Introduction 11 years and counting

Welcome. I'm the same as you. Got my first GSM phone 11 years ago when I started my job as a cellular engineer. Funny to see how far it's all come in such a relatively short time.
I still remember that first phone, Ericsson 868, could hammer nails with it....literally. And those shiny glass-like buttons made it feel really like some luxury item. Made in Sweden too.

...now it's SonyEricsson, everythings made in Asia, but can do 10x more. Gotta roll with the changes I guess...

 

I miss those old Nokias. My first phone was a Nokia 5165. I remember how we all used to play snake and get the really "cool" faceplates. My favorite was the Nokia 1100. I hope I can pickup a used 1100 when I get out of South Korea.

Welcome to the forums. That baby has adorable eyes.

 

Actually, the original Nokia 51XX series (5110, 5120, 5130, 5160, 5165, 5185, and 5190) were one of Nokia's longest running series. It was one of the first with the "Xpress-on" interchangeable covers which of course others copied.

Another bug I have with Nokia is they are now re-using old model numbers on new phones.

Used to be that you could tell the technology or where the phone could be used e.g. XX60 were TDMA phones, XX85 was for CDMA, XX10 was for use in Europe, XX90 was for use in North America.

 

My first Nokia was the 6200, that was my all time favorite phone.

 

Nokia 5190 ftw! my first phone for 1 year. After I switched to Sprint, I dropped it out the window just for fun. THat damn thing would not break!

 

All except for that it was 1900 Mhz only, no roaming at all on 850.

 

When the 5190 came out there was no 850 Mhz on GSM. You can't roam on a GSM frequency that wasn't there Part of the reason why AT&T Wireless (pre-cingular) had such a crappy roll out of GSM to overlay their IS-136 network was that they didn't have handsets that could do "850" at that time. The Nokia 3590 (monochrome) and Nokia 3595 (color) were the first Nokia handsets to use both 850 and 1900. AT&T Wireless/Cingular had mostly 850 licenses with some 1900 licenses. AT&T Wireless tried to launch GSM with their less than ideal 1900 only holdings. There were lots of tales of people being really not satisfied with AT&T's GSM at 1900 only. Cingular didn't start doing their conversion to GSM in earnest til around 2002 after their absorption of AT&T Wireless. AT&T Wireless made a big mistake trying to use just their 1900 only plant. When AT&T Wireless overlaid GSM there were no handsets that could do both 1900 and 850 just 1900 only.

 

"Quad band" didn't exist back in 1999, 2000.

Europe had 900 Mhz and later 1800 Mhz but North America only had 1900 Mhz "PCS." 850 GSM came about ~2002.

Ericsson (pre Sony-Ericsson) had the T-120W which had GSM 1900 and GSM 900.

Nokia 8890 was GSM 900 and GSM 1900. The "big deal" was a Motorola that was tri-band 900/1800/1900. As I recall on early Moto models you had to manually switch between bands.

The first "quad band" phone that I recall was a handset by NEC and sold by AT&T.