2024-05-02 09:04:23
25 years after its launch, Nokia is releasing a new edition of the legendary 3210 cell phone. t-online editors remember their first cell phones.
Those were the days when cell phones still had buttons and ringtones consisted of wild beeps: in 1999, Nokia launched the 3210 and revolutionized the industry. It was small, affordable, had an integrated antenna and the cult game “Snake” installed.
25 years later, Nokia’s cell phone division is Chinese and a successor to the cult phone is on the way. Here you can read more about it.
This news aroused nostalgic feelings in the editorial team. We have rummaged through our memories and old device treasures for you and are introducing you to our first mobile phones, most of which did not have internet and some of whose displays were tiny.
“Much cooler than Nokia”
Christopher Clausen (37), mobility editor: “When I bought my first cell phone in 1999, the Nokia 3210 was extremely popular. It was too expensive for me as a 13-year-old. Instead, I was attracted by a Japanese device with a spacey name: the Trium Astral. Less angular, with a changeable cover (like the Nokia) and extendable antenna Although it didn’t have the game ‘Snake’, it did have other advantages: I found the menu images (monochrome, of course) much prettier than those at Nokia, the ringtones were recognizable among all the Nokia monotony and the T9 It had a system for quickly writing SMS just like the 3210. However, that also became a problem for me: with prices of 39 pfennigs per text message, the prepaid card with 25 D-Marks was empty in no time.
Both the mobile operator and the mobile phone manufacturer no longer exist: Viag Interkom and its prepaid brand Loop eventually became O2, and Trium manufacturer Mitsubishi Electric stopped manufacturing mobile phones at some point. However, the old phone is still in a box at my mother’s, next to the C35 from Siemens and other devices from the early days of mobile communications.”
“Incredibly stylish when talking on the phone – that’s what I thought at the time”
Steve Haak (46), Digital editor: “My first cell phone was a Philips Diga TCD308. The device had a slide-on cover for the telephone buttons. When making calls, it looked incredibly stylish with the cover pushed out – I thought at the time. I can still remember the buttons felt pretty spongy when typing.
My contract was a prepaid offer from Vodafone, where I had to pay 2 D-Marks per minute of talk time. Incredibly expensive from today’s perspective. But the cell phone was a hundred times better than the Scall pager I had before, which only showed me when someone wanted to reach me.”
“Finally a way to get past your mother-in-law”
Sara Zinnecker (39), financial editor: “I’ve forgotten the name of my first cell phone. But I still remember exactly what it looked like and what cute noises it made. It had rounded corners and was so small that when I was texting I was always afraid that it would fall on me A quick internet search shows that it looks very close to the Trium Astral of my colleague Clausen.
It’s crazy to think back on how quickly we learned to press the same key multiple times to produce entire words. Just for the word “beautiful,” for example, it took the 7 four times, the 2 three times, the 4 twice, the 6 five times, and the 6 twice. That was routine and happened at lightning speed. The cheap cell phone was available free of charge with the student tariff from Viag Interkom at the time.
Even though I can’t remember the name of the device, the memory will always remain: I think it was in the school yard where I wrote my first text message to my then crush. And inside I was so relieved – because I finally no longer had to worry about catching my potential mother-in-law on the landline.”