My History of Mobile Phones

Nokia 2270 (October 2002 - 2005)

This was my first phone. This Nokia 2270 was a 17th birthday present and connected to the Telstra CDMA network in Australia on a pre-paid account. This was clearly a Golden Age for Nokia. This phone worked flawlessly and still started up like it was brand new years after its useful life.

Nokia 6230i (2005 - 2006)

The Nokia 6230i was purchased on a plan with Telstra. Within 12 months of using this phone it bricked itself. The phone was returned and exchanged under warranty for the newer Nokia 6233.

Nokia 6233 (2006 - December 2008)

The Nokia 6233 ran a version of the Symbian operating system and was edging very closely to a running like a smartphone. It had an app store and supported smartphone features like email and music playback. This phone still started up like new until I recently sent it away for recycling.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (December 2008 - February 2010)

My first touch screen phone featured a resistive touch screen an extensive app store for the time, high quality and durable build and screen. User friendly and effective version of the Symbian operating system which was the trademark of nokia phones at the time. It was very capable competitor to the new iPhone which was simply dominating the high end of the market at the time.

The Nokia 5800 featured front and rear cameras, SMS, email, FM radio, GPS, expandable memory, and wifi. It also featured Nokia maps which was the pinnacle of mobile phone maps for the time.

After a solid year with the phone the screen started to fail for no obvious reason. The screen would randomly go black for some time, with a restart restoring the screen. The times that the screen would go black gradually became longer and eventually, restarting the phone did not restore the screen. Some research at the time found that this was a common problem with this model.

A temporary fix was to insert a strong magnet under the front case at a certain location towards the top of the phone.This fix was very much temporary as the magnet only seemed to last for so long and jamming the magnet under the front case resulted in an outward bump in an otherwise flat front surface.

Motorola Milestone (February 2010 - February 2012)

The Motorola Milestone was purchased outright and imported from the UK. I simply had to have this Android flagship. In Australia this phone was compatible with the Optus network. The phone featured excellent build quality and included the popular Corning Gorilla Glass protecting the screen from scratches.

There was a freakish incident with a small amount of coffee spilling into the headphone port. The phone was dead immediately. I quickly opened up the rear casing, separated the battery, and submerged the whole lot in dry rice overnight. The phone did survive, but just wasn't the same for a while. I then ordered the Samsung Galaxy S.

A few weeks later I tested my Motorola Milestone to find it was working as new again. Maybe there was still some moisture deep within the phone, or some dried coffee residue eventually freed itself from the phones internals. Whatever it was when I on-sold the phone it was still in great condition with only minor dents and scrapes around the corners.

The physical keyboard was great and I still miss having a physical keyboard sometimes. A physical keyboard is brilliant for gaming and typing extended emails. It's a shame the keyboard makes the phone so bulky otherwise we could be seeing many more phones with this form factor in modern smart phones.

Samsung Galaxy S (October 2010 - January 2013)

Bought with a plan with Optus. Was rooted and custom rom'ed countless times. Keeping it up to date with the latest version of Android. By the time I was just about done with this phone I dropped it onto some brick pavers, cracking the screen quite badly. It was still usable, although occasionally small shards of glass would splinter off between the cracks.

LG Optumus L3 E400 (January 2013 - March 2013)

I wanted to switch back to the Telstra network at this time, but was awaiting the release of the next Nexus phone from Google. The LG E400 was bought outright as a prepaid phone from Telstra. With rooting and romming this phone served as an adequate stop-gap while awaiting the new release of Nexus phones.

The LG E400 was cheap, but ran the latest version of android with the help of a Cyanogenmod. The screen was poor quality and  low resolution and the camera was terrible, but it worked as a smartphone and fulfilled all other functions quite well.

LG Nexus 4 (March 2013 - January 2014)

My LG Nexus 4 was purchased outright from Google Play. It is compatible with every Australian network. This phone was recently updated to the latest version of Android, 4.4 KitKat. A flawless phone and I am enjoying the Google Android experience.

It dropped to the concrete driveway when getting out of the car and cracked the front screen. In that instant the device was rendered useless as the touchscreen would not repond to any touches or gestures. Although I remained unaffected for nearly a year, a common complaint of this phone was its fragility. Many users reported cracked front and rear glass panels due to impact from day one.

I temporarily switched back to my LG Optumus L3 E400 while my Nexus 5 is on the way.

One tricky part of switching back to the L3 E400 from the Nexus 4 was the sim card sizing. The Nexus 4 takes a micro-sim, so when setting up this phone I had my mini-sim cut down to size by my local Telstra shop. A problem arises when wanting to switch back to the mini-sim size.

Of course the electronics and functionality of the sim cards of mini or micro size are identical. Only the physical shape and size of the card matters and how that fits into the intended phone. Hence, I was presented with a problem: how do I use this too-small micro-sim in a sim card slot designed for a larger mini-sim card?

My solution was to construct a case of sorts to fit around the micro-sim, essentially making it physically larger and the same shape of a mini-sim. I took an old and no longer used mini-sim and cut a hole in it with a stanley knife/box cutter using my micro-sim as a stencil.

After some very careful cutting I had a mini-sim which my micro-sim could fit snugly into. A perfect fit was then achieved by carefully shaving the new hole's internal edges with the stanley knife/box cutter. I did not use anything apart of the sim's own edges and then the phone's sim tray to hold the two pieces together in the phone. And it worked perfectly.

LG Nexus 5 (January 2014 - )

...