It’s hard to imagine living without your cell phone now, but the fact is, you’ve lived around half of your life without one. Depending on when you got your first phone, yours probably didn’t even have a color screen! But as we time went on, phone companies began releasing cell phones left and right, each one cooler than the next. In case you’ve forgotten about the cell phones you tried to convince your parents to get you over the years, we’re here to remind you!
1. T-Mobile Sidekick
Thanks to Paris and Nicole, the Sidekick probably became the most sought-after phone that only the most spoiled tweens and teens actually had. If your parents refused to get you one, you weren’t alone. The sliding screen was mesmerizing for tweens and teens alike. Only a few cool kids at school had this gadget, and if they let you hold it for even just a few seconds, you would automatically move them to your Top 8 on Myspace.
2. LG Chocolate
Though we’re still confused by the phone’s name (its shape kind of resembles a chocolate bar…?), we have to admit that it was a pretty snazzy device back in the day. It came in a variety of colors and boasted a music player, which was a big deal for cell phones back in the mid 2000s. Plus, sliding the screen up and down was slightly addicting.
3. Motorola Razr
Even by today’s standards, the Razr was a genuinely cool cell phone. No flip phone before it had ever been that thin and sleek-looking. The flat buttons and compact design made it all the rage – at least, until you dropped it and it snapped in half. When and if your parents caved and finally bought you one, your friends had probably already moved onto the much cuter pink version.
4. Samsung Juke
If you don’t really remember this phone, it’s probably because it was released the same year as the first-generation iPhone. Despite the competition that would eventually crush it, the Juke was a cool phone in theory. The teeny size and swivel design were buzzworthy, even though the phone didn’t have a Qwerty keyboard. But what drew you in was the MP3 music player, which had enough space to hold more than just a few Usher albums.
5. LG EnV
When the EnV was released in 2006, you likely had been through a number of cell phones already. From the outside, the EnV looked like your average cell phone that you could use to call your worried mother, but once you opened it sideways –voila, you had a keyboard that you could use to hit up all your buddies!
6. BlackBerry
By the time the BlackBerry rose to fame, owning a cell phone was a legitimate need for a teenager. All you needed to do was convince your parents that your non-BlackBerry-keyboard phone was simply not good enough anymore. The moment your parents bought you one, you took to Facebook to publish your BBM PIN, and then you surfed the web to buy silicone-like cases.
How crazy is it that not too long ago, cell phone features like a 1.0-megapixel camera, a music player and a keyboard were considered groundbreaking?!