When year did you first have a cell phone, what type was it, and how common was a cell phone among your family and friends back then?

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  1. 2006, was a senior in high school, it was one of those classic Nokia bar phones. Everyone in my family had a cell phone by then (I was the youngest and didn’t “need one”). Several of my friends had them, too.

  2. 2001, Samsung flip phone, it was common among my family – and most of my friends. But there were still a few without one.

  3. I got my first cell phone in August 2001, a week or two before starting my first year of college. [It was a Nokia 5110](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_5110).

    My parents had car phones for a few years before that. Some of my friends had cell phones in High School, or sometimes a family would share one cell phone. Within a year or two both my parents and my younger brother had their own cell phones.

    Among my friends both in my hometown and in my Univerisity the novelty of cellphones had already worn off by the time I got mine…but it was another year or two before the expectation started to become that *everyone* had a cellphone and if you exchanged numbers with someone they were probably giving you their cell number, not their landline.

  4. Somewhere around 2000-02. Early high school. Was one of those Nokias. My parents already had one, and my sister got one around the same age. Most of my friends had one.

  5. 2000, it was one of those Nokias.

    It was fairly common because Cricket was oy $20 a month.

  6. I reckon it was 2006-2007. Whenever I got my license. I wasn’t so lucky and received my brother’s old [LG VX-6100](https://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=504), which he had absolutely abused. Cell phones were very common among friends. I never understood how they texted so quickly on phones that didn’t have keyboards like they have now.

    I finally got to upgrade to a [Motorola W385](https://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=1114), which was an absolute tank. The thing would go a week on a single charge!

  7. 2006ish, I was a sophomore or a junior in high school. It was one of those memetic Nokia brick phones with a T9 keyboard. The screen did not have color capabilities and all the phone could do was call, text, and run a couple small “primitive apps” like a calculator.

    A handful of my friends had phones but text messages cost money on a lot of plans, so we still mostly talked on AIM or Yahoo Messenger when we got home from school instead of texting. My mom had a cell phone since the mid 90s but no one else in my family did until around the time I got mine.

    My text messages were like 25cents or 50cents to both send and receive a text, and long texts would be broken into several messages, so you’d end up paying quite a lot. Almost all of my money at that time went towards texting my then-boyfriend who had started college in another state.

    I rarely used it as a phone to talk on, but I no longer had to scrounge up quarters for the pay phone to call my mom to come pick me up from the mall, so it had its uses.

  8. I was in high school. I don’t remember the specific type. It was just some hand me down. This was the midish 2000 and cellphones were common but it wasn’t something that every single kid my at school had. It was still somewhat common at that time for kids not to have one at my age. By my senior year though everyone had a phone.

    I will say thought that kids started getting cellphones in middle school from what I remember.

  10. iPhone 3 in 2010. I was in my 30s, and easily the last of anyone I knew to get a cellphone.

  11. 2004 – 2005. Nextel I860. Everybody was chirping in those days instead of phone calls and this was before texting took off.

  12. Like 2008 ish? Some Motorola flip phone when I was in middle school. It was the first time my parents got cell phones too.

  13. 2004, Samsung flip phone, got because I got a job that year and might need a ride too or from work. Was probably about 50/50 in my class who had cell phones at that point.

  15. 2005. Senior year HS. Got a flip phone for my birthday. Samsung model. No camera, no keypad, had to push a number 3 times to get a letter.

    I was the youngest in the family, so everyone else had one. My friends, graduating soon, got phones as well. Compared to the other kids at school, we were pretty late to the cell phone party.

  17. 1994, it was a Nokia, It was uncommon for people to have them, but I liked tech.

    I got a StarTac in 1996 when I started working for a company where I travelled a lot and they paid for me to have a phone.

  18. Spring 2001, senior year of high school, Nokia 5110. My dad had an old school briefcase style cell phone in the early 90s because he worked at remote sites. My mom had gotten one a couple years prior. My two years younger sister got one at the same time I did.

    I want to guess somewhere around half or two thirds of my school grade had cell phones by graduation. This was a relatively affluent suburban public high school FWIW.

  19. 2001, it was a classic Nokia brick. I got an iridescent green case for it, so cool. At the time, it was getting pretty common. I’d say most of the people I knew got a cell phone around the same period I did. My parents didn’t get phones for a few more years (my dad was a late adopter to all phone technology, one of those “I don’t want to be reached everywhere!” types).

  20. In 2004. It was a Motorola Razr. Pretty common, but it wasn’t like a shock if someone didn’t have one

  21. I got my first cell phone in 2000.

    It was this awkward, blocky thing that my parents bought on a pre-paid plan so I’d have something I could contact my parents with in an emergency if I was away from home.

    Many, but certainly not all, of my friends had cell phones. Generally the ones from more affluent families had cell phones. I had a couple of friends at that point that still had pagers, but would soon thereafter upgrade to cell phones.

  22. 2005, I believe. I was in 6th grade and got a flip phone, but I mostly used it to talk to my parents; most of my friends either didn’t have their own phones or we already talked on the Internet.

  24. 2004 or 5ish. I was in elementary school and was only allowed to carry it when away from home without my parents.

  25. 2002, Nokia. I was the first of my friends to have a cellphone, by a couple years I think. My parents got it for me because I missed my stop getting off the school bus on the 2nd day of sixth grade and they had no way of knowing where I was until the bus finished the route and then came back to my stop, which was probably an hour or so.

  27. 2006, I can’t remember what model it was, but it was a starter Nokia flip phone.

  29. I was in 5th or 6th grade, so 05/06

    It was some Nokia flip phone I believe.

    I can’t recall if any friends had them, but I’m pretty sure all my siblings did.

  30. I got my first cell phone my senior year of college, which was around the year 2000, and it was one of those nokia flip phones. My family and friends were gradually getting phones at that time. I was not unusual among my friends, but not everyone had a phone. By the time I got to college a year later, practically everyone there had a cell phone but practically everyone was living far from home as well.

    I clearly remember that texting among my friends was not common until after college graduation, four years after that, and I didn’t get a fully tricked out cell phone with a big screen and everything until around 2012.

  31. Got my first cell phone in 2003, when I was in middle school. It was a Nokia 6600. Phones were becoming increasingly common among students at the time, but were far from ubiquitous. My parents also each had the same phone as I did, but while my dad was fairly experienced with cell phones by then, for my mom and I it was a new experience to have one of our own.

  32. 1995 Motorola. It came in a small zippered case. I didn’t know anyone else with a cell phone.

  33. I don’t remember the model (something on Verizon), but I got my first cellphone in 2001 when I was a senior in high school. They were rare enough that when I was called into the office of the assistant principal for student affairs I was in trouble for having it even though a classmate had taken it from my schoolbag.

  34. 2006. It was a Sanyo Katana which was basically a Motorola Razr alternative from sprint

    I think just about every adult in my life had a cell phone at that time. Some had a Blackberry

  35. 2005. Got a pre-pay flip phone. Hated it, put it in a drawer and forgot about it.
    First one I used on a regular basis was in 2008: iphone 3.
    My elderly parents had cell phones in 2004.
    My grandmother had a car phone in 1992

  36. I think it was during my sophomore year in high school so 2007 maybe? Definitely before my junior year. I believe it was a Samsung Erickson flip phone.

    I mostly just used it to call my parents and listen to the radio on the bus to school. I got a new phone my senior year of high school and then switched to an iPhone halfway through my first semester of college.

  37. I really don’t remember.. sometime in the early 2000’s, it was probably a Nokia somethingorother. We didn’t keep the phones on all the time then either, it was off unless you needed it in an emergency, that way the battery didn’t run down. Most of my family and friends had one, but it was almost more of an emergency kit for your car thing than what it is today.

  38. Got one in the 8th grade (2006). It was somewhat common. I think it was a Nokia. The cool thing about it was it had a radio tuner in it so me and the other kids would listen to the radio on the yello school bus (yes, the yellow buses are real) heading to school. Great times

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