Mobiles and pricing plans in the late 90s / early 00s?

Mine was the Ericsson T28 in 2000 was on the one 2 one network in 1999 and then a few years later I upgraded to the Nokia ngage in 2004
 
Mines a Motorola A130 Vodafone PAYG , then I got a Sony Z1 Plus shortly after , this was circa 1998 or 1999 when I was in college.
 
I got my first mobile in 1993 (I was 23 at the time) It was this beast, the Ericsson EH237

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I do remember getting a Ericsson GF 768 at some point. However the highlight of the late 90s for me was the T28s, pretty cool connected to a Psion Revo via IR link, and sending an Email!!

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My first was a Philips Savvy in 1999. Went from that to a Motorola V50, then through a bunch of weird and wonderful Nokia phones (in no particular order, as I CBA to look up when they all came out):

7370
N80
E60
6820
N91
8800
E90

Also had a Sony Ericsson S700, T630 and W810.

Growing up, I was fortunate that my dad worked in the industry as a sales manager, so we got a lot of phones. Nokia, in particular, used to just had them to him on a regular basis. They were always "on loan", but very few ever went back. My brother had a load too, including an NGage, N95, 7600, N90, E61, and N800. Looking back, there were some seriously weird designs :cry:

IIRC, the W810 was my last "dumb phone". I moved from that to an Xperia X1, bounced between Windows Phone and iPhone for a few years, then settled on Android.
 
I remember the old man having a BT thing, that he turned on and off and it topped up by a tenner. I also remember paying 10p per text!

Remember getting the N95, what a game changing phone that was.
 
All the cool kids had a 3210/3310 or an 8210 (seriously cool kids) at my school, but my parents refused to get me a phone so I collected the ring pulls off of Coke cans (I didn't even drink coke), sent my 30 quid cheque off and ended up with an Ericcson A1018s as my first phone on One2one :D

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Nobody had contracts, we were all on pay-as-you-go, mostly the BT Cellnet £10 per month (?) top Genie sim card with unlimited texts.
 
I was on a one2one weekends and evenings free tariff. I still have the same number.

mates were on everyday 50 with orange.

My brother had a NeC P3 (analogue) which could be used as a police scanner. Pretty mad !
 
My boss had a brick which he carried around Shrewsbury - then we all had mobiles at work in early 90's - I retired in 1998 so had to give phone back so bought my own -It was only for ringing home to say put dinner on.
Can't remember what phone was but then had biggest load of rubbish ever- a Samsung Apollo -Took it clay shooting and got someone to throw it in the air and shot poo out of it.-then a Samsung Flip off a mate who was upgrading - Good lad he was as he left naked pictures of his wife on it. Always looked at female GP's in a new light after that.
Finally the best phone I had before todays smart phones - A Nokia 6630. -it's still in drawer next to me.

Ps - think I may have them in wrong order -it was a long time ago.
Pps -samsung Apollo
 
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Around '95 at a guess would have been my first phone a Motorola M300 the SIM was a full size credit card that you slid in the bottom of the phone. No idea what I was paying but I shared it with my flatmate in the student halls of residence, so we had one phone, one number, were not always together but split the bill lol
 
Got my first mobile in either 97 or 98 - my brother actually bought it, but couldn't afford to keep topping it up; so I had it off him.

Don't recall what network it was, but used to top it up with £10 or £20 cards a time, pretty sure it used to have an aerial you could unscrew... for reasons I guess. Pretty sure it was a Motorola jobbie though.
 
Sp00n said:
All the cool kids had a 3210/3310 or an 8210 (seriously cool kids) at my school, but my parents refused to get me a phone so I collected the ring pulls off of Coke cans (I didn't even drink coke), sent my 30 quid cheque off and ended up with an Ericcson A1018s as my first phone on One2one :D

tmGosOa.png


Nobody had contracts, we were all on pay-as-you-go, mostly the BT Cellnet £10 per month (?) top Genie sim card with unlimited texts.
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Ericsson A1018s Coca Cola Edition | 20 years later sealed - YouTube

:D
 
robfosters said:
I remember my dad getting his first mobile in about 92 or 93. A little flip down Motorola called the M300 on Mercury One2One.

No word of a lie, he still has the same number. That could actually be a record.

My first was a little Sony Ericsson in about 1999. Can’t remember the model number. I do remember it getting stolen by a scaghead in the pub though.
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I remember my dad getting his first mobile phone (rectangular brick) PAYG on OnetoOne, the sim card was the same size as a bank card, nothing like sim cards of today that are smaller. And when you bought a top up voucher it expired in 30 days from day topped up. OnetoOne had a scary man's voice that after making a call would call back informing the customer the remaining credit and also said "if not topped up will expire on such & such date" if not topped up the phone was cut off until a new top up was added so couldn't recieve or make any calls/texts until a new top up was added.... Also mobile number back in the early to mid 90's all had 10 digits and we could tell who the provider of your number was just by saying the first 3 digits I.e 077, 079, 078 I think BT/O2 was 077, Orange/EE 079, OnetoOne/T-Mobile 078 and so on.... It was around 2003- 2004/5 where mobile numbers were then changed from 10 digits to 11 digits due to the increasing amount of mobile users that all mobile providers then no longer used set numbers at the beginning of their customers numbers... my very first phone was a BT cell net U phone (texts 5p/calls 10p a min to other networks & free to other BT customers) when BT Cellnet changed to O2 the prices then increased..... also back then when having a monthly contract if late paying yout bill your phone was cut off (no incoming/outgoing call/texts at all) until you paid your bill. But if you stopped paying your bill the provider would completely block not only the sim card but also the phone too that it became an unusable brick, unlike today majority of mobile providers give phones unlocked to any network that most that stopped paying their monthly bill could continue using the phone by changing the sim card to a different one (any network) where earlier years could only use sim cards of the same provider as other providers sim wouldn't work until you had paid to have that mobile unlocked to any network..... I have to admit mobiles of today are so much better compared to days of the mid 90s - early 2000's as most mobiles we not only locked to set network providers but we're also set to only work for either PAYG sim only or Pay monthly only didn't work for both sim, that you'd have to contact the network provider to have them give you the step by step instructions to change the phones settings from either monthly to PAYG for it to then accept change of sim card ( I personally had to do this when O2 was still kinda new)
 
Minstadave said:
I remember having a BT Genie mobile. The credit was stored on the phone so you could text and if you timed it right and turned the phone off it would never get the signal to reduce your credit.

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You had about a 25 second window in which you could make a call and whip the battery out back in the GSM only days of O2 as billing systems were old basically fixed line versions and the early GSM core networks often treated calls dropped within 25-30 seconds to be a failed call setup attempt, so no billing.

It also took a while for phone manufacturers to build enough residual charge into their products to enable them to send the “mobile detached” signal to the network before fully powering down in the event of the battery being pulled mid call.

Whoops! Didn’t clock this was a Necro!
 
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My parents bought me my first mobile phone when I was about 15 (so about 2000). I remember no one ever had credit so it was a bit pointless. Back then if I needed to do an urgent call I'd do a reverse charges call from a public phone box. Also used to use the National Rail Enquires phone line all the time. Was super useful.
 
I bought my first phone in summer 1995 - a Sony CM-DX1000, which was a GSM model with a nifty slide-up earpiece. I think I may have paid around £100 for it, and my Vodafone(?) contract was around £35 a month. I absolutely loved it. I was the first of my circle of friends to have a mobile, and it stayed that way for a year or two.
 
Scottish Lass 84 said:
Also mobile number back in the early to mid 90's all had 10 digits and we could tell who the provider of your number was just by saying the first 3 digits I.e 077, 079, 078 I think BT/O2 was 077, Orange/EE 079, OnetoOne/T-Mobile 078 and so on.... It was around 2003- 2004/5 where mobile numbers were then changed from 10 digits to 11 digits due to the increasing amount of mobile users that all mobile providers then no longer used set numbers at the beginning of their customers numbers
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Some interesting insights there, especially with the providers for 077, 078 and 079. I didn't know about that being separated out like that. The 11 digits thing was definitely in by year 2000 though, as year 2000 was when I got my first phone. It had an 11-digit number off the bat and I have kept the same number ever since, so 25 years now. So it might have been a rolling thing when 10 digits became 11, happening over the course of a few years, then all completed by 2003ish.
 
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