Personally I think the ZenPhone 9 series looked very sleek and cool - especially the in red colour choice.
My razr. God I miss that phone.
Iconic. That flip open/snap shut feeling. Insanely thin at the time.
The V3i, I paid full price for that phone when it came out. I modded that thing as much as I possibly could!
Yes! I had the candy bar version, the Slvr.
It scratched that cyberpunk itch.
And, yeah, I used to use one like that.
And you could knock a motherfucker out with one! Like in 12 Monkeys where Bruce Willis beats a pimp to death.
The duck phone. The quack when you got a call was annoying, though.
LG Chocolate! I had the white one. It did everything I needed, supported custom ringtones, had paid ring back tones (remember those?), played music, etc. The best thing was being able to text with one hand while not having to look at what you’re typing. Hopefully it’s not nostalgia affecting me with this phone, but it ran flawlessly for years before I eventually upgraded to a Motorola Droid back in the day.
I miss fun phones. I can either have a folding slab, a black slab, or a different slab that comes in other colours. 🥲
Oh I fucking hated ringback tones. What a goddamn terrible idea.
Totally agree! If they came back I’d immediately hang up if I heard some annoying ass song instead of a phone ringing.
But a young me really liked them and bought a few!
My old mate’s phone stuck with me for decades. Not sure if it’s pleasing but sure is something
Imagine typing a text message with that
Utter nightmare. It doesn’t even lit the available letters in the dark. It’s just bad
I loved my Nokia 7380 art deco phone. It had a screen hidden behind a mirror surface, a rotary dial instead of buttons and even a little fabric flap like a pair of jeans or something. It was so widely different to anything else out there. I wish it still worked on contemporary wireless services, but alas. It was a pain to text on but with voice messages becoming a thing, it didn’t matter too, too much. I would probably go back if I could.
Yes! When I saw this post the Nokia 7380 was instantly where my mind went. I had the exact same phone, it was rad.
I remember at the time it was referred to as a “lipstick style” case. Loved that thing. I still have it in a box of old electronics somewhere, been thinking about digging it out and seeing if I could get it working again but assumed it wouldn’t on the current cellphone frequencies. I stopped using it when I got the original iPhone at release, so that was 18 years ago I guess. Haven’t not had an iPhone of some variation since.
The simplicity of it is what I always loved about the form factor. Yeah, it sucked for texting but maybe I shouldn’t be writing long texts nowadays anyway. It was fine if you are just replying with a couple words to a text. That reflective one way mirrored screen, real leather and simplicity of the buttons was a great mix of form and function for me at the time.
Your picture didn’t load for me so I am attaching my own;
The Nokia “fashion” line had some interesting designs
More phones should come with fabric flaps ‼️
The Samsung U600 was stylish as hell.
Motorola g8 plus. The photos online do no justice, you need to hold the phone and see it. It had a shiny case, sort of metallic, sort of iridescent, it gave the impression of being made of thick glass over metal or something. The only phone I never wanted a case for, I only used transparent ones for it because nothing out there could look better than the phone itself.
If it weren’t for a forced upgrade to 5g network in my country I’d still be using it.
Edit: here, I’ve made a gif of it. It still doesn’t look as good. The camera doesn’t get the change of color to purple, and the gradient from dark to light gets lost. The reflection on the surface also throw the camera off. But all that said, it’s better than a still photo.
Nokia Lumia series. It is a shame that they did not sell
Loved my Lumia 920 back in the day. A phenomenal phone featuring a fun user experience with the Live Tiles. It was a great phone if you didn’t like apps.
Microsoft gave up too soon. Android was also shit at the start, it only became good around 4.0
Ah the soap boxes
This was my favorite phone I’ve ever had. All metal case, big front facing speakers, slim form factor. Apparently according to this article the processor was bad and the camera wasn’t great but I didn’t notice or care. I never bothered with Bluetooth speakers with this thing because it sounded great and it was waterproof. It also had a radio tuner built in that you could use with wired headphones acting as the antenna which I used a surprising amount when waiting in places with poor cell service and at least once trying to get weather updates during a bad storm. I wish more phones went with just weird features like this.
The original HTC Incredible. Comparatively speaking, it was a very modern looking phone. The back was the thing that people noticed. It had a weirdly shaped battery cover back. The physical interface was pretty great and it included an optical cursor or whatever you want to call it.
modern phone gripe
It could be operated with one hand whether you’ve got big hands or small hands. I hate the fact that everything now is available only in phablet and bigger phablet.
And without user swappable batteries. Ugh.
The OG Motorola Razr was the most aesthetically pleasing phone I ever remember. Shit was like TOS Star Trek’s communicator thingy.
Dual slide helio ocean, t9 and hardware keyboard on different slide outs
Probably a red Blackberry Pearl Flip. One of the last phones I had that wasn’t a featureless black slate covered in rubber.
My old Motorola RAZR from the mid-aughts.
