What was the first cell phone you ever had?

Motorola Piper from Cell One.

$20/mo (or was it $30?) gave me 30 local min and free nights and weekends -- back when nights started at 5:00pm.

Now I've got a Sanyo 5300, Sprint service.

 

Motorola DPC550 w/ LA Cellular in 1996. Nightowl Value which was $29.99/month 30 minutes peak and 150 offpeak. That was a smoking deal at the time.

 

1997, a 1900MHz-only Qualcomm with a thumbwheel on the left with Sprint PCS. At the time I was working at a place which was a reseller for them, and we got a crazy amount of minutes, I believe 1500 day, and 3000 n/w, for $15.47 a month. At that price, I didn't mind only having service in the city and on major highways. Once they cut our reseller deal I dropped Sprint like a hot potato (which may or may not have been easier to place a call with)

 

1999- Nokia 5120 on Comcast Metrophone the night before the official switchover to SBC Cellular One (the sale of Comcast Metrophone to SBC had already been made). I had a $30/200 + $5 for N/W, which was eliminated for new customers the next day and replaced with $35/225 + $10 for N/W (I just made it).

It was a nice phone and definitely the big thing back then...EVERYBODY had a Nokia 5100 series and most people in my area had Comcast. They definitely had more subscribers than Bell Atlantic in Philadelphia, but they went downhill after the takeover and subsequent name change to Cingular.

 

Cool Thread

First Phone was a Nokia 5130* (Single-Band GSM 1800 Mhz) for use on E-Plus Mobilfunk Germany, got it in October 2000. *The 5130 is the European version of the North America Nokia 5180 & 5190 series.

Now use a Sony Ericsson T300 on Virgin Mobile UK, but will switch to Vodafone UK in the next 2 weeks

 

My first cell phone was an OKI 900 from GTE Mobilenet in 1992. In 1994 I registered this phone on SK Telecom (NAM2). The keypad wore out after over 15,000 minutes. OKI fixed it for free even though the warranty had expired.

After another 15,000 minutes, the keypad wore out again. I replaced it with a Nokia 252 on Verizon and a Samsung SCH-4400 on SK Telecom.

 

1994: ATT. Ericsson (one of the first digital models) It looked like a black brick with large whip antenna.
Since then:

Nokia's (various models)
LG TM-510
Current: Panasonic Allure, along with my Yahoo discussion group: PanAllure

 

1998. sprint pcs. i had one of those huge qualcomm phones (w/ the shuttle on the side) that they were promoting heavily at the time. like someone said earlier, the battery on that phone is bigger than my current phone! i was a freshman in college at the time and everyone in my dorm had that phone, so i naturally had to have one as well. i was one of the "cool kids!" oh, and another sprint phone that i used to see in the dorm was a sony, it was the small boxy one with a flip microphone. since then: samsung sgh 2000 w/ sprint, nokia 5185i w/ qwest, currently SE T68i w/ TMo.

 

1997. Cellular One. Analog Startac. The first grey one that came out. I dropped 3 bills on that thing, pretty expensive for a college kid. I just wanted to show off. $13/mo. .35cts/min. And 3 ct weekend minutes for the first year! The only 2 year contract I've ever signed.

 

Make: AT&T (analog only...of course)
Model: Can't remember
Year: 1994
Service: Cellular One (austin, Texas)
plan: 120 anytime minutes for $30 i think.

Got it for my birthday because I was commuting to and from san marcos 5 days a week usually in the middle of the night.
I stll have the phone. it doesn't power up and it rattles when you shake it. It was a tough little brick.

===
topenga

 

I could have used a cell phone during my many late night drives between Austin, San Marcos, and SA Actually those drives wer eusually around 5 or 6 am when I woke/sobered up.