It’s that wonderful time yet again where Verizon kindly offers to give me an ever-diminishing amount of credit towards a new phone as my “reward” for continuing to pay them money each month. It’s because of this somewhat generous policy that I go through cell phones a lot faster than I do other personal possessions, like, say, clothes or loved ones. It’s because of this that I’m in a bit of a nostalgic mood, and would like to dedicate today’s post to all the cell phones I’ve owned before, and why I disliked them all in their own unique ways. Journey with me, won’t you?

Motorola DPC-650

This monstrosity was the very first cell phone I ever owned. From the looks of it, you would think that this particular model was released sometime in the early 1920s, and was powered by steam. You’d be wrong. I had this goddamn thing in just the earliest part of this decade, right around Y2K, which is why I feared that the Y2K virus would make the thing self-aware and kill my family, which is why I temporarily buried it in concrete. When I figured out the phone was as stupid as it was large, I escavated it and tediously carried it around with me everywhere.

Now besides being cumbersome and unweildy, the Motorola DPC-650 also contained the slick feature of never actually being capable of making a phone call. If you were to now, while you were reading this post, make yourself a phone out of construction paper, glue and glitter, it would actually be more capable of making a call than this phone ever was. In all the years I carted the thing around, I don’t recall ever actually having a functional conversation on the thing. It was, however, a fairly effective weapon, in that it had many good brick qualities. If you’ve ever been hit in the head with a Motorola before, you’d know it. Being you’d still have the dent in your skull to prove it.

Audiovox CDM-9100

I still find it kind of odd that the largest cell phone I ever owned was immediately followed by the smallest. If you’ve never seen one of these things for yourself before, they are really quite tiny. Which is why I think I might’ve lost mine when I accidentally inhaled and swallowed the thing. But before that, I really did enjoy this cell phone a lot.

You might notice this cell phone is kind of a powder blue. You also might notice that I’m a man (supposedly). So yes, it was a very pretty phone. But like I said, it was also very small. I used this thing all the way through college, when I lived out in Fargo. Being a candybar phone, the numbers for dialing were always susceptible to random phone calls to people on speed dial whenever the phone got bumped. Which was unfortunate, considering how often I liked to fall asleep late at night with my phone still in my pocket. As my wife will attest to, many a night she was awakened by 3am phone calls from my pocket, which usually consisted of a conversation involving her repeatedly saying hello and my responding with high-pitched whistling noises from my nose as I was in the midst of heavy REM sleep. Good times.

LG VX4400

Before this point, cell phones really only had one function: making phone calls (or not making them, per the Motorola). This phone, for the first time, had the ability to download shit onto it, like ringtones and games and other such nonsense, which Verizon kindly provided for a nominal fee. So this was, for the first time, that my cell phone bill made it into the triple to quadruple digits. But since my folks were picking up the tab for my phone services at the time, I guess I didn’t really notice.

Other than rocketing my parents to the poor house, though, this was the most boring damn phone I ever owned. I mean, look at the thing. It’s grey. What the hell else is there to say about it?

Audiovox CDM8940

This phone was my first since I finally became an adult and started paying for my own cell phone at the humble age of 26. Since this was the first phone I ever paid for myself, it was also the first one that I picked out for myself. Or it would’ve been, if I hadn’t walked into the Verizon store and let the associate pick out my phone for me. I’m still not entirely certain what happened, but having walked into the door with my mind made up on two better phones, somehow I walked out with this phone instead, which I paid full price on. If I ever see that Verizon associate again, I’m gonna punch him the mouth.

If you look at this Audiovox phone and the LG phone before it, please notice that they are fairly identical. But this was the first phone I owned which had a camera. An incredibly poor camera that I had to first remove from behind a sliding door, and then juttison out at an angle from the phone with a lever before taking any pictures, but still, a camera. I picked up this phone before going to see a Pearl Jam concert just so I could get pictures of the show. Then the tickets said not to bring camera phones in. So I didn’t, and then spent the entire show watching everyone around me shoving their phones in front of my view to take pictures. Fucking ticket stub.

Orange LG enV

My current phone, and by far my favorite. Because it’s orange. I don’t know why that’s important to me, but a cell phone has to be orange. It just has to.

The reason why this phone is better than all those before it has qualities that all the phones before it had. It’s the size of a brick. It’s a bright color. It downloads shit. It has a camera. And in addition, it also has a keyboard, so I can write stuff while pretending to be a giant typing on a human-sized computer with my giant hands. I would venture to say that the enV is not just my cell phone, but quite possibly my best friend. Which is why I’m looking to replace him soon.

So now that we’ve finished this narcissistic musing on all my old cell phones, I can give you a sneak preview of my (anticipated) next cell phone. Drum roll…

Drum roll…

DRUM ROLL….

Oh, that’s right. Sorry. Forgot. Internet.

LG enV Touch (image courtesy of www.boygeniusreport.com)

I have given up on the concept of change. From now on, I want all my cell phones to be pretty much the same. So I will update my orange enV with this black enV Touch, arriving in stores June 5. See, this phone is just like my current phone, only the front is a touchscreen. So it’s like an iPhone, only not. Which I think is cool.

So now that I’ve worked myself up in tech nerd frenzy, I will go find someplace to lay down and wait for June 5th to get here. But when that day does get here, I dedicate my new phone to the memory of those that came before. Thank you, old friends, for letting me smear ear grease over your screens for so many years. You may be gone, or in a box in my basement or something, but you are not forgotten.