I've had four cell phones in my life. Just for fun, here they are.
First, the Sony Ericsson T237. This was a very basic candy bar
phone, short on features and free with the service. The service was
through WV Wireless, a company which I don't think exists any
longer, but which offered no roaming charges back when roaming was
still a big deal. The two things I remember about this phone were
the charger connector, which degraded to the point where you had
to use another object to wedge it into the right position to charge
properly, and the funky green globe / logo thing on the back, which
apparently served no purpose whatsoever. Due to the weird charger
issue this phone was pretty worthless when it was retired, so I
disposed of it.
This is not my picture, by the way; I stole it from someone on eBay who's trying to sell their phone for $15. Protip: Mine was free, that was seven years ago, it's worth even less today. Best of luck with your sale, amigo.
Next was the LG CU400, a pretty generic flip phone purchased on the
exact day the iPhone was released. I think I paid $10 for this thing
with a two-year contract (at AT&T now). The battery life was
amazing, and the phone could go for ten days between charges. Keep
in mind I didn't use it for much — the very occasional text
message (charged per instance!), some pictures, and actual phone
calls. When I upgraded I put this phone in a bookshelf in the
bedroom and forgot about it for awhile. When I came across it months
and months and months later, the thing actually powered up —
and showed a charge well over 80%.
Next, my first real smartphone: the Nokia E71x. This was actually an
awesome phone — well-built, a full qwerty keyboard, Symbian
OS, lots of bells and whistles. I think it was $149 with contract.
And I could even get on the Internet, but only through a wi-fi
connection since I didn't sign up for the data plan. And apps! There
were apps! Well, sort of. Nokia kind of let its app market get eaten
alive by Apple, so although there were hundreds of apps, a lot of
them were trash — while Apple had thousands and thousands. My
app downloads consisted of a file manager, an ftp client, and a text
editor — enough to let me write some things "in the wild" and
upload them (provided there was a wi-fi connection available).
This phone is still an awesome phone in its second life — it's been resurrected as a dedicated mp3 player with almost 32 GB of music on it. The picture here shows the phone in its new role — yep, that's Queensrÿche I'm listening to, minus the umlaut (with apologies to certifiedcrush, and others — I know, omitting the umlaut is horribly incorrect). It goes almost everywhere I go, and as an mp3 player it goes over a week between charges (which I've done exclusively in the car since the derecho). By the way, if you're looking for an adapter cable to convert the 2.5 mm jack on the E71x to a standard 3.5 mm jack compatible with ordinary headphones, this is the one.
Last: my current phone, the HTC Inspire 4G, previously
discussed. Fifty bucks with a coupon and contract renewal, it
does plenty despite being almost a year and a half old and
running Android 2.3.5. I have no upgrade plans in the immediate
future, and I can see this phone lasting awhile before I get
tired of it — at which point I'll probably root it to see
if I can squeeze out some more functionality. There's no sense in
me going into the details of Android and the Google Play Store
and such, so I'll spare you the details... this is a modern
device capable of all the trappings of today's digital lifestyle.
(Man, I should write ad copy.)
So that's the end, those are all the phones I've owned to date. Fifteen years from now when we all have phones we wear or permanently embed in our bodies or some such, we can all look back on this list and laugh.