Mine was the Motorola T2288 Talkabout. It had a Monochrome display of 96 x 64 pixels, showing 4 lines of text. The built-in phone book stored up to 100 entries and call records were limited to Call records 10 dialled, 5 received, 5 missed calls only. Oh, its WAP 1.1 browser was cutting edge for 2001 too. So was the conspicuous antenna that jutted up from one side of the top of the phone....
The below image shows what the Sagem MC 3000 and MW3020 looked like. They were identical twins and were perhaps the most popular Sagem phones in these parts back then. Many people had their first taste of GSM technology with a Sagem phone. They were also the earliest set of Sagem models in the Nigerian market at the launch of GSM mobile technology in 2001. They were very basic phones, but were also durable....
Some of these old cell phone brands are still around and kicking dust till today, and you will perhaps be surprised to know that some of your favourite smartphone brands today are ancestors that have been around since the 80s. I like to refer to the 80s companies as the 1st generation brands. A second generation of phone brands came on stream in the 90s and early 2000s. I classify brands that arrived after 2007 as 3rd generation mobile brands....
While there had been attempts at making pocket-sized, handheld telephones since as far back as 1917, the first one was not produced till 1973, and Motorola (an American company back then) was the first at it. On April 3, 1973, the first cellular mobile phone call was placed on a Motorola phone. Incidentally, I was born 7 days later. The cell phone was a forerunner and a herald of my impending arrival....
