The snap of a clamshell

liked the flip-phones with clips to hang them on your belt. no pockets needed. like a pager

Microsoft is now the architect of a lot of shit. But the Windows Phone systems were surprisingly good, and a competitive alternative to iOS and Android. Even using Internet Explorer for its browser wasn’t so bad, since it was the late years of the browser when they understood standards compliance was critical, and followed them entirely.

Its moderate success in outer regions was delivered as an overpromise that lead to Windows 8 as a very “fullscreen touchscreen” OS, so it especially sucks that its follow-on legacy was so tarnished.

I still sometimes think about my Nokia Lumia 730, my first smartphone. It was an absolute joy to use. The live tiles which was implemented so badly in PC looked so cool on phone.

Windows phone was light and fluid unlike the bloated Touchwiz most people used on their Samsungs those days. Things weren't always rosy though, I used to wait for turns to get my hands on my friend's android just so I could play the multiplayer games which didnt have a port. Never could follow the latest trending photo filter app , i think one was name prisma. Now I think it was probably for the best.

Held on to it as much as I could but with the app ecosystem not expanding and several services limited to just Android and IOS, I had to give it up.

My htc hero had a track ball. Peak android right there. Also literally the first android in the US if I recall correctly.

My Nexus 4. Great phone! I regret giving it away after I broke the screen for the second time by stupidity. It was light, fast and beautiful

Nokia n900. It was everything a smart phone should have been in the first place.

I still have, in my little nostalgia cash box, a Nokia phone from the early 2000s that has Nokia Bowling on it. Doesn't have an adapter, but I'm not letting that phone go.

I reminisce about the time when I would get a new phone and then spent a whole day going through the settings and tweaking stuff.

Setting up a new phone now is arguably easier and faster but also just boring

I miss my old Nokia 6800 Typing was so nice on that phone.

I sometimes wish I had my old nokia. the indestructible brick one.

mostly because i fucking hate smartphones and the always-online-ness.

Nope. I never really got into phones. The only reason I bought my smartphone, is because society demanded it. You can't access many things without one.

My first and only smartphone is an iPhone 16, all the previous cellphones were cheap dumbphones for about $20. If possible, I prefer using email and a PC browser, because desktop computing is my natural habitat.

Phones suck. I have to pay a subscription for something that I don't like using, and barely touch most weeks.

Rip helio ocean, dual slider t9 and keyboard

It was such a simple yet fun device. It had really good sound and an equaliser, which was special at the time. Played loads of music on it. Great battery life too. No WiFi, but honestly, that might be a plus nowadays.

I always wanted the "phone" John Connor used in T2 to hack the ATMs

Atari Portfolio

My Nexus 6P with the finger print sensor on the back. It supported gestures on the fingerprint sensor too, so you could unlock it and then swipe up or down to do an action. I had down swipe as pull down the notification shade, so could check notifications without even touching the screen.

Not as old, but I miss using my Essentials PH-1. It had stock android instead of a carrier or maker version of android and some really cool features.

The add-on possibilities looked good, since it had two power pads on the back with a magnet, and wireless USB interface.

You could mag click on adapters to add hardware.

I had the 360 video camera add on, and the company folded before I had a chance to purchase the audio DAC headphone add on.

It was a terrible games machine, it was a terrible phone, but it was weird and interesting, the Nokia N-Gage

Loved that weird thing

My old Motorola Razr. I used to like flipping it open like a Star Trek communicator, but it was also just a cool little phone.

When I was a little 1980s kid, my family got rid of a malfunctioning wall-mounted rotary phone which had been installed there since time immemorial. I asked if I could keep it and my mom said no, but she did let me exercise my curiosity by taking it apart to see what the innards were like.

I kept the dial, and it still lives on a shelf of mildly-interesting things in my house. It still spins, though the recoil speed is way slower than it should be

(I also grew up to be a phone phreak.)

Oh boy how I miss using this bad boy:

6210

Perfect size and shape, good button response, no distracting apps, could provide mobile-internet over IR to a laptop (eg Satellite Pro 4200)(speed was in between 33.6kbps and 56 kbps) .

WAP was a nonsense gimmick.

Solid phone.

I don't really reminisce, but lament having a Nokia N9 with the meego os and watching Microsoft buy the company and run it into the ground.

The phone was small, quite heavy in comparison, but the icons and ui worked (and still works) with the low px-res UI.

Yes my RAZR V3. It was not perfect but I loved it.

Yes. The HTC TyTN. Full slide out keyboard. Windows CE. Decent memory. Decent battery life. I jailbroke it too so I had even more customizability.

Also the original iPhone 3g. Still have it. Still works.

Both of them represent the (mostly) pre-enshittified internet.

The Motorola Droid. Full keyboard was amazing.

Before that the Nokia 6800. Tiny screen but still had a full keyboard.

No phone will ever work as well as blackberry 10 os did. I miss that shit every day!

Nexus 6p was peak phone.

Alot ... My lovely LG Optimus G ❤️ 😢

1961 Bell System Model 554 Rotary Dial Wall Telephone

BlackBerry. My kingdom for a decent keyboard.

Nokia 7110 because it had a spring loaded keypad cover.

Nokia 8850 because my carrier fucked up the billing and credited my account the amount I was supposed to pay for the monthly repayment plan.

Yes, all my various BlackBerrys.

Motorola Droid 2. I just miss keyboard sliders.

I actually do kind of miss my windows phone LOL

Blackberry phones worked everywhere, anywhere in the world, it was the only system that worked during 9/11.

physical keyboards were faster and more accurate.

Nokia n900 for me, circa 2010. It ran Linux (real Linux!), had a pretty good camera, headphone jack, sd card slot, slide out keyboard, 4or 5 day battery life, xmpp instant messaging natively. It was perfect. It was a little bit chunky, but would fit in a jeans pocket perfectly and didn’t weigh too much.

Occasionally I miss my old Nexus 5. The screen felt so big at the time and I loved it's sharp edges

Yeah, my LG EnV2. It was a more physically pleasurable thing to use than any phone I've had since, because I switched to Android after that. That first Android phone, an LG Ally, was kinda slick too, not as ergonomic and touch screens are a mistake, but...it still felt like progress. Things got better or more capable. I've had like four phones since that Ally, and even though they've gotten objectively more powerful as computers, they don't functionally do much more.

Nexus 5 with CopperheadOS . it was such a solid combo in terms of speed and lack of corporate bloatware. Oh, and the vibration mechanism needs to be brought back.

My touch slide. Texting was so tactile and fun. I had snake on it and one more game I can't remember. I didn't need more.

Nexus 4 was so ahead of its time and so cheap. I miss it.

I just thought about my old phone. Got a new one in May, andjust before I left for a long trip a few weeks ago I loaded it with a few movies. During the trip I realised that the new phone didn't have a headphone jack anymore, so I couldn't watch anything. It made me irrationally angry.

The Nokia 3310. It made phone calls, snake was installed by default, and it was built like a rock! You could use it to stun a raccoon at 43 paces, then make a call while playing snake.

LG used to put really good DACs in their phones. So for somebody who uses his phone as an MP3 player that can also take calls, my LG V30 was perfect.

I do miss my Pixel 5a. I think it was the last Pixel to have a headphone port. I have an 8a now and it's just worse. Effective battery life is MUCH worse and I'm not even sure why. The device itself is a little thicker, no headphone port, the under-screen fingerprint reader is much less effective, the pinhole camera is in a worse location, and other than that it's pretty much the same.

I would have used my 5a into perpetuity but the screen spontaneously broke one day totally out of nowhere. Didn't drop it or anything, it just permanently froze while I was using it one time.
Turns out it might have been some moisture problem and people online said that it might work if you put the phone in the freezer. Well, that actually did work and I used it that way for a couple weeks. I would keep my phone in the freezer overnight and it would work for most of the day. But eventually that stopped working and the screen warranty had just ended so I got a new (worse 😡) phone. But I miss the 5a...

The Sidekick II. Bought it for $350 and sold it a year later for $300. Was a fun phone for a year and well worth the $50.

I remember getting my Nokia 8210, one of the smallest phones ever, you didn't need to buy a bag or bring a jacket just to carry the phone around... Incredible concept

My Nokia 6800

I want my LG V20 back.

Built in quad-dac that beat fiio devices, and it came apart in 16 screws. Hell all the connectors where even on ribbon cables for ezpz repair jobs

I miss that fuckin thing so much.

Make that phone with a modern SoC, Graphene OS, and a pine-phone esque back-cover keyboard, and I'd be in cellular heaven.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact

Palm Centro

Palm Pre

Motorola Droid

Motorola RAZR V3M

My purse got stolen once and my Sony Ericsson T300 (and my favorite lipstick) were in it, and nothing will ever emotionally live up to that phone. I loved it and I probably love it more because it was taken from me before I got tired of it.

Nokia N9, it was my first smartphone, it ran Linux, as in you could run sudo apt install in it and yes, sudo worked and you could get root access from factory. It was very sturdy, keyboard did some vibrations when you pressed so you got some tactile feedback which was invaluable in convincing me to use a phone with no buttons, it had gesture navigation which took years to arrive in other phones, plus some games I never got to finish and now I can't play anymore.

The Kyocera Torque.

You know how sometimes you just want to throw your phone through some drywall? If I could get original indestructible model with new guts it wouldn’t even be a question.

HTC Windows Phone 8S. The Windows Phone was actually really nice and it's kinda sad it was discontinued.

HTC m8 and m9. Those were such good phones...

you can still use these phones.

i have discord and signal messenger on my nokia 7110 with wap-browser shenanigans

The awful heft and size of the company-issue Samsung A25 makes me think about just how damn light the Nokia 8210 was. Life was then simple: enjoy life away from the keyboard, never distracted, and only text or call when it is really needed.

After the 8210 came Sony's K750, which had firsts for me: it can play music, and it can also take pretty pictures. My beef with it was the charger and earphone connector, and the not-so-responsive camera button.

The HTC One M9 was the peak of modern smartphone design and it’s all been downhill from there.

I miss my Nokia 8210. I had a case for it that slid open like the one at the start of the matrix. Dropped it in a puddle one night, pulled it out the next morning, dried it off and it kept working just fine. Had no waterproof rating.

I waded into a pool with my supposedly waterproof iPhone in my pocket by accident and it immediately died.

I miss the promise of WebOS and the palm Pre series. The 2 and 3 were in the right direction, and then HP 🔥

Nope. The only old phone I'm still impressed by was the old Motorola Razor flip phone. I had a blue one and my wife had a pink one. The number of times that phone rode through the washer and dryer without ever hesitating was amazing.

My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S10. It's the first smart phone I've had that hasn't started glitching after the first two years. I ordered it on July 29, 2020, and it's still going strong with no signs of stopping. I've never been forced to do so much as factory reset it. Every previous phone I've spent the last year or so I had it trying to coax it into lasting just a little longer.

I've replaced the factory-installed screen protector and the otter case I bought for this phone once. When I had the phone out of the old case and stripped of the screen protector, it still looked brand new.

I hella want a modern Sidekick. Mostly for the physical keyboard.

OG Moto Droid with the sliding keyboard.

Brilliant design, would love that again.

I miss my Nexus 6. It was my first Android phone, and got me into tinkering with android. I remember that the device codename, relevant for finding compatible ROMs, was "shamu". I miss that big old whale

A lot of what I miss is the software side of things. Google Assistant used to be way more capable than it is now. And now they're replacing that entirely with Gemini.

No, but I do really miss the iPod Nano that clipped to my jeans

HTC Desire, my first Android and smartphone ever. I made a lot of Java applications on that thing. Maybe I should learn Kotlin to do the same on my current phone.

I still have it, but reminisce is all that I can do because I have no landline service to plug it in. It's the Trimline phone that we had when I was growing up. I think it was the one my parents previously rented from Wisconsin Bell, then bought after the breakup of AT&T when they had to let customer-owned devices connect to the network. It sits in the superannuated telephone nook in my kitchen, because, why not?

I miss my old Motorola flip phone (way before the razor) grey little thing with a removable battery & an antenna you extended... fit perfectly in small pockets that jeans back then liked to have randomly on the side.

Sidekick (danger/tmobile). that layout with physical keyboard and the screen that rests over it or flips 180° above it was so cool.

Palm Treo was also pretty nice. Drug Wars, Space Trader, and AOL Instant Messenger all in one place!

iPhone 4S was one of my favorite phones. It was around the golden age of jailbreaking in my opinion. So much fun.

If we are going back before smartphones, then the RAZR V3i was a fun phone. SEEM editing was pretty sweet. Like, why was rhythm lights even a thing?

The Nokia 6820 will always have a special place in my heart as well. It was such a perfect little texting machine.

Nexus 5 is still my favorite phone I’ve owned. Affordable, no-nonsense, and lightweight.

I want to say the Motorola Droid, but the Droid III had a dedicated number row which was amazing. Either those or my old Razr v3.

God I miss having flagship phone that would fit into my hand.

Also I miss windows phones. Fuck Microsoft, but they tried something different and imo it worked if you went in with an open mind.

I miss having my Motorola Z2 Play, with the Moto-Mods platform, as a daily phone.

External mods that magnetically attach to the back of the phone. Primarily an extra 3500mah battery, but there were others: 360 camera, a printer, 3" stereo speakers, and even a projector.

I actually still have this phone, but it has become extremely slow, doesn't get security updates, and is incompatible with lots of apps. It now lives on the handle bars of my ebike, with it's extra battery mod; mostly as a gps. Occasionally I'll use it with the projector on the wall of my bedroom; watching movies or youtube.

https://www.androidauthority.com/moto-mods-789689/

Honestly…. No.

My old phones were crap and I don’t miss them. First phone had phantom key presses and thought it was just a browser (lg chat). My iPhone 4s has horrific battery life. Next 2 were cheap Chinese phones which parasitic bloat (blu). Then I went into Xaiomi with a phone with broken GPS, and another with broken cameras. Ok otherwise.

I now have an iPhone 15 Pro. It’s good enough I almost don’t think of it. But I kind of wish I got a Fairphone.

The Sidekick 4G. I miss physical keyboards on mobile devices.

Yes, and of phones I've never had and always wanted. The phone I had that I reminisce is my Nokia 808 PureView. The camera stack is revolutionary for its time that everyone basically uses it in bad and cost cutting ways IMO. But truly the best thing about it is the microphone. To this day I am still not impressed with. Sure I'm no techtuber that can get overpriced phones but even watching review videos and using headphones in their video recording sections the sound captured is okay at best.

The phones that I reminisce that I never had but always wanted is the Nokia N86 and many of the Nokia keyboard slider phones. the N86 is just because it is a normal slide phone usually, except that it can slide down to reveal music playback buttons. Nokia horizontal keyboard slider is just a nerd dream. Oh and the Nokia N900. And the Nokia N9. I might be a Nokia fanboy back I'm the day

Motorola Razr (the first ones).

So many lol

The T-Mobile G1 was incredible. I wish they would remake it for today. A slide out keyboard, and a little mouse ball. It was fucking fantastic.

Blackberry 7230, I think. I looked up the timeline, and that looks like the right one, but the article says it was color. Mine was black and white. My mom got it for me because I loved to read, and could use it to read books outside.

Blackberry 7100t was peak. First time I watched Internet porn was on that phone lol

And at one point between the blackberry and my first android, my mom got me this phone with a built in MP3 player. It was so friggin thick, but it could hold so much music, and had an awesome camera. Around the same time, my buddy had a phone with a camera with a telescopic lense that looked more like a traditional camera than a phone.

Palm Pre. Aside from the OS itself, I miss the little paratrooper game that was seemingly, unfortunately, exclusive to WebOS.

I had an odd and rare one: the LG AX490. Most of the phone was unremarkable, other than being somewhat car-shaped when closed, but it had an innovative keyboard system. There was a normal phone keypad, maybe slightly shrunk, but at the corners of each number button was a tiny raised button for each letter of the alphabet. It made anything text-related in the phone a breeze while keeping the normal flip phone shape.

I had a nokia brick for a decade....like actually. It had fantastic games. I even got ebook (as txt) working.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3310?wprov=sfla1

J5 Prime. iPhone 6. good times

I am sad they switched off 2G some time ago here, I liked calling with my Nokia 6150 once in a while.

I had a phone back in the day where all I had to do is violently flick it abruptly to enable the flashlight. I use my phone's flashlight a lot, always have.

There are apps that supposedly do the same thing, but I've never found one that worked so well, and so reliably as the one that was baked into the phone's features/OS/whatever. All the free ones I've tried have AIDS I mean ads, though it's been awhile since I last tried any.

All the time. I'm an Apple guy, but I also have an Android phone. It's a Galaxy S10 and despite being 7 years old, I still like it. I kinda want to replace it (the Fairphone 6+ is freakin' awesome in green!) but it still gets the job done. I do miss my old Galaxy S3 sometimes, the custom firmware I ran on it. My favourite was called LiquidSmooth and it was based on Android 2.1 or 2.2 (Jellybean). It was a different world back then. I never woulda considered an iPhone back then. Now all phones are kinda samey. I use an iPhone because it's boring (it's consistent). I miss when being an Android user meant you were on an adventure. Now they're just iPhones with spyware. (They were before too, but you could do more about it. And yes, I know GrapheneOS exists and so does LineageOS — I remember when LineageOS was called CyanogenMod.)

Nokia Lumia 735, it still works but essential apps don't so I had to switch. It was perfect, reliable, sturdy, and the last phone to comfortably fit in my palm. Had gorilla glass and guts to match, took many a tumble down the pavement when I accidentally yanked the earbud wire while biking, you could hardly tell. Everything about it was just right.

One company I worked at gave us all BlackBerrys (at least those of us who needed phones). BlackBerry was a little outdated at that point but then they released the BlackBerry 10 OS. It was actually decent, but the build quality on the Q10 I had didn’t match their earlier phones. It came too late to save Research in Motion, but I always felt if they’d developed it 5 or maybe even fewer years earlier then they might’ve survived at least as corporate phones. They were so far gone at that point, though, that BlackBerry put out a press release celebrating our company committing to buy a couple thousand phones.

My lumia 950 windows phone. Just fantastic ui that is yet to be matched, 13 years later.

Yeah, I miss my old iPhone 5S, LG G4 and Nexus 6P. All of those were great phones for different reasons.

I don't miss my old Samsung slide-open phone, nor the HTC One m9 I had for all of a week before the camera was so bad it made me return it.

My Motorola T720. That thing took a lot of beatings and somehow survived it all. Haven't used it in twenty years, but still have it.

Nokia 3650 was my first smartphone and it was weird and quirky and awesome.

Nokia 6133, Flip phone that had a button which popped it open. Nothing else has felt as cool as pushing that button to answer a call.

I miss my original Motorola droid phone. With the USB on the side...with accessories like the charger that made it look like a nightstand alarm clock...

Great phone.

The samsung fliphone. I actually played some awesome games on it as well, and the ringtunes were so good, made my childhood.

Nah. I just wish I could get the phone I want at a good price. Which is a dumb (feature) phone where you can connect by usb and edit things like the calendar and contacts in a web browser and heck the phones settings and such. More importantly that it have a data connection and you could click a button to have it act as an access point and give you a code to use on your laptop to connect to it. I don't feel those feature should more than double a cheap dumb phones price.

My old slimline POTS phone is still mounted to the wall in my kitchen for nostalgia's sake.

I miss my Blackberry Bold Touch.

I've been trying to recreate the Droid 2 typing experience pretty much since getting whatever phone I had after that

I am writing this on my Bluefox NX1... Android 15, 8gb ram, 128 GB storage. 4" on the diagonal, about three days battery. Crappy sound, crappy camera, finicky keyboard but autocorrect is a thing. Bluetooth earbuds and I don't care about the camera most days. Dual SIM, 135$. Been using it exclusively for almost a year now.

I still think about the Nexus 6P. That was such a perfect phone

I loved my Sidekick 2, I love a real keyboard.

Yeah, I miss my Xperia Play. It was so damn cool with side controller built in.

I had a POTS phone that was clear plastic with a ring of blue neon that would flicker when a call came in

I miss my old moto droid x2. Right size and I never had to worry about breaking a glass back

Two spring to mind. Nokia 2110 because awesomeness, long battery life and snake. iPhone 4 because it just felt so good in the hand and wasn’t a stupid size.

I miss my old Xpera XA 1 ultra, it had a great camera and i loved the design and wallpaper even if it wasn't the best of phones.

Palm Pre, and a yellow sony dumbphone i once had.

I had one of those 3d screens. Cheap worthless gimmick? Definitely. Awesome? Also yes.

Does no one realize they still sell tiny dumb phones. You dont have to get a smart phones.

My old palm pre was amazing webos ui was way ahead of its time, super customizable, independent from google, Facebook and everyone elae, all in a sleek package with a physical keyboard. It had many other issues but it took android a few years to catch up so their UI wasn't as clunky.

S4 Mini - flagship (or slightly under) in a one-handed, pocket friendly format. I would love to see a modern take on this

I loved my Samsung Droid. It was so easy to mod.

I remember having a phone called NEC (I think) and it had an awesome James Bond ringtone on it

I remember the first time using my Treo 600. Its seemed like the future was hitting me know. It was amazing.

The Nokia 7110 was possibly the coolest dumbphone.

I think the iPhone X may have been peak smartphone in terms of aesthetics, but I’ve never tried a folding phone.

Pixel I have is still small. I miss the headphone jack of the original one though.

Oh, yeah. I really miss how painful dialing anything on a rotary phone was.

My favorite ever was the Samsung Uproar. Also my first portable mp3 player and while it had shit storage, I had my favorite playlist always at the ready which was so novel at the time. The backlighted screen felt so premium then.

every day, then I remember how little features they have and I stop reminiscing. I think if I was to go back, it would just be a landline and I wouldn't bother with anything prior to smart phones. The only redeeming factor about early cellphones was the slide, I would love a current day model with a slide on it.

If smartphones where universally and unequivocally banned tomorrow I'd be happy about it. I don't think the pros have outweighed the cons.

I'm basically still looking only for an improved version of the Nexus 5x par excellence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_5X

Any of my phones with a flip out keyboard... those were the best. I wish I kept them...

Sony Xperia Z5 compact My previos phones couldn't compete with its quality overall. Last really compact phone I owned. Feels like peak smartphone to me, but certainly a lot of nostalgia.

i keep every phone i've ever owned in a box. rip xperia z1 compact, gone too soon when i accidentally put it in a jacket pocket on a -35°C day and the battery froze...

Sony Ericsson k700i… what a Phone. And my iPhone 4. Had that thing for nearly 7 years

I miss the HTC Hero, and my ancient Motorola Razr.

I was an iPhone user for most of 12 years. None of them.

The xperia play was such a cool phone. I had a few pre-Android Sony phones that were great too. We don't really get fun designs anymore which sucks.

No. They've all been trash.

Seeing a lot of love for the RAZR, but I loved the Motorola SLVR. Perfect size, incredible antenna.

I loved my Siemens SL55 which came with a camera attachment! The slide out pebble design was so new when it was first released.

My Note 10+ is cracked, glitched out, usb-c port no longer works, but damn if it wasn't the perfect phone. The only other phone that I felt this level of attachment too was my Moto droid 3 with the sliding keyboard

Pre smartphones: I loved my Nokia 5310 xpress music phone. It was so slim and small and at that time, became my mp3 player so I didn't need a dedicated mp3 player. I definitely reminisce about having a small phone again.

Post smartphone: probably nexus 4a. Good smallish size and still had a headphone Jack. And it ran fine. I only replaced it last year (or year before?) because it was having difficultly charging and it no longer received security updates. I honestly feel like the 9a was kind of a downgrade because of how shit the in screen fingerprint sensor is compared to the external on the 4a.

Nooooo, because that would be weird. Like reminiscing on an old pair of pants I used to wear or something. Your stuff isn't your friends