The Mobile Journey: Nokia 8310 to Samsung Galaxy S2

Remembring the good old days when I had nokia 8310.....

was my 3rd July 2011 facebook status update. The comments and rappels that followed made me write this post, perhaps to preserve these precious memories.
I remember the days of Government College Sargodha when my only tele-communication with the world was through the landline telephone which was installed at the reception of the hostel. Apart from that, I used to have exchange of hand written letters with a couple of friends. I carried letter writing into my next phase of life, the medical college. In the period between the two, my mailing address used to be Syed and Sons Sillanwali. It was the same Government College Sargodha where I saw a cellular phone for the first time, with my friend Asad. I remember how naïve I was about its mechanism of working and functional limitations. In medical college, Saudi students with mobile phones were so well known that one of them got a title "mobile guy" on our first class function. Due to expensive incoming and outgoing call rates, this luxury was still out of everyone’s pocket. A similar landline telephone provided at the medical college hostel served the purpose of communication with my family and other private stuff. My father had to travel to a nearby town to call me on weekends, at a rate of PKR 25/minute. Moving to Rawalpindi happened at a time when we started hearing about the launch of a cheaper mobile service, with the name of ufon. The first and foremost attraction was free incoming calls and free short messaging service. In the beginning though, even purchasing a sim card of ufon was labeled as an achievement as there used to be long ques outside its sale centers whenever the sale of SIM cards used to open.

I remember I bought my first GSM mobile SIM card from ufon, through a friend who had a contact in a regional service center. Reason behind choosing ufon was none other than that it was state owned agency and I believed I was serving my country by choosing it Those were the good old days #patriotic. I later switched to a Jazz number, not being a traitor but because Jazz spread its service to my home village area and I had to join others in the family.

First ever GSM mobile handset that I happened to use was Nokia 8310. Released at time when color display was not yet marketed, it carried some extraordinary features like GPRS, FM radio, voice and in-call recording and an elegant crystal display. I chatted with my friends on messenger using gprs. Although it was a second hand set, its battery lasted for 3 days after first charging, secret was that I didn’t receive any calls during those three days #literary joke. It stayed with me till its display was damaged. Still I was able to re-sell it to a fellow who, except displeasing me with his finding of some private call recordings in the set, never complained about the performance of the set. Those were the good old days.
Daily afternoon visit to Commercial Market Rawalpindi kept me and my friends updated about all the latest releases of handsets. Soon the markets were flooded with polyphonic ringtones and quickly after that color display enabled cellular phones. I quickly changed few sets, including a Sony Ericsson J210, Nokia 3500, and then again a Sony Ericsson handset, this time K608i. This one was exclusive in having a 1.3 MP camera and a better music playing than I ever had. Thanks to the camera, I kept it in use until it was completely worn out, color faded, software crashed, and photos, memories and people associated with those memories were no more. I cherish that handset a lot, mainly due to the photographs I took with it. There are some jokes associated with its diverse ringtones ringing at inappropriate times. But at the boom of mobile business, such events happened to everyone. Those were the good old days.

I still have that fateful handset in my property it has lost much of its value thanks to smart cellular phones made available recently. I bought a BlackBerry Pearl when I came in France. My inability to understand it resulted in my disliking towards the phone and I moved to windows enabled Acer X960 tempo. I was a bit late in purchasing that one as technology had moved on. Google had launched android operating system and market was overflowing with new generation handsets. I remember I covered my trip to Limoges (France) with that Acer handset camera.

Next was android OS Motorolla Dext with MotoBlur, my maiden android set. It was gifted by a friend of mine. It gave me quite a liberty to use facebook and twitter on the go. I switched back to same Acer and remained contented till my contract with my service provider expired and I was able to benefit from an offer by another one. So I bought my current handset, Samsung Galaxy S2, with the awesome latest version of android OS and a massive 1.2 GHz processor. Communication, games, photography, editing and what not, it is a pleasure to have this machine. With Google+ and other awesome applications, it keeps its magic alive. Although I haven’t been able to benefit from its high tech OS and hardware, I feel myself like tapping my heels all the time. For a moment, it just makes me forget the awful things around, submitting myself to the galaxy that it is. Still I wonder how I managed to write all this down after so much time. But a more amazing thing is how you managed to read it till down here. So, here is the sweet reward, an interesting ad of Samsung Galaxy S2. Enjoy and share your experience of handsets down in the comments....