The Joy of Old Phones: A Nostalgic Look at My First Phone

Oh man, holy crap it's working so the frequency support for this phone is such that there's no way I'm getting on a network it's like I forget we're 800 over here and they're 850 over there GSM blah blah blah it doesn't matter anyway the point is there's no way that's going to work over here but what we can do is holy crap access internet yeah network not available I should certainly think so I think yeah I think we're done here. Do you remember when phones used to have like limited number of phone numbers you could store on them and stuff? Oh yeah show call timers right right because we used to be so worried about how long we were spending on the phone because we only had a limited number of minutes that like it was important to have a timer oh man audible call timer so it would beep every minute so you'd know how many minutes you're using that is so awesome wow I just had like a like a flashback moment that was my ringtone like in high school you know ring or vibrate at least I had vibrate you couldn't take that for granted back then so that was nice when I'd get texts um in class or whatever I used this one at one point. Sorry I'm just like having fun right now I guess I could keep making a video hey oops that's menu crap hey sup thanks for helping it's a terrible keyboard thanks for helping me instead e call or something I don't know I mean I didn't really have a lot of functions I think the last thing to really show off for you guys has got to be games oh oh that's right hold on hold on there so that's your quick settings like all your quick stuff vibrate on and off. Oh my god this is so awesome internet you're right okay last thing then play some games towers of hanoi baccarat and bricks so I actually never really played um towers open away like like I know I know how the game works and then baccarat I didn't really understand the game at the time options bet on player bet on banker bet on tai and you just you put in like an amount and then you deal and then someone would win and then you would get or lose points so I didn't really like get it yeah we can end the game but bricks I played a lot and like the other games there wasn't really a great deal of depth to it like it's not like the ball starts to go faster or anything in fact if I recall correctly once you clear the bricks uh you just bounce the ball around in an empty thing but don't quote me on that let's we're just gonna have to see how this plays out I think like the funny thing is I could say to my kids with a straight face when I was a boy we only had one level and we were happy to have it and of course like the paddle does not like the the the spot on the paddle that you hit doesn't affect the angle the ball comes off it at so you just kind of have to i gotta go to wancho but instead I'm stuck here like oh oh oh no is it affected by how you're moving when it hits it is two there we go physics so you can spin it okay all right we got this we got this I can do it I can do it wait for it ah shoot that could have gotten it too okay did we get it yeah we got it score yes that's right so you could pause when it was clear and you could like take a breather and then continue later so that's it you guys that was my first phone the motorola v100 or vbox as it was called by my carrier here in canada um there were a lot of sacrifices there was not a lot of sex appeal but for better or for worse that got me through my high school social life.

The Motorola V100: A Tribute to the Early Days of Mobile Phones

The Motorola V100, also known as the "vbox" by my Canadian carrier, was my first phone. Released in 1998, it was a bulky device with a brick-like shape and a screen that could display only two colors - green or blue. It weighed in at around 16 ounces, making it one of the heavier phones of its time.

One of the most notable features of the V100 was its limited phone number storage capacity. With only ten contacts stored on the device, users had to rely heavily on memorization to keep track of their contacts' numbers. This limitation led to a lot of creative solutions, such as using call timers that would beep every minute to remind you how much time you'd spent on the phone.

The V100 also featured an audible call timer, which was a novelty at the time. It would chime in every minute, ensuring users didn't exceed their allotted minutes on the phone. This feature may seem mundane today, but it added a layer of complexity to using the device that made you appreciate its functionality even more.

Accessing the internet was also an exercise in patience back then. The V100 had dial-up connectivity, which meant users had to wait for what felt like an eternity for pages to load. It was not uncommon for websites to take up to a minute to download, and navigating through menus was a slow process due to the limited processing power.

Games were also a significant part of mobile phone culture in the late 1990s. The V100 had a range of games built-in, including Tower of Hanoi, Baccarat, and Brick Breaker. While they may seem simplistic today, these games provided hours of entertainment for users who didn't have access to more advanced gaming consoles.

The V100's display was also notable - it could only show two colors, which made for a limited visual experience. However, this limitation actually added to its charm, as the device became an object of fascination among my friends and me. We would spend hours trying to figure out how to make our own custom ringtones and games using the built-in software.

The Motorola V100 may seem like a relic from another era now, but it holds a special place in my heart as a symbol of innovation and perseverance in the early days of mobile phones. Its limitations actually made me appreciate its functionality even more, and I'm grateful for the lessons I learned while using this device.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enokay so this is really cool i'm on ebay the other day and you know the whole theory that goes yeah you can sell or buy pretty much anything on ebay i figured okay i'm gonna put this to the test can i find my first cell phone and the answer is yes so this is the motorola v100e or as it was called over here in north america the v box it was my first cell phone and apparently this thing works so i am going to open it up and show you guys just how stone age i am after i tell you about freshbooks freshbooks is the easy to use accounting solution built for how you want to work stay organized and productive try their 30 day free trial at freshbooks.com forward slash tech tips so i think one of the most fun things about this video is going to be to compare and contrast my current daily driver here in 2018 with the very first cell phone that i ever owned uh and i got this thing back in well i mean i could probably just look at the okay packed in the eu blah blah blah does it have a does it have any kind of date information on it so hold on a second so i was i was 16 i had just gotten my full license the deal was that i got a car and a cell phone it's a pretty sweet deal as long as i was willing to drive my four siblings to and from wherever they needed to go and as long as i was at my parents beck and call at any time so this was like effectively i was the family driver and this was like my pager so that would have been about 2003 i want to say probably around around around 2003 so that was 15 years ago holy crap am i ever getting old so let's talk a little bit about this thing it has a special keypad console which makes text messaging to your friends easier use to access a range of information via your phone including cinema listings entertainment and sport cool that worked out great wide screen visual display excellent from when you are playing you're playing from a choice of three games so my mom my stepdad and i all got the same phones and it was important for us because my mom is hard of hearing so talking with her on the phone isn't really an option so this was all of a sudden a reason for us to have phones and a way for us to stay in touch so i got this super cheap plan that had like a hundred minutes like and no no like unlimited weekends or evenings or anything like that and then it was mostly i just had like 250 text messages and so we could we could text back and forth so here i want to show you guys what's in here so um this is just from an ebay seller so i actually am not a hundred percent oh oh okay hold on no no it's okay so sorry uh i was thinking oh no it doesn't come with the north american adapter but actually they just used the north american version to adapt to the uk one so we just we just dodged a huge bullet here because like i could have probably found a substitute for this or like freaking i don't know it's for 4.4 volts 1 amp what the hell is that do you guys like do you guys remember non-standard mobile device chargers what a nightmare that was like it's it's so easy to take for granted stuff that we just don't have to deal with anymore all right so hopefully we're good then what else we got um battery storage case for your protection store battery in this case when not in use uh well someone clearly didn't read the label i wonder if it even comes with a battery i mean this battery is long dead like years ago this battery was dead okay you know what i'm gonna get to this later it was the worst thing about this phone by far this okay i was actually kind of worried that uh this wasn't gonna be the right thing but no this this is it you know i'm actually so sad that clear plastic casings died off like does that not actually look kind of cool oh yeah like if you could buy a modern cell phone that had a backing like that so you could see the battery and stuff would that not be cool um so yeah you can see actually you can see the pcb for the display here uh mine had a different logo mine had like a motorola logo um i didn't have a rogers logo i don't know i think i'm pretty sure it just had a standard motorola logo in terms of i o there's an ok button here that i that you could use to answer calls i don't remember what this special button over here did uh this right here is the charging port nothing on the back just the hinge here and then what glory be it's got a headphone jack so as cool as it was that my phone had a headphone jack oh boy this is in about as good condition as i'd expect it to be the headphone jack had a little problem problem number one it wasn't a three and a half mil it was the less standard more fragile two and a half mil problem number the second the headphone jack was actually the only way to get audio in and out of the device did that just blow your mind yeah oh boy so get this the expectation okay for motorola geniuses that they are other than some pretty stupid crap they've pulled over the years the expectation was that this goes in your pocket or clips to your belt because that was a thing back then okay and you put this very comfortable earpiece in your ear and you just kind of hope that that sits somewhere kind of desirable also it wasn't a very good microphone now there was another solution and i did invest in this aforementioned other solution for myself and that was that you could pull the battery cover off and there was a module that added about this much more thickness to the phone that had a microphone in one end and an earphone jack in the other end and then a little wire that plugged into here so you had this like dongle and actually it was the it must have been the other way it was the other way so you had this dongle and you would hold it like this up up against your head and it was like literally this thick by that point it had kind of this weird kind of wavy sort of pattern to it anyway i i wasn't able to get one of those because who the hell would have kept them but as you guys can probably guess having it sitting like that in your pocket all the time wore out the headphone jacks within a matter of months for every single one of us to the point where i was always like this with my pinky on the jack holding it in place while i'm trying to conduct a phone call let's find out if this ebay seller is full of crap so they claim it works why they even had this thing why they thought to list it on ebay i don't know but it was their freaking lucky day because i paid like 70 bucks for it which is most assuredly not worth i just hey hey look at that charging complete baby although i'm willing to bet yeah it turns off immediately this battery is completely hoopty-hooped whoa hey no nice holy crap it's working so the frequency support for this phone is such that there's no way i'm getting on a network it's like i forget we're we're 800 over here and they're 850 over there gsm blah blah blah it doesn't matter anyway the point is there's no way that's going to work over here but what we can do is holy crap access internet yeah network not available i should certainly think so i think yeah i think we're done here do you do you remember when phones used to have like limited number of phone numbers you could store on them and stuff oh yeah show call timers right right because we used to be so worried about how long we were spending on the phone because we only had a limited number of minutes that like it was important to have a timer oh man audible call timer so it would beep every minute so you'd know how many minutes you're using that is so awesome wow i just had like a like a flashback moment that was my ringtone like in high school you know ring or vibrate at least i had vibrate you couldn't take that for granted back then so that was nice when i'd get texts um in class or whatever i used this one at one point sorry i'm just like having fun right now i guess i could keep making a video hey oops that's menu crap hey sup thanks for helping it's a terrible keyboard thanks for helping me instead e call or something i don't know i mean i didn't really have a lot of functions i think the last thing to really show off for you guys has got to be games oh oh that's right hold on hold on there so that's your quick settings like all your quick stuff vibrate on and off oh my god this is so awesome internet you're right okay last thing then play some games towers of hanoi baccarat and bricks so i actually never really played um towers open away like like i know i know how the game works and then baccarat i didn't really understand the game at the time options bet on player bet on banker bet on tai and you just you put in like an amount and then you deal and then someone would win and then you would get or lose points so i didn't really like get it yeah we can end the game but bricks i played a lot and like the other games there wasn't really a great deal of depth to it like it's not like the ball starts to go faster or anything in fact if i recall correctly once you clear the bricks uh you just bounce the ball around in an empty thing but don't quote me on that let's we're just gonna have to see how this plays out i think like the funny thing is i could say to my kids with a straight face when i was a boy we only had one level and we were happy to have it and of course like the paddle does not like the the the spot on the paddle that you hit doesn't affect the angle the ball comes off it at so you just kind of have to i gotta go to wancho but instead i'm stuck here like oh oh oh no is it affected by how you're moving when it hits it is two there we go physics so you can spin it okay all right we got this we got this i can do it i can do it wait for it ah shoot that could have gotten it too okay did we get it yeah we got it score yes that's right so you could pause when it was clear and you could like take a breather and then continue later so that's it you guys that was my first phone the motorola v100 or vbox as it was called by my carrier here in canada um there were a lot of a lot of sacrifices there was not a lot of sex appeal but for better or for worse that got me through my high school social life and this video is brought to you by squarespace squarespace makes it easy to build yourself a beautiful and functional website they have award-winning templates you can use for a wide range of projects every squarespace site features their e-commerce features so you can sell merch or services online and manage your inventory and orders and if you ever need additional help squarespace offers webinars full series of help guides or even 24 7 support via live chat and email so go check out squarespace over at squarespace.com forward slash ltt to get 10 percent off we're going to have that linked below so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join like look how far we've come rightokay so this is really cool i'm on ebay the other day and you know the whole theory that goes yeah you can sell or buy pretty much anything on ebay i figured okay i'm gonna put this to the test can i find my first cell phone and the answer is yes so this is the motorola v100e or as it was called over here in north america the v box it was my first cell phone and apparently this thing works so i am going to open it up and show you guys just how stone age i am after i tell you about freshbooks freshbooks is the easy to use accounting solution built for how you want to work stay organized and productive try their 30 day free trial at freshbooks.com forward slash tech tips so i think one of the most fun things about this video is going to be to compare and contrast my current daily driver here in 2018 with the very first cell phone that i ever owned uh and i got this thing back in well i mean i could probably just look at the okay packed in the eu blah blah blah does it have a does it have any kind of date information on it so hold on a second so i was i was 16 i had just gotten my full license the deal was that i got a car and a cell phone it's a pretty sweet deal as long as i was willing to drive my four siblings to and from wherever they needed to go and as long as i was at my parents beck and call at any time so this was like effectively i was the family driver and this was like my pager so that would have been about 2003 i want to say probably around around around 2003 so that was 15 years ago holy crap am i ever getting old so let's talk a little bit about this thing it has a special keypad console which makes text messaging to your friends easier use to access a range of information via your phone including cinema listings entertainment and sport cool that worked out great wide screen visual display excellent from when you are playing you're playing from a choice of three games so my mom my stepdad and i all got the same phones and it was important for us because my mom is hard of hearing so talking with her on the phone isn't really an option so this was all of a sudden a reason for us to have phones and a way for us to stay in touch so i got this super cheap plan that had like a hundred minutes like and no no like unlimited weekends or evenings or anything like that and then it was mostly i just had like 250 text messages and so we could we could text back and forth so here i want to show you guys what's in here so um this is just from an ebay seller so i actually am not a hundred percent oh oh okay hold on no no it's okay so sorry uh i was thinking oh no it doesn't come with the north american adapter but actually they just used the north american version to adapt to the uk one so we just we just dodged a huge bullet here because like i could have probably found a substitute for this or like freaking i don't know it's for 4.4 volts 1 amp what the hell is that do you guys like do you guys remember non-standard mobile device chargers what a nightmare that was like it's it's so easy to take for granted stuff that we just don't have to deal with anymore all right so hopefully we're good then what else we got um battery storage case for your protection store battery in this case when not in use uh well someone clearly didn't read the label i wonder if it even comes with a battery i mean this battery is long dead like years ago this battery was dead okay you know what i'm gonna get to this later it was the worst thing about this phone by far this okay i was actually kind of worried that uh this wasn't gonna be the right thing but no this this is it you know i'm actually so sad that clear plastic casings died off like does that not actually look kind of cool oh yeah like if you could buy a modern cell phone that had a backing like that so you could see the battery and stuff would that not be cool um so yeah you can see actually you can see the pcb for the display here uh mine had a different logo mine had like a motorola logo um i didn't have a rogers logo i don't know i think i'm pretty sure it just had a standard motorola logo in terms of i o there's an ok button here that i that you could use to answer calls i don't remember what this special button over here did uh this right here is the charging port nothing on the back just the hinge here and then what glory be it's got a headphone jack so as cool as it was that my phone had a headphone jack oh boy this is in about as good condition as i'd expect it to be the headphone jack had a little problem problem number one it wasn't a three and a half mil it was the less standard more fragile two and a half mil problem number the second the headphone jack was actually the only way to get audio in and out of the device did that just blow your mind yeah oh boy so get this the expectation okay for motorola geniuses that they are other than some pretty stupid crap they've pulled over the years the expectation was that this goes in your pocket or clips to your belt because that was a thing back then okay and you put this very comfortable earpiece in your ear and you just kind of hope that that sits somewhere kind of desirable also it wasn't a very good microphone now there was another solution and i did invest in this aforementioned other solution for myself and that was that you could pull the battery cover off and there was a module that added about this much more thickness to the phone that had a microphone in one end and an earphone jack in the other end and then a little wire that plugged into here so you had this like dongle and actually it was the it must have been the other way it was the other way so you had this dongle and you would hold it like this up up against your head and it was like literally this thick by that point it had kind of this weird kind of wavy sort of pattern to it anyway i i wasn't able to get one of those because who the hell would have kept them but as you guys can probably guess having it sitting like that in your pocket all the time wore out the headphone jacks within a matter of months for every single one of us to the point where i was always like this with my pinky on the jack holding it in place while i'm trying to conduct a phone call let's find out if this ebay seller is full of crap so they claim it works why they even had this thing why they thought to list it on ebay i don't know but it was their freaking lucky day because i paid like 70 bucks for it which is most assuredly not worth i just hey hey look at that charging complete baby although i'm willing to bet yeah it turns off immediately this battery is completely hoopty-hooped whoa hey no nice holy crap it's working so the frequency support for this phone is such that there's no way i'm getting on a network it's like i forget we're we're 800 over here and they're 850 over there gsm blah blah blah it doesn't matter anyway the point is there's no way that's going to work over here but what we can do is holy crap access internet yeah network not available i should certainly think so i think yeah i think we're done here do you do you remember when phones used to have like limited number of phone numbers you could store on them and stuff oh yeah show call timers right right because we used to be so worried about how long we were spending on the phone because we only had a limited number of minutes that like it was important to have a timer oh man audible call timer so it would beep every minute so you'd know how many minutes you're using that is so awesome wow i just had like a like a flashback moment that was my ringtone like in high school you know ring or vibrate at least i had vibrate you couldn't take that for granted back then so that was nice when i'd get texts um in class or whatever i used this one at one point sorry i'm just like having fun right now i guess i could keep making a video hey oops that's menu crap hey sup thanks for helping it's a terrible keyboard thanks for helping me instead e call or something i don't know i mean i didn't really have a lot of functions i think the last thing to really show off for you guys has got to be games oh oh that's right hold on hold on there so that's your quick settings like all your quick stuff vibrate on and off oh my god this is so awesome internet you're right okay last thing then play some games towers of hanoi baccarat and bricks so i actually never really played um towers open away like like i know i know how the game works and then baccarat i didn't really understand the game at the time options bet on player bet on banker bet on tai and you just you put in like an amount and then you deal and then someone would win and then you would get or lose points so i didn't really like get it yeah we can end the game but bricks i played a lot and like the other games there wasn't really a great deal of depth to it like it's not like the ball starts to go faster or anything in fact if i recall correctly once you clear the bricks uh you just bounce the ball around in an empty thing but don't quote me on that let's we're just gonna have to see how this plays out i think like the funny thing is i could say to my kids with a straight face when i was a boy we only had one level and we were happy to have it and of course like the paddle does not like the the the spot on the paddle that you hit doesn't affect the angle the ball comes off it at so you just kind of have to i gotta go to wancho but instead i'm stuck here like oh oh oh no is it affected by how you're moving when it hits it is two there we go physics so you can spin it okay all right we got this we got this i can do it i can do it wait for it ah shoot that could have gotten it too okay did we get it yeah we got it score yes that's right so you could pause when it was clear and you could like take a breather and then continue later so that's it you guys that was my first phone the motorola v100 or vbox as it was called by my carrier here in canada um there were a lot of a lot of sacrifices there was not a lot of sex appeal but for better or for worse that got me through my high school social life and this video is brought to you by squarespace squarespace makes it easy to build yourself a beautiful and functional website they have award-winning templates you can use for a wide range of projects every squarespace site features their e-commerce features so you can sell merch or services online and manage your inventory and orders and if you ever need additional help squarespace offers webinars full series of help guides or even 24 7 support via live chat and email so go check out squarespace over at squarespace.com forward slash ltt to get 10 percent off we're going to have that linked below so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join like look how far we've come right\n"