Dec 7, 2009
Historic Cell Phones
At a recent ’80s themed Halloween party, a friend brought his mother’s old cell phone to accessorize his costume. While the phone was slightly anachronistic — dating instead back to the early 90s — his repeated shouting of, “No, dude, I’m calling you from inside the party!” into a giant grey technological dinosaur became a source of endless amusement for the well-lubricated crowd. These days it seems that obsolete technology has a place reserved only in our grandparents’ living rooms, in the form of VCRs, rotary phones, and television sets that could be mistaken for credenzas. But more recently, some have taken their love of all things retro to new heights, purchasing cell phones from sites like Retrobrick, which offer collectors a wide selection of historical phones, dating all the way back to 1987. Most of these phones aren’t particularly smart: they don’t store numbers, don’t text, and are not guaranteed to actually make phone calls, much less able to download apps. They do, however, give hipsters the opportunity to look as ironically Gekko-like as possible. Can your phone do that? – Sharon Rosenfeld