292 handsets. I remember Uniden handsets that looked suspiciously like the Nokias, but with a proprietary ba...
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From my days at Radio Shack, I remember the Q-Phone, made by Qualcomm in Sprint's early days in 1995-6 - one of the first all-digital handsets. Going even further back, I remember Radio-Shack branded handsets, used through Cellular One, I believe. This would have been in the early-to-mid 1990s. They had a penny-phone, you got 200 minutes, no N&W or MTM, no data, no text, no nothing, for about $80 a month. I could be wrong about the airtime, it was a long time ago. Just a phone, a charger and a manual you could use to crack someone's skull with.
I remember the Nokia 252 & 292 handsets. I remember Uniden handsets that looked suspiciously like the Nokias, but with a proprietary ba...
(continues)
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How about the Motorola TeleTac 200? Analog. Better yet, the Motorola ?? Brick phones...like the ones in "A Night at the Roxbury"
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i have a mot 8000 and an OKI 700 their first Portable. My favorite is a Motorola MicroTAC 500 which originally sold for $3000 when they launched. the first "Flip" Phone
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i once had a call where a customer wanted to swap esn back to thier Fujitsu commander, it being the only phone they could find that got signal in thier area.. To program it. I ended up surfing to some Canadian phreaker site where the manual was archived.
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Hrmm... probably the oldest I remember seeing in use was my dad's Motorola flip phone. Analog only, I think he got it in something like 1994? Being that I work for VZW I finally talked him into upgrading the other day and bring him into the next century 🙂
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I do not know the model number or manufacturer but I recall handeling a cell phone that came in a small briefcase. You can still see these in old movies.
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I think the model was a Qualcomm 4000 or something like that. It was about a foot tall, two inches wide, three inches thick. The battery alone was about the size of a Sanyo 4900. The customer had had it since 1996 and only had very occassional use for it. They were on one of those old 20 minutes for $20 plans. They finally came into our store to upgrade when the battery gave out and tey couldn't find a replacement.
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