I had one of those too!
Worked for AT&T Wireless Services in 1998, left them for Microsoft, and got to take my company phone with me when I left AT&T, a Nokia 5190:
at Microsoft, I had to provide support for the RIM Blackerry 850 & 950
I think a Motorola StarTAC was next for me:
At that time, while working for Washington Mutual Bank, I supported and used a smattering of RIM Blackberry Devices, starting off with the Blackberry 5810
and then The Blackberry 7230:
and many other Blackberries in that four year stint.
Followed by an AT&T Tilt (HTC) Windows mobile phone:
next, the HTC Droid Incredible:
I think the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 followed that. It still sits on my desk, and used to be used to used to monitor my a few security cams, and then the Wyze cams (notice the nice Burn In the lower left corner of this OLED screen)
And from there, we went from the Dark side (google) to to the other Dark side (apple) with our iPhone 12 Pro Max for about five years, and now our current iPhone 16 Pro Max
How did we ever survive without a cell phone before there were cell phones?
Now I can’t leave the house without it, and will turn the car around to retrieve the phone when I do…
Disclaimer: as I relived that journey of cell phones I’ve used, I’m thinking I might have the things not in the correct chronological order. Old age will do that…
Wow. You reminded my about having a work HTC, about 3 or 4 blackberrys and a “Good” device. When I left, they let me keep the Samsung S6. Fond memories.
Oh wow, you just reminded me that I had the HTC Touch for couple of months that I accidentally broke and replaced it with just released iPhone.
Some of the devices shown here remind me of my Handspring Visors that I used extensively, though I never had the cellular module for the Springboard expansion slot.
Yeah, I had Palm Pilot and Dell Axim with a GPS BlueTooth module.
I had a couple of iterations of the Palm devices, too. The last one I bought was a Tungsten T3. That one was dope! I really liked using the stylus and the Graffiti system.
Not a big fan of the stylus, kept on misplacing them
Handspring had a 5-pack (I think) in different colors, so I bought that for fun.
My first cellphone was the Motorola Brick in 1990. I graduated to the thin Brick and since then have gone through Nokia’s until they started to suck and then Samsung’s until they started to suck. I still have a Palm Treo and the Palm puck with the slide out keyboard. Used a Sony Ericsson in Singapore. I used some low end LG’s in projects requiring cell uplink until we designed a hat for raspberry pi’s using Telit modems.
For the last few years, I have gone from a Pixel 4a 5G to a Pixel 7 to a Pixel 8.
Never an iPhone.
Over those 35 years, I have the same phone number I started with.
Wow. You must be older than me? Same first number for 30 years. Never had a brick. Guess I started late, not like kids today.
Times were different. All I needed was a pager, back then.
On balance, did you like how it changed your ‘work life?’
It was “helpful” since I worked in IT and was on-call frequently. Made it easier to deal with issues when I was neither at work nor at home. Hated my pager.