Top 8 Things We Miss About Our First Mobile Phone
Everyone remembers their first mobile phone. I still have not forgotten that smug feeling of carefully placing a chunky brick on the pub table, leaning back with a satisfied smile, and waiting for the squeals.
“The new Nokia!” friends would gasp in amazement.
And I would nod excitedly, unable to disguise the sheer thrill of the fact that a mobile phone came with my job – while other mates still lumbered around with pagers clipped to their belts.
But I am very old, so ancient that first indestructible breeze block of mine had a battery life of about a week and a half, allowing me endless uninterrupted hours of Snake.
The next mobile milestone was the flip phone which made us all feel like a hard-bitten detectives on the streets of Manhattan, ended calls with a satisfying snap.
Alas many of those trademark characteristics have been phased out as smartphone giants fall over themselves to flog us newer and newer models – the downside being that phones all look and feel pretty similar these days. And I’m not alone, three in five Brits have hung on to their historic handsets.
But telecommunications provider Esendex has mined thousands of Reddit posts to discover the top things we miss the most about our first mobile phones.
- Keyboards
Although it was an end of an era for Blackberry users when the iconic phones were decommissioned earlier this year, users still pine for the click-clacking sound of its traditional QWERTY keyboard. At its peak in 2009, Blackberry owned 20% of the global smartphone market, with its ability to send email way ahead of the game.
And who could forget BBM – Blackberry’s own instant messaging service.
- Battery life
While it feels fantastic to have a teeny tiny computer in your pocket, streaming music, watching YouTube and gaming are all a huge drain on the battery. Our old phones were just that – we used them simply to make calls and send text messages – meaning that battery felt almost infinite.
Legend has it that Nokia 3310’s battery could last up to a whole month on standby, and up to 22 hours of talk time.
- Touch ID
Generation Z, who grew up with iPhones and have lived through the rapid advancement of mobile phones, are apparently pining for the earlier features such as Touch ID. When Face ID was first introduced in September 2017, the scanning technology was hailed as a more secure and fast unlock method (with the added bonus that we all felt like we were in a futuristic spy movie).
But when the pandemic forced us behind masks, the facial recognition technology failed us. Many users miss the simplicity, with 14% of Reddit users saying they would prefer to revert back to Touch ID.
- Design
While the latest all-singing, all-dancing Smartphones look like they are optimised to the max, they all look pretty samey. Gone are the glory days of flicking your wrist on a flip phone to answer a call or smacking it shut to hang up on someone, which was reflected in Esendex’s research; 11% of users miss the satisfying feeling of ending a call with a flip phone.
But for anyone looking for a quirky design, some recent releases stand out from the crowd, such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4, which can be folded in half.
- Durability
Most smartphones use tempered glass touch screens, delivering great picture quality and being super responsive, but the technology falls down on how easy it is to scratch – or worse, smash – leaving you with an expensive repair bill or having to fork out for a brand-new phone.
Ten per cent of Reddit users said it was the durability of their old mobile phones that they miss the most.
- Headphone Jacks
When Apple first removed the headphone jack in September 2016, only allowing their earphones to connect through a USB-C port, people were furious that they needed to invest in an adaptor to plug in their favourite headphones.
Six years later one in ten Apple users still want to see the return of the headphone jack. As wireless earphones become increasingly popular it seems headphone jack may soon be consigned to history.
- Simplicity
Despite the fact that our phones enable us to stay connected at all times, many feel nostalgic about the good old days when our phones were just phones – way back when there was no such thing as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik-Tok or Twitter, and no instant messaging with notifications pinging day and night. Almost 5 per cent say they miss not feeling like they have to be available 24/7.
- Games
Some phones are now being manufactured for the sole purpose of gaming – like the Xiaomi Black Shark 5 Pro, which is as capable as portable consoles such as the Nintendo Switch.
And while most phones on the market can stream multiplayer games online the nostalgia people feel for simple, classic games cannot be underestimated, with people pining for Snake coming in at 8th place on the list.
