My friend has built a villa up in the hills in Sardinia and was telling me that mobile reception was very patchy. That reminded me that I had one of many of my old mobiles up in the loft so I dug it out. It's a Motorola 2200 international transportable that still works with a SIM card. For those that don't remember them, transportables are much more powerful than a hand-held portable and can reach base stations further away which is why they were much better in remote locations and on boats. The battery has long expired but you can still get new ones so just working on the mains for now. You can even fit an external aerial on them too. Just ordered a PAYG SIM card (it won't work on T-Mobile/Orange/EE/Three), only Vodafone or Cellnet (O2). I'll let him take it out there and it can become his house phone.

Here it is, very small and light compared to some transportables I've owned!

Click image to enlarge

I used to have one of those. Great for building muscles and you don't need a gym, but you could get through almost anywhere due to the signal strength.

Also had one in the car, a Citroex BX, the one with the plastic bonnet. In those days you had an aerial magnetically attached to the roof of the car. So when I purchased cellphones for the company fleet the phone guy produced a box of mag. aerials so I put one on the bonnet but being plastic the aerial wouldn't stick. The phone guy didn't know the bonnet was plastic so he tried another, and another. When he was halfway through the box of "duff" aerials he saw my tears of laughter so I thought I had best lket him in on why I was laughing.

J

I had the Panasonic version of this, I seem to remember that people referred to them as "luggable" phones. In those days people used to buy the stick on car aerials to give the impression that they actually had a phone in the car even if they hadn't got one. 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
5 x FL2 4 manual + 1 auto
Now Discovery Sport P250 MHEV SE

The Panasonic C50. I had one of those too. I used to sell them in the eighties - earned bloody good money too. Not on the phone, but on the connection bonus you got from the airtime providers. Over £600 a time! That was in the days of £50 connection fee, £25 monthly service charge (NO inclusive minutes) and 50p per minute or part minute. Oh yes, and the small matter of a five year contract. That was after you'd shelled out £1500 or more for the phone in the first place! Oh, those were the days - there were lots you could do with those old analogue phones.  Past: FL2 TD4 HSE Auto
Evoque SD4 Dynamic Lux Auto
Present: Audi A3 S Line.