Remember when mobile phones were just for making calls, and how exciting it was when you could customize your ringtone? Join me as I take a walk down memory lane, exploring the evolution of mobile phones and how their transformation has impacted our daily lives. From the days of the Sony J5, the first phone I owned with customisation features, to the T68i, my first phone with a colour screen, I recount my personal journey with this groundbreaking technology. Witnessing the shift from basic, bulky devices to today's sleek, feature-packed smartphones, I share how the advent of contract phones led to the explosion of texting.
In other news, I am thrilled to share some exciting updates about the podcast! As we gear up for our fourth season, we're leveling up with a brand new logo and even teasing the possibility of podcast merch. While having guests on the podcast comes with its challenges, from scheduling conflicts to detailed planning, it brings a new, valuable dynamic to the show.
To wrap up, I delve into a frank discussion on the financial aspect of technology, reflecting on how it has become far more accessible to the masses over the years.
So, buckle up for an engaging and nostalgic tech journey!
Remember when mobile phones were just for making calls, and how exciting it was when you could customize your ringtone? Join me as I take a walk down memory lane, exploring the evolution of mobile phones and how their transformation has impacted our daily lives. From the days of the Sony J5, the first phone I owned with customisation features, to the T68i, my first phone with a colour screen, I recount my personal journey with this groundbreaking technology. Witnessing the shift from basic, bulky devices to today's sleek, feature-packed smartphones, I share how the advent of contract phones led to the explosion of texting.
In other news, I am thrilled to share some exciting updates about the podcast! As we gear up for our fourth season, we're leveling up with a brand new logo and even teasing the possibility of podcast merch. While having guests on the podcast comes with its challenges, from scheduling conflicts to detailed planning, it brings a new, valuable dynamic to the show.
To wrap up, I delve into a frank discussion on the financial aspect of technology, reflecting on how it has become far more accessible to the masses over the years.
So, buckle up for an engaging and nostalgic tech journey!
Hello, welcome to Stephen Speak. I actually don't know what I'm going to talk about today. I've literally just pressed record in the hope that during the intro song, something comes to mind. I've got a few things whispering around my brain, but I really don't know. I really don't know. Let's see what happens. Welcome to Stephen Speak.
Stephen:
The podcast Unscripted Prattle on everything and nothing. Hello, how are you doing today? Thank you very much for joining me again. I noticed I recently posted you may have noticed, I've noticed because I posted it that I recently achieved two and a half thousand downloads for the podcast in total, which might not sound like a lot, but a little owe me. I'm quite pleased. So thank you for everyone that's been listening, downloading and staying with me. It means a lot that you put up with my randomness and general prattle. Let's say so. Yeah, today's episode I don't know what should we talk about.
Stephen:
Well, first, I think I'm just going to go over a little bit of podcasting stuff, updates yeah, I'm going to change the logo and stuff like that. So, between season three, which this is, and season four, I am actually going to make somewhat of a valid, some sort of valid effort to update stuff and hopefully, once that's done. I'm going to try and produce a merch, mainly for me going out and about, but I may put it on sale with random people that are sad and would like to purchase some it's not sad, by the way, purchase some merch. So I'll let you know. I'll keep you up to date with that. I know I've had not many guests on this season. It's been partly me. Being super busy takes a lot of organization to get guests on and also sometimes, like I've spoke to a few people, we've just not synced up time wise. So I'm already starting to try and make some efforts for season four. So I'm going to go and record one on location again next week, which I'm very excited about. So reoccurring guests, so I'm very, very excited about that. So, yeah, so those things come in. Please keep listening and spread the word as well. Like things I post, share them, comment and blah, blah, blah algorithms.
Stephen:
So what I'm going to talk about today, I think actually is going to be like technology related actually, because I've been thinking about this recently. I've had a conversation about this with someone from work. It's considering the cost of this microphone. The actual thing it's attached to is white shit and it's not me, by the way. Yeah, so technology.
Stephen:
So I'm of the age and I think there's probably maybe a few years either side of my age I'm now 40, that there was kind of a shift in technology and how we use it and a massive, massive improvement in technology as well and also demand and keeping up with the Joneses kind of thing. You know, having to have the latest technology and I've always been a bit of a tech guy. Love having, like, uh, keeping up with new technology. But sometimes I'll wait for something to improve or be refined until I jump in, because sometimes the first iteration of a product and that good.
Stephen:
But the thing I'm talking about today is mobile phones, because mobile phones were a thing that happened when I was a teenager. That became okay the minute around for a while. Mobile phones you had to be pretty rich to own one and coverage was crap. So when I was probably 14, 15, that's when mobile phones started becoming more of a daily thing that people could afford. It wasn't just business users or high tech people or organizations that use them, it was more getting to the masses. So when I was at school it was about like 97, 98,. I was about 14, 15. I left school in 2000.
Stephen:
In the UK we leave school about 16, then we choose to go to college. So I was 16 in 2000, or 10 when I was 16, actually 1999. Because I was one of the older kids. But that's not what this is about. I'll forget to the point.
Stephen:
But what I'm saying is mobile phones became a thing. They rushed the market and they flooded the market with all these basic type of mobile phones. Now mobile phones are literally like your house phone that you could take outside, because house phones are a thing of the past really. Now I'm not sure whether what it's like the rest of the world. I know you still see them on American TV, people speaking on house phones. I'm not saying that people in the UK don't have them, they do. But I think it's getting less and less because mobile phones why would you pay for a line line? We've also got a mobile phone. So yeah, but yeah, an original mobile phone was pretty much like being able to take your line line out with you, but you just saw a different number. They were very, very basic. I'm not going to bore you, like most people know that, like early phones were basic, but they weren't an everyday carry, it was.
Stephen:
Normally people would take them if they knew they would need to phone someone. Like I'm going out for an extended amount of time, I may need to phone someone, I'm going on a long journey, I'll take my mobile with me and it wasn't something like my mum and dad when they first got theirs. My dad, think, was the first one to get on home. My brother was at university here in the bank account he got a free mobile phone. My dad got a gifted one through the company that he worked for, which was pretty cool, and my mum got one shortly after and I inherited my brother's mobile phone because it was basically too expensive for him to use while he was at uni.
Stephen:
But they were pretty basic. You could save a number into them, like, I think, my mum's phone. You couldn't save numbers into. It was literally you had to remember the number you were dialing, but they were all pay as you go. So it was like no contracted phone. It was like you adding your own balance to them and you had to pay for per text. You had to pay per minute.
Stephen:
Of course certain numbers were super dear and again like kind of thing like a landline with you and they were like gimmicky and Give me what job? What do you put on silence? Well, no, anyway, sorry if you need ding in the background, stupid watch or not stupid watch, it's just. I thought I'd do not to stay up or whatever, and it's still dingin. See, I'm getting older now and technology means little to me. It's laziness though. It's laziness like I can't bother to read manuals and stuff. I now know why not. When I saw my parents I was like why do you know? I want to know everything about this thing and all the things I can do. I don't care, I don't care. I've bought it for things I wanted to do. That's it.
Stephen:
Um, yeah, so my first mobile phone was actually pretty cool, the Phillips savvy it was called. What a crap name, though it was quite a small phone. But for standards then it was kind of like the Nokia Kind of similar shaped knock away to take the fascia plates off, was it? What was that? It was not the 6110 or 8110 or something like that. No, numbers didn't knock you at the time and you couldn't like customize or anything that came in different colors. I think eventually, Me can.
Stephen:
You had a phone book on it and a little like Directional d-pad button thing to select three menus had a couple of games on it. I can't remember what the games were, but there was like a version of snakes, I think, on it which wasn't called snakes, and then it was like a puzzle game, I even remember. And then there was um, there was what else was on it. Oh, there was a horoscope thing you put. You could put the date, the date of birth and the today's day, and it would give you a horoscope. Weird. I don't know if there's no internet on it, though as far as I can remember, there was no wireless application protocol. I believe is what rap WAP stand stood for, but it was like it. It was a lot. It was a, it was a lifeline, basically, so I could text me mates occasionally on it. I was capped on what I could use.
Stephen:
Mom and dad was like it's for emergencies, don't phone us like you need it, don't phone the house phone, phone, mobile phone, because it was super data phone, house phone from a mobile, and it was literally like that's your emergency thing. You have that phone, it's not to mess with, it's not for socializing with. Really, it was kind of as I was like you take that out with you and if you need us you can phone us wherever you are. And before Mobile phone, before I had a mobile phone we had, we we had something with my mom. Dad were a BT, british telecom, for all online and they had a thing at the time where you'd have what was called the charge card and Each member of the family got a charge card and had different Restrictions or limitations depending on who you were and what was unlocked. So one dad, basically.
Stephen:
So you had this charge card. It was like a credit card basically, but it was linked to the family house account. So you type the number in across the front and then you add your own like special pin code you put in and then you could dial anyone you wanted and that call would be registered and go and be added to the bill Of your house. Which was like really, really clever at the time and it was really useful because it meant that I didn't have to carry a phone with me. You know I really wanted a phone before I got a phone, but it just meant literally I could use any what I could use, it Call. I could call for a friend's house and instead of like using if they they were funny about me using their phone. I could say, well, it won't cost you anything, I'm gonna use my BT charge card. Or I could use any public phone and type this number in, type this pin code in.
Stephen:
The restriction on mine was I could only phone home my mind. I didn't have to dial a number, it's instantly phoned. The house phone, my brothers, he could phone a couple of numbers and then me, mum dad, say we're unlimited. But that was that was the thing before my what phones. That was what I had, other than that carrying money and putting some money on a slot and dialing the number. So having a mobile phone, really opened it up to, you know, not having to try and find a phone. But I was still restricted because, like, they didn't like me using it and they keep checking on my balance and like how much you're using and when I got a paper around I used to pay for me on credit as well. But you know, I can't even remember how much I used to use it. It wasn't even that much. But I can't even recall like how much I used to have to top up, but in my own mind it was less than a ten or a month, like. So what's that? Like less than $15 a month, because I literally didn't use it very often.
Stephen:
Mobile phones now have completely changed our lives. Like they're little computers in your pocket and I think if you'd have told me, like back three millennium, that you'd have basically Star Trek tablet in your pocket a minute, just Star Trek tablet where you could watch films, listen to music digitally because even then digital music wasn't much of a thing, like Napster was kind of a thing, yeah. So it's really bizarre how like this little device has changed like everything we do. Like I used to remember numbers. I used to remember people's phone numbers back in the day. I could remember my mum and dad's phone number, like the mobile numbers as well, because I kind of had to remember them because I got a BT Charge Guard upgrade as well, as I still had my one more phone, but it was the backup of the phone, so I had to like remember them just in case my battery died. So my number.
Stephen:
Eventually, when I changed phones the Sony J5. Oh, what a phone that was. What an absolutely beautiful Google Sony J5. In fact, I might even post about Sony J5. It was. I got a Sony J5, let's say again, sony J5. How many times can you say Sony J5? My dad, through his work, basically got sent loads of SIM cards. He was a virgin trains and basically they basically said do you want SIM cards for free? So I bought a phone through Virgin when I went to college and I bought this phone I'm not going to say the name again and it was lovely. It was absolutely beautiful and that was probably the first phone.
Stephen:
I don't know where I was going with this, but that was probably the first phone where you'd like kind of customise it a little bit so it had WAP on it as well, so you could get some internet stuff on it. You could customise the ringtones on that. You could actually record any sound. So like using the internal microphone, you could record any sound and then set it as like the ringtone or the message tone and it was just for me. That was brilliant. But it was such a slim, beautifully designed phone, pretty Sony I was wearing it which was Sony man.
Stephen:
At the time I had Sony MiniDisc. I didn't have a Sony Hi-Fi. Because I couldn't afford a Sony Hi-Fi so I went for an I-O-O one which I believe were a subsidiary of Sony anyway, or JVC, I can't remember. But great, great Hi-Fi still. But pretty much everything else was Sony Headphones, earphones, minidisplayers, cd players that I owned, portable CD players, so yeah, like cassette players as well. I also had Sony cassette players, apart from one that I got bought which was an I-O-O. So I-O and Sony my hand in hand. That's why I always owned yeah.
Stephen:
But this phone is beautiful, but you could record your own ringtone. So I love the film Aliens, all the Alien franchise. So I had as my message alert was the get away from me, you bitch, get away from her, you bitch. I used to go off every time I sent me a message which was hilarious until I was in like lessons and that would go off in a silent classroom and I got told off many, many times for that. But my ringtone was like Austin Powers theme for a while, star Trek themes, like anything, anything that I wanted. I could just record it and make it and that was so cool at the time.
Stephen:
But that for me was the peak of phones. That was the peak of what I got a bit of internet. It was cheaper to run as well. It was like you know, it was the time where it started to be like if you were texting certain people or certain numbers, or you could add certain numbers which became free. So I think you could text any other Virgin network person for free. So, like all my family are on Virgin because obviously my dad worked for that and they got these free sim cards, it was cheap to text other people. You could add numbers in to make it cheaper, you could add phone numbers in to make it cheaper and stuff like that. So they were kind of working on these deals and edging towards like kind of contract scenarios. Yeah, but that was one of the most beautiful phones I ever owned.
Stephen:
I wish I had one now, actually, just to frame it was a, I would frame it. I'm going to frame my mini-display. I'm not going to start mini-display, I'm going to frame that at some point. Yeah, sony J5. What a phone. Completely a nostalgia run now and I swapped that phone out for a Sony Ericsson, upgraded to a Sony Ericsson color screen. And here's the thing that will probably shock people if you're probably like five years younger five years or more younger than me Is none of these phones had cameras. Cameras weren't even a thing. Color screens weren't a thing, and my first phone that had a color screen.
Stephen:
I think I bought in like 2001, 2002, maybe a bit later, and it was a Sony Ericsson phone and I bought it on contracts and this was like when contracts were started to be a thing. I bought it on a contract and it had a detachable phone that you could buy separately, the phone attachment and this was the T68i. So Google that and look at the phone. I might even again, I might even post it. Really really nice little phone, color screen, had battleships on it to play. I think you can even download extra games to it, had WAP color screen. It was just a nice, compact but like sturdy little phone. Really like that phone.
Stephen:
Again, sony, sony Ericsson, they did that partnership. Still loved my J5. But the J5, I think, was a talking phone. That was the phone. It was still aimed at people phoning each other more than I would say texting, whereas when you were moving on it was like people text more. So it was like less to do with the screen, less to do with like actual holding your phone.
Stephen:
I don't know, that's my view of it anyway, that's how I saw it. But nowadays you can't go anywhere without your phone. I would leave the house on a night out without my phone. It wasn't essential. It wasn't an essential thing, and now it is. And I don't even know why I'm going with this. What did I start saying? What was the whole concept of this episode? I can't even think Just having phones and how they've evolved. I can't even remember what I said. Now, this is how my days been, my week, my brain, yeah, but I've owned quite a few phones. I'm an iPhone user. Now, don't moan, I have an Android. An Android is brilliant as well. I went from that Sony Xen, I went Nokia for a bit A couple of phones. On Nokia, I had that weird diamond shaped one I don't know if anyone remembers that. It was like a diamond shaped one and I got that because it was cheap on a contract and weirdly enough, you think the number pad was either side of the screen. And I've said this before.
Stephen:
Mrmobile is a YouTube channel that I watch and, if you don't hear me, he has a series of videos called when Phones Were Fun Brilliant series of videos about when phones were fun, when the designs, you know, when clamshell phones came around. I only ever had one clamshell and again it was a Sony Ericsson. It might have been a Sony phone actually no, it was still Sony Ericsson at the time, wasn't it? And that was great. It was like a Walkman as well. So that was when digital music started really coming in to anything onto phones. But yeah, the whole. What was I saying? Oh, my God, my brain. Oh homes, oh yeah, but I had, yeah, so I had the Nokia one. So phones were fun MrMobile, great series Go and watch it. I'm not affiliated, obviously. He doesn't know who the hell I am. I just really appreciate his videos and on one of them he shows like all these weird designs from Nokia and from other companies and you can see that diamond shape, nokia one, which was really weird, but it was actually quite easy to text on.
Stephen:
You wouldn't think it, but yeah, so phones part of our life now, and I must admit I fiddle with mine quite a lot, but I do everything on it my emails, I reply to emails on it, like podcasting, listen to audio books, music, all your apps Keep up with everything my life's on this thing. Scarily enough, would I go back to the simplicity of having the Sony J5? I think I would. I think I could sacrifice doing all this on a phone, but I'd have to have a tablet. I would miss the functionality of the phone, but I think for basicness, you know, if I was going away somewhere and I wanted a complete break, but you still needed something, the Sony J5 would be the pick for me. But when I put up a picture of the Sony J5, you're like that looks shit.
Stephen:
Anyway, thank you for listening to my random rambles about mobile phones. I don't know what the premise of that episode was about at all. I don't even know what I said at the beginning about where I was actually going with it. I don't even think I got there, which isn't unusual for me. So, yeah, thank you very much. Please keep liking. Thank you so much for the support and I'll speak to you all soon. You've been listening to Steve and Speak the Podcast. Thanks for listening to my unscripted prattle on everything and nothing. Please follow me on Instagram and my blog, stevenspeakcom, for updates, information and my blog. You can follow more updates on social media and StevenSpeak PC Bye.
