Cut to flashback...I need to first mention about the land line telephone which we all were used to earlier. I went to the telephone department at Sheshadri Road to apply for the telephone connection by paying a deposit of Rs 3000/- when I was an engineerig student in 1999. I was so happy that that I need not go to the PCOs or the coin phone booths to call my friends. Now I would have my own number where my friends could reach me when I was @home. It took 3-4 months before we received this phone connection. We got ourselves a cordless Panasonic handset & I was all gung ho about this. It was the year 1999 or 2000 I think, I got my hands on the mobile handsets such as Siemens & Ericsson. These were bought by my father. And then there was the mobile phone from Motorola which belonged to my uncle which used extensively for SMSs. In 2003, I badly needed a mobile phone of my own since I had already started searching for jobs. And then Reliance's Karlo Duniya Muthi main campaign happened which revolutionized the mobile phone industry by making LG CDMA handsets available for a paltry Rs 500/-. This phone had a medium resolution blue backlight display which was capable of displaying images in grayscale mode. There was R-world CDMA data service through which we were able to connect to the internet for downloading ringtones & images from Reliance CDMA data sites. The phone used to get heated up during long conversations on it. It had a stand type of charger. The phone was quite cute & small with a nice keypad layout. The mobile cost me dirt cheap Rs 500/-
Due to this, mobile phone was no longer a gadget of luxury & even people from lower middle class could easily afford it. But of course there were expensive models even then which only the upper middle class used to go for.
Then came the era of mobile phones with color display in 2004. There were lot of players in the low end market of color display phones then such as LG, Samsung & Ericsson. Nokia was a somewhat late entrant into this category since its B/W phones were doing very well such as the 3310, 2100 Nokia models.
Finally I bought my first GSM phone from my own hard earned money which was a Samsung C100 which had a brilliant color display & a blinking LED on top which emitted multicolors during phone rings. It had nice ringtones of midi format such as the nature sounds, horse's squeaking & so on. It had a
nice steel slim body finishing with a nice keypad layout.
This one cost me Rs 7000/-
This was the cover of my first GSM pre-paid phone connection from Airtel. I still use this same number even after 8 years but have converted the connection to post paid plan.
Then came the era of camera phones during late 2004 & that was when I went ahead with the first upgrade for a camera mobile phone from Motorola. I dont remember its model number but it had a much bigger screen than the Samsung C100 & it could display JPEG images with great clarity. The camera was a basic one with 0.3 megapixel but it generated decent images.
The pic of this phone is here for all to see :)
Little did I realize that this was just the start of a never ending saga of mobile phone upgrade due to its craze & frequent upgrade of mobile phone technology which is true even today.
Paid Rs 10,000/- for my first moto !
Mp3 ringtones & video camera in a phone became a rage a few months later. the lack of it in my moto mobile phone was pinching enough for me to go for a new phone very soon. In 2005 I went for Sony Erricson K500i camera phone which captured decent videos. It supported mp3 ringtones & very nice call recording capabilities.
I paid Rs 6,500/- for this one. It was a very sleek mobile with nice 3D games & a video camera for the first time in my case.
This was the phone which I used when I got engaged :). Needless to say that it had great battery backup which enabled me to talk endlessly with my spouse for hours together.
Just before marriage around November 2005, smartphones were round the corner. Nokia had introduced its first smartphone Nokia 3650 which was a rage among people. I soon switched over to a used handset of Nokia 3660 which was the second smartphone from Nokia which had a huge screen & keyboard layout. My friends used to call it the Brick phone :)
The best thing about the smartphone was that you could extent its capabilities by installing software available on the internet. Due to its large displays viewing photos, videos & SMS messages on it was a delight. Also installed an mp3 player, movie player on it. I listened to mp3 songs on this phone for the first time ever. I paid Rs 4000/- for this one for a used handset.
Then came the shortcomings of this phone which I realized slowly.. The smartphone OS symbian was highly unstable causing phone hangs & crashes often. Also it supported external memory only up to 256 MB. Due to its large display the battery used to get drained very early which was a major problem.
In late 2006, I was forced to switch to a new mobile phone again. This time it was the Nokia 5200 XpressMusic. It was an excellent phone with mp3 music playback capability with 2 GB external memory card support. Excellent design with external keys for controlling music.
To be continued.... stay tuned !
Coming up...
Nokia 5700
Nokia 5800
& finally the almighty Nokia N8 :)
