To belatedly mourn the death of Windows Phone (I needed time, okay?), as well as to celebrate me finally joining the Android Master Race, I've decided to look back at the various phones that I've owned throughout the years.
2001/2002 — 2003: Nokia 3310
My very first phone was the all-time classic Nokia 3310. I think I got it around 2002, maybe 2001.
I loved this phone. I don't remember making a lot of calls with it (I was on a pre-paid SIM), but I do remember playing a lot of Snake, and copying midi ringtones note-by-note from the internet.
Sadly, it was stolen, along with a bunch of other phones, when my highschool gym locker room was robbed. Good times.
2003 — 2004: Sony CMD J5
This was a hand-me-down that was given to me to replace my stolen 3310. If anything, I could say that this phone was unique. I mean, just look at it.
It has a scroll wheel on the side. A scroll wheel! Who puts that on a phone? I liked this phone because it was different, and that made it interesting to me.
2005 — 2008/2009: Motorola v535
Now we're getting somewhere. Yes, like everyone else I, too, owned a clamshell phone at some point. But what a phone this was.
Not only did it look cool, it had a color screen, a secondary screen on the back, and a camera! This was the real deal. It only cost something like €150, which seems like a total joke at this point.
I used this phone a lot, for at least 3-4 years, but I can't remember exactly when I moved on to the next one, because...
2008/2009: Samsung C170
I don't remember when I bought this particular phone, or why. It was probably around 2008 or 2009. I know I got it because I wanted some basic, temporary phone, but I don't remember the specifics. My v535 never stopped working, as far as I can recall.
Anyway, this phone is extremely basic (and cheap), but everything that it did do, it did really well. No complaints here.
2010 — 2013: HTC Touch2
My first experience with Windows Phone Mobile, version 6.5 to be precise.
This was a decent phone, although in retrospect it seems rather crummy. It had a resistive touchscreen (as opposed to today's capacitive screens) that was pretty annoying to deal with, and required you to use the included stylus to work some of the smaller UI elements. Some of HTC's own skin was a little more finger-touch friendly, but underneath it was still very much Windows Mobile, which was not optimized at all for anything but a stylus.
I remember writing apps for this thing in .NET, and playing a lot of games on it. It faithfully carried me though my university days while everyone else was running around with iPhones.
2013 — 2015: Nokia Lumia 920
Looking back through the list, I guess this is my first real, proper, flagship smartphone.
I've written about this phone before, so I'll be brief: it was pretty damn good. Starting with version 8, Windows Phone has been a fantastic phone OS. It's just a shame that Microsoft was too late to the party, and it never got any traction.
2015 — 2018: Nokia Lumia 930
An incremental upgrade over the 920, the Lumia 930 has been my faithful companion for the last 3 years, and it has served me well.
It's a great phone, but unfortunately it's beginning to show its age. Windows Phone is dead, the hardware is old, there are no apps, and I'm running into more and more bugs and annoyances. It's finally time to close the book on over 8 years of Windows Phone usage, and to begin anew in the Promised Land of Android and Samsung...
2018 — ????: Samsung Galaxy S9+
It's Android time!
My first Android phone, and also the most expensive device on this list by a good margin. I plan on using this phone at least into 2020, preferably 2021. Although given the blistering pace of technological advancement, we'll have to see if it can last that long. Onwards we march!