Old School Wireless
Yes, that's a Motorola Digital Personal Communicator, introduced in 1989. I think I got mine in 1995 or so. I distinctly remember the plan we had: $25 a month, and you got 10 minutes peak time, 10 minutes off peak. Here's the phone compared to my current cell phone:
DPC vs. iPhone
The basic outline isn't too terribly different, but the iPhone weighs about a tenth what the flip phone weighs, plus, well, it plays music and can access the internet. The world wide web was in its infancy when I got the Motorola. And for a real eye-opening comparison:
Big Battery
Yes, that's the iPhone next to just the battery to the Motorola. And that's the thin battery! It's pretty amazing how things have progessed in less than a generation - I remember my dad having one of the bag phones in his car back in the mid-1980s, and that was a BIG deal then. Hell, I remember them being called "car phones"...
Okay, okay, enough with the walk down Amnesia Lane - before you know it, I'll be yelling at kids to get off my lawn...
That is all.
5 comments:
Don't feel too bad. My Elderly friend was forced to get rid of his Rotary Dial Phone only a couple of years ago, and the old geezer is still mad he can't leave his finger in the hole for the free ride back.
Man I remember "Car Phones". I actually had to pull over and make a call to a recorded safety line to promote safe cellular use in my Driver's ed class, on one of those big bag phones.
Actually there were a few bag phones on the fishing boats offshore because, according to them, the analog phone system got a bit more range, so you could still make calls further out.
I know nothing about such things, but I know I called my Boss on September 11th, because at the time Herring Spawn patterns didn't seem to matter much with the WTC a smoking hole in the ground with thousands dead.
List that thing on Ebay.
It must have some value.
I had one of those bag phones and later one of those Motorola bricks. The brick was the best cell phone I ever had.
It was analog. That meant that I could use it nearly everywhere around here. And when I got way out in the boonies and the signal strength got low, it would get noisy and start to fade giving me plenty of warning. The audio quality was as good as a land line.
Today's fancy smart phones excel at texting, but that's about it. When the signal starts getting low, it drops the call with no warning and usually no notice. I'm just suddenly find myself talking to a dead line. And audio quality? Don't get me started. The cell companies, now that they have gone all digital, just keep slicing that bandwidth into thinner and thinner slices so that they can add more and more customers. But the audio quality keeps getting worse and worse. Even the much vaunted iPhone sounds like s$(t.
Of course, that couldn't be my ears getting older and older could it?
You kids get off my lawn!
Paid $2,500 to have a car phone installed in my new El Camino.
Worked great.
Now we got shit hangin' off our ears and talkin' to ourselves.
...off my lawn.
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