How Old Were You When You First Got a Cell Phone?

Are we talking about when we first legally obtained a cellphone?

I was 22 in 1992. You had the Nokia 1011 [grignani.org] then. Far too expensive for a mere student. I got my first mobile in 1998; an Alcatel that could run on three normal batteries. [blogspot.com]

Mid 90's so between 35 and 40.

[John]

I held out until 35, when my wife was pregnant with our first child.

This poll is more useless than most because cell phones haven't been available to the public long enough. In order to make any sense out of the results of this poll, age data would need to be provided in order to categorize responses based on technological practicality. All the results for this poll tell me is what I already knew: the majority of people on this site are older than the internet.

was working as a cab driver at the time. It was the kind with the main body of the phone in a bag, and an antenna your ran from the bag out the window to the roof...

I was watching the 1976 movie Car Wash not too long ago and it wasn't until after the scene where the woman was talking on a car phone that it dawned on my what I'd seen. So I looked it up and found [checking again] the first handheld cell phone was demonstrated in 1973 and first commercially available in 1983. The first mobile calls from cars were made in 1946, and the networks they built in the following years were in use into the 80's.

I got my first cellphone when I was a somewhat less old geezer of 42. I don't think they even HAD cellphones when I was 22.

Modded to handle 5 ESN/MIN pairs from the keypad without needing the CTEK dongle.

I also had a whole slew of Motorola G1-G3 brick and flip phones at that point, but the Oki was the prized possession by far.

my mother insisted I carry a pay-go phone in case of emergencies, because I had a ratty old car and commuted daily.

After a couple years of this, my then-fiancee added me to her cell plan (over my initial protests) and I've had one since.

... But I do borrow one. I rarely use the phone due to my disabilities and rarely go outside. :( I prefer the Internet even if it is a slow dial-up on copper landlines!

So I scan the poll for my answer and find it in the bucket that starts at 22, which is nowhere near my real age. 22 considered old???

I must be pretty old. Hell, I was a good bit older than 22 when /. started....

I got one of those great Bag Phones, the things which could talk to a cell tower a couple counties away. I relized right away I could not drive and dial at the same time, so gave that up in the first days I had it. It was a hoot being on a ramp off the highway, making restaurant reservations for Pizzapapalis Taverna in Greektown, Detroit. "Where are you calling from?" "Off ramp along I-75 near Birch Run." "Wow! You've got one of those new car phones?!?" Yeah, it was a trip. Now everyone has one. Even little kids. :p

At what age you do you let your kids have or give your kids a cell phone?

For me, it was last year at age 12 or 13 (can't remember if before or after his birthday).
He almost never uses it as a phone though.
He does text occasionally.

• Rented a bag phone -the old shoebox sized ones - for a road trip working in the US.
• Rented a Gordon Gecko phone for another job - found out how long the battery lasted. Not long enough.
• My first real phone was an Audiovox about half the size of a brick - seemed really small at the time.
• Then something I've totally forgotten half the size of that.
• Hmmm - one Motorola flip phone, one Sony/Ericsson that I REALLY liked, but the cel company sucked so bad that I sent it back.
• A variety of cheapo pay as you go Samsungs and LGs.
• Moto Charm smart phone. A really lovely form factor, with real keys, but otherwise crap.
• Nexus S
• Now pondering the next phone. Miss having a real keyboard, so am waiting to see what happens with the Blackberry this month. Otherwise likely another Android something.

So that takes me back to about 1990. At this point I gotta say that I use the cel about 5% for phoning, 5% for texting, and 90% for internet, e-mail and related tasks.

My first phone was the Nokia 7110 [wikipedia.org]. Got it in 1999, so I would have been 16 or 17. I was a bit of a latecomer - most of my school friends had phones a year or two earlier. SMS was really starting to take off as the method of communication back then.

I know the 7110 wasn't actually the exact model used in the Matrix (it was actually the similarly-designed 8110 which is a bit older), but it came out around the time the movie did so a lot of people thought it was 'the Matrix phone'...

These days I'm on an iPhone (yeah yeah, Apple is evil blah blah, but it works for me).

I know that I'm not an early adopter in the truest sense of the word, as they were technically around before I was born. However, I did have one before most average people. My buddy and I worked at Best Buy, so we got good deals on them. I had an Ericsson CH668 (or something close to that) on Omnipoint (before they became Voicestream and T-Mobile) in the late '90s.

I started out with the cheap (I thought it was free, but maybe it was just really cheap) Mt. Dew numeric pager promo. My friends and I all got them, and got used to being able to contact each other all the time. I also had a Motorola Advisor Elite alphanumeric pager, and eventually set up a webform so people could page me from the internet.

I've just happened to work for several places which allowed me to get cheap access to pagers and phones before they were ubiquitous. For the most part, they were simply more geek toys for me to play with, rather than something I had a real need or desire for.

...23 or 24 I think. Got a Motorola SC3160 with Airtouch.

I was always an early tech adopter in the 90's, but the rise of the cellphone has given me pause. I understand the benefits of communication in emergency situations but have seen this excuse devolve quickly into cyberspace zombie behavior in public and then private situations. The TV was the first 'hypnotically' attractive communication device but the so called smartphone is orders of magnitude more addictive. Instantaneous access to your person by anyone at any time might not be the greatest of innovations. I do have an iPad and that seems to grant me mobile access to the net and yet some distance from the groundswell of scattershot diversions from inane chatterboxes. - signed Grumpy Old Man - "Get off of my lawn!" ;)

Let's see. 22 or older and I've had a personal cell phone for at least 16 years and no land line for 14 years. Oh, and my first cell phone was the Sony CM-Z100 with service from GTE. They gave me a basketball for signing up. That phone was awesome. Everyone else was lugging around those big flip phones on belt holsters and I had this little thing smaller than a pack of smokes that slipped in a pocket. And it went 24 hours on a charge with the stock battery (which was LiPo if I remember right). Most people had 4-6 hours of NiCD standby and had to carefully manage their charge cycles to avoid cutting that even shorter.

In 1997. I bought a used GSM phone, think it was an Alcatel HC 400, and a pre-paid SIM for it. It was OK but there were some issues with it, such as the battery not having a perfect fit so the phone would occasionally switch off when having it in the pocket. I fairly quickly went on to other phones.

The most annoying phone I've had was a Philips Diga, circa 1998. There were many usability issues including that it was way too easy to accidentally call the emergency number.

The phone longest in use I've had was an Ericsson T65. I bought it in 2002 and used it until around 2008. Durable and good-enough feature set.