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Home > Off Topic > Going Old School - Giving up the smart Phone |
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dorsetfreelander Member Since: 20 Jul 2013 Location: Dorset Posts: 4353 |
Does two tin cans and a length of string count in this thread? 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
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14th Sep 2015 3:52 pm |
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dunkley201 Member Since: 09 Jul 2011 Location: Lincolnshire Posts: 2739 |
Without doubt. Don't forget to keep the string tight! 10MY (Sept 09) TD4 HSE Auto in Stornoway Grey (Now Gone)
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14th Sep 2015 3:57 pm |
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Steve D Member Since: 19 Jan 2013 Location: Essexshire Posts: 4102 |
After buying my second phone, I got to learn how the fledgling mobile phone industry worked and I started buying and selling secondhand mobile phones. It was a real earner! In those days, the contracts and pricing were similar on both networks - Vodafone and Cellnet. £50 connection fee, £25 monthly charge plus calls at 50p per minute with the standard contract length being.......5 years! You could pick up phones that were barred for bad credit or being registered as stolen on one network and legally use them on the other network. Sometimes you could make a couple of hundred quid on the phones but most dealers were happy to break even because the 'real' money came in the form of a dealer connection fee. Sometimes as high as £675. Connect just one of them a day and you really were in the dosh. On my best ever day I connected 4 phones and in my best week 9 phones - that was a lot of dosh for basically no effort back in 1990! Holidays, cars, and a Yuppy lifestyle followed. Many times you would just connect someone up on the rival network because they had 'knocked' their previous one. Loadsa money! You were not allowed to connect directly with a network like you can now so had to go through various network providers. There were also 'special' network numbers issued to phone repair companies that could be programmed into any phone (for test purposes - no swapping of SIM cards in those days) and you could make calls at their expense. Programme one of those numbers into an old phone and they were worth a nice few bob. 'Basher' phones they were known as because you bashed some companies phone bill! You could put the one number on any number of phones. Not that I ever did that you understand. There came a time in the great boom in the late eighties when all these airtime provider companies were being sold off and their value was mostly determined by the number of active subscribers they had. You could always tell when one was being fattened up for sale as they were taking on subscribers with little or no credit checks - even electronic serial numbers (ESN's) of non-existent phones were being allocated phone numbers for connection and commissions were being paid. Of course, any good thing never lasts forever and the market in connection commissions collapsed when regulations changed and consumers were allowed to buy direct from Vodafone and Cellnet. Happy days. Never to be repeated. |
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14th Sep 2015 4:40 pm |
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DAC364 Member Since: 03 Mar 2014 Location: Norfolk Posts: 119 |
I started with the Nokia 101 in 1992, then an Ericcsson 628 before the T39. Life was so simple! Td4 XS manual, Orkney Grey, MY2014 |
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14th Sep 2015 5:16 pm |
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Steve D Member Since: 19 Jan 2013 Location: Essexshire Posts: 4102 |
Interesting link here - popular phones in the eighties with today's equivalent price. I had nearly all of them.
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14th Sep 2015 6:43 pm |
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The Doctor Member Since: 09 Jul 2010 Location: Gallifrey Posts: 4615 |
This was my first phone when I was at school. Had it on pay as you go with one2one. It made calls and sent texts and had about 4 ringtones all of which sounded like a tune from an Atari video game
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14th Sep 2015 8:42 pm |
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Spoke Member Since: 01 Oct 2014 Location: Gloucestershire Posts: 10 |
I remember being issued with a Sony Ericsson T68i which was one of the first mobiles with a colour display and saying to everyone - why on earth would anyone need a phone with a colour screen? |
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15th Sep 2015 7:07 am |
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tenet Member Since: 23 Jul 2009 Location: cotswolds Posts: 1081 |
I also had a car phone as described by DorsetF above. It was in the days of analogue and somehow my number was hijacked and from 5pm on a Friday until 7am on the Monday the phone was constantly used to call Islamabad et al. The upshot was a £6,000 bill . Thankfully Vodaphone waived all the charges.
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15th Sep 2015 8:01 am |
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dorsetfreelander Member Since: 20 Jul 2013 Location: Dorset Posts: 4353 |
Back in the early 90's my wife had had about 10 years off work having kids etc and went back to work. One day she said "I need to ask you something very personal and promise you won;t tell anyone?". I wondered what was coming, the question "What exactly is a Filofax?" 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
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15th Sep 2015 8:37 am |
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Steve D Member Since: 19 Jan 2013 Location: Essexshire Posts: 4102 |
You were cloned. In the days of analogue, two things were needed to make a phone work. An active phone number, which was relatively easy to programme into most phones, and an ESN - elecronic serial number. That was built into the phone itself and was the analogue equivalent of a modern IMEI number. To clone a phone was relatively simple if you had the right gear. They just used to erase the original ESN in the phone and reprogramme the phone with an active ESN and phone number. I used to get my carphones cloned to my hand portable phones for convenient hands-free operation in the car by having, say, my Motorola portable phone ESN blown into a NEC carphone. No built-in bluetooth in those days. |
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15th Sep 2015 10:16 am |
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pcheaven Member Since: 19 Jan 2010 Location: Kent Posts: 1459 |
just picked up a Motorola Startac 130 GSM, and a Motorola 8700 GSM - real old school.
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17th Sep 2015 9:19 pm |
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