The Best Phones of All Time: Iconic Phones from the Last 40 Years!
Young or old, you’ll all be able to recognise at least half of these most iconic phones of all time. Some may have been your first ever mobile phone, some may be better resigned to a museum, either way it’s incredible to see just how far we have come in the last 40 years.
So sit back and enjoy as we go back in time over the best phones of all time…
Motorola 8000 DynaTAC range
Unless you were minted back in 1983 you’re unlikely to have ever experienced the Motorola 8000 first hand. The giant Motorola handset was the first mobile phone to ever hit the market, and was originally developed back in 1973.
The phone’s specs? The Motorola 8000 was 9 inches tall, weighed in at a ginormous 1.3kg, and cost an equally massive $3,995 (£2,550) to buy!
Nokia 7110
Now for something a bit more exciting: modelled on the entirely fictional phone from the Matrix movies, the Nokia 7110 sports an intriguing slider feature which revealed Nokia’s good old rubber keypad underneath.
OK, so the phone might not have a super sensitive touchscreen like all of our handsets today, but why would you need that when you’ve got a super cool scrolling track pad?!
Nokia 3310
The Nokia 3310- surely the best phone of all time? Anyone who was anyone had a Nokia 3310 at some point in their life, and if you’re too young to remember Nokia’s most successful feature phone then you’re missing out!
With a monochrome screen and no camera, the Nokia 3310 might not have been at the forefront of technology- but with a battery that lasted longer than the Lord of the Rings trilogy, this handset beats the modern smartphone hands down! But perhaps the single best thing about the 3310 is Snake- the classic game which got Britain’s thumbs moving back in the early noughties.
Motorola Razr V3
Next up is a real gem from Motorola- the Razr V3. Known in its day as the thinnest phone around, the V3 went miles in kick-starting the ultra thin phone trend that still exists today.
Sporting a smooth embedded keypad (unlike Nokia’s noisy rubber buttons) and a cool metallic flip phone design (come on- it was 2004, flip phones were all the rage!), the Motorola Razr V3 is the ultimate iconic phone.
LG Chocolate
Everyone likes Chocolate, right? And the LG Chocolate range was no different when it hit the market. Opting for a sliding mechanism, the LG Chocolate BL20 was known for its touch sensitive buttons and compact size (once you’d slid the phone shut of course).
BlackBerry Curve 8520
If you are a successful businessman (or woman) or were born circa 1990, you’re bound to have been the proud owner of a BlackBerry, and none ever came close to the classic BlackBerry Curve 8520.
With its compact design and teeny tiny buttons, the BlackBerry revolutionised the mobile scene, bringing a smartphone to the masses. The Curve 8520 offered internet access, a 2 megapixel camera and the much applauded BBM messenger!
Apple iPhone
Now comes the real king of the mobile phone world: the iPhone. Launched in 2007, the iPhone was then, as it is now, the best phone on the market. Apple fans knew even in 2007 that they were onto something good with the original iPhone, and over 7 million handsets were sold by the end of 2008.
Not only did it look a million bucks compared to many other smartphones around, but it also had a camera (2 megapixels, which by today’s standards might not be so impressive!), a 3.5-inch screen and was the first device to sport iOS, Apple’s iPhone operating system. Compare it to today’s iPhone 6 and you can see just how far the iPhone has travelled…
HTC Dream
Just as the original iPhone was the brainchild for Apple, so was the HTC Dream for Android. The Dream from HTC was the first ever smartphone to sport Google’s robot-inspired operating system, kick-starting the software that has become the most popular operating system in the world!
The HTC Dream itself looked a little more ‘90s than the iPhone thanks to its slider and physical QWERTY keyboard, though it did sport a 3 megapixel camera and Google’s- then basic- app store, so it wasn’t all bad!
Samsung Galaxy S2
While it was HTC that brought us Android, it was Samsung which really turned the operating system into something special in the form of the Galaxy S2. It might not look quite as snazzy as the metallic Galaxy S5, but the Galaxy S2 soon grew into something of a phenomenon, making Samsung one of the best selling manufacturers of all time.
Samsung Galaxy Note
And last but not least is the Galaxy Note, also from Samsung. In terms of features the Note did nothing that the Galaxy S2 couldn’t- but what made it one of the most groundbreaking phones of all time was its size.
Nicknamed the King of the Phablets (phablet being half phone, half tablet), the Galaxy Note range really changed the shape of the mobile scene, laying the path for even bigger handsets to hit the shelves. Compared to the late ‘90s when it was cool to be small, the noughties started a new era where size truly matters.
**While it’s always fun to see where today’s smartphones have come from, it’s also nice to return to the present, where our smartphones sport 13 megapixel cameras, fingerprint scanners and huge app stores. **
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