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In this day and age when your cell phone is just another appendage you can’t leave the house without, it’s so funny to recollect the times before cell phones.

How did I make plans with friends? How did my mom know that I wasn’t lost and kidnapped? More importantly, how did I not have a phone/camera/map/GPS/recipe index/my DVR/encyclopedia/all my friends in my pocket at all times? It’s very hard to comprehend. I know.

This is how it all started for me:

It took me a good hour of Googling to find it, I could not remember for the world. Luckily “sprint phones in 2001″ was what finally led me to this: The Sanyo 4700.

2001 - 2003

Oh she was a beauty. I thought I was the coolest kid in the 11th grade.

Check out that blue screen, and the awkward antenna.

I was in the basement  at our family desktop computer, camped out for an evening full of AIMing my friends, and I got called upstairs because my dad had come from work with a “surprise.” Disgruntled that I had to be separated from a super important, 16 year old drama-filled AIM conversation, I ran upstairs and saw that my dad had got himself, my mom, and me matching cell phones! Oh I still remember the excitement to this day.

It was 2001, and even though some of my friends were starting to have phones, it wasn’t like everyone had them and it’s not like I begged for one all the time. I don’t even think I ever asked. At this point, cell phones were something you kept in your locker in case you had to stay after school to tell your mom to come later. But IT.WAS.AWESOME.

This beauty didn’t even fit in my pocket, and only made phone calls. What’s texting?

But it had one game, and we were in love.

Two years later, we switched to Verizon, and it was the era of the flip phone.

2003-2005

Oh the LG VX 4500. It had color graphics on the inside! It even fit in my back pocket of my jeans!

I even got a hot pink plate on it, and I had a Britney Spears “Toxic” ringtone. Remember the really bad sounding “midi” ones, that gave you a headache and barely sounded like the song? Yep.

This phone takes me back to the beginning of texting, in college. It was limited because not all my friends had plans, and it was an expensive luxury. But we still did it occasionally. For important messages only… “lunch in the Towers or Campus Center?” “wait for me after class.” Other longer conversations (i.e. what are we doing tonight? who’s buying the raspberry schmirnoff) were done on AIM.

2006-2008

The Pink Motorola Razr. This phone was the JAM. Everyone had it. Slimmest phone yet, andddd it had a camera!! I didn’t even have to get a pink case for this one!

This is the phone that allowed me to master T9 Word texting. I was writing novels. And Fast.

2008-2009

The LG Voyager. Now I was working full time. Being a grown up. I still had a pink case on this phone though (duh). Touch screen phones were starting to creep in, but the quality was terrible. I spent 99% of the time texting on the QWERTY.

I had this phone when I first started dating A.K. All of our date plans were made via text. I spent a lot of time staring at the front screen of this phone in anticipation, waiting for a text “trumpet sound” that meant he had responded.

2009-2010

The LG Voyager didn’t last very long. A.K. convinced me that I was missing out on life without a smart phone. And since I love having the newest, geek tech toy, it didn’t take long to convince me to get a Blackberry Curve 8330. And he was right.

Enter: smart phone addiction, the demise of human interaction and not using your brain without Googling first.

Once I got a hot pink case for it, the Blackberry did change my life. In 2009 I had just started my part time MBA and it helped me keep up with it without being stranded at home all the time waiting for project emails from my team members.

And BBM was revolutionary. It created an exclusive BB community where you could actually see your message get marked from “D” (delivered) to “R” (received) when someone got your text! How did humans survive before that? Or text boys and not know if they were just avoiding me?

2010-2011

Next came the HTC Droid Incredible. The iPhone was only for AT&T so Verizon was trying to compete by promoting the Androids.

I had just moved to DC, and my new roommate got it the day it came out. He had a GPS on his phone AND could set our DVR while outside the home. That did it for me. I wanted one.

So, I got one. The Droid was amazing. It blew Blackberry apps out of the water. The camera was almost as good as the camera quality on my digital camera! Internet pages actually loaded in under 10 minutes! It told me the weather instantly!

In my opinion it was just as good as the iPhone… but, man was I wrong…

2011 - ?

My sister got the iPhone. Then A.K. got the iPhone. We “Facetime”d her. I wanted an iPhone.

That’s all it took. I am a spoiled tech snob, I know. But I just love my gadgets. So, I got one.

Don’t worry I sold my Droid for the same price on eBay, so it was a fair trade.

iPhone does not compare to Droid. Everything is better. Even the same apps are better on the iPhone. The internet is like on a normal computer. It’s fast. It doesn’t completely lose screen visibility in the sun. I can shop. I can blog. I can read blogs. I can read books. I can listen to books. I can have all my music on there. There’s more apps. Whatever your heart desires, there’s an app for that.

Next there will probably be a few more generations of iPhone, but who really knows what’s next?

I’ve come a long way since that bulky Sanyo…

10 years, 7 phones.

As I laugh at the Sanyo, someday I will laugh at the iPhone and say “How did I ever survive without X, the iPhone didn’t even do my laundry for me.”

What was your first phone? What year was it?

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