1. There was once a time when people did not always have their phones on silent.
Before Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, Snapchat and Instagram had our phones hopping every three seconds with notifications, we all used to have message tones and ringtones turned up to full volume.
That’s just not practical today, unless you want to annoy everyone on the bus with the constant pings from your various group-chats and multiple conversations on iMessage.
Ringtones originally existed to make us look at our phones. We don’t need to be reminded to look at our phones anymore, because we’re constantly holding them. That’s not depressing at all.
2. Ringtones were very serious business.
Back when people did have their volume on their phones turned up, a ringtone was almost a status symbol.
In the early 2000s, countless people found themselves victim to ringtone subscriptions they accidentally signed up to because they wanted to have Dry Your Eyes Mate by The Streets as their ringtone. We all knew at least one horror story about a person who lost all of their credit over an ad on the telly.
3. Kids under the age of 17 have no idea how much we all suffered because of the Crazy Frog.
The headaches.
This is probably a conversation for another day, but there was also far too much debate on whether or not the Crazy Frog had a penis. Some insisted it was just his bellybutton, others insisted it was a little willy. We can safely assume it was the latter, due to the fact that it was blurred out before the 9pm watershed.
4. Unless they’re musicians, the youth of today definitely don’t know the difference between the words monophonic and polyphonic.
Polyphonic ringtones felt like a massive technological advancement to all mobile phone users in the mid 2000s. It’s hard to imagine that there was once a time when you’d feel proud of yourself if you had a polyphonic ringtone blaring out of your pocket in public.
5. And remember the leap from infrared to Bluetooth?
Infrared seems like a ridiculously primitive method of file transfer now. Like how cavemen once rubbed stones together to create fire, we once held phones together to send our friends and family a monophonic rendition of Hey Ya by Outkast.
Then, if either of the parties involved in the exchanged moved even slightly during the transfer, it failed and you had to start all over again. The stress. Look at how far we have come.
It doesn’t seem like we’re making any massive bounds in technology these days, compared to what we were witnessing a decade ago. The best thing Apple can throw at us today is a pencil.
6. There was an awkward time between polyphonic ringtones and MP3s when people just used their voice recorders to record songs they liked from the radio to use as ringtones.
Anyone remember telling every member of your family in the car to shut up so that you could record Tipsy by J-Kwon on this bad boy?
Desperate times. And what’s worse is that your awful recordings of songs from the radio used up pretty much all of your memory.
We complain about 8GB or 16GB being too little storage on an iPhone nowadays, but all we had on our phones in 2006 was one song recorded from Spin 103.8 and three photographs we had taken on our 1 megapixel camera that were respectively titled ‘Me_xxx.jpg’, ‘Me_m8s_xxx.jpg’, and ‘Mwah_xxx.jpg’.
7. Oh, and we did not have front cameras.
It didn’t even occur to most of us that we needed a front-facing camera until the Samsung Tocco hit the shelves of the Meteor shop. And even then – it wasn’t for selfies. You couldn’t even access the front camera unless you were on a video call.
It wasn’t really until 2011 when the iPhone 4 was released that we began to expect – and embrace – the luxury of a front-facing camera. Now it’s impossible to imagine blindly taking a selfie with the back of our phones.
8. We used to be able to swap batteries with a family member/friend when ours went dead.
It was very rare that you’d find yourself with a low battery if you had a Nokia, but let’s imagine you did.
You’re about to nip out to the shops in the Punto and the boys from Clongowes have a massive list of soft drinks that they want, but there’s no way you’re going to remember it. You’ll need to call them once you get to the shop, but your battery is low.
No hassle. You don’t need to wait around for your phone to charge before you go out. All you’ve got to do is pop the back off of your phone and swap batteries with a family member or friend who has the same phone as you. God be with the days.
9. Screensavers.
Before we had cameras readily available we had to either opt for a screensaver/wallpaper that came with the phone or buy them from an ad in a magazine or on television. In the early days, these wallpapers looked a bit like this:
Nowadays, we can just use photos of our dogs.
10. There was more than two companies making phones.
Obviously, it’s hyperbole to say that there’s only two companies making phones nowadays. Huawei, Sony and HTC are doing their thing, but there’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that Samsung and iPhone dominate today’s mobile phone market.
A decade ago, pretty much every electronics company you could think of were making phones. Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens, Sharp, Philips, etc. All those companies that you’d just expect to make microwaves were making mobile phones too. It’s obviously not worth their time anymore.
11. Of course we all remember Snake. But Nokia’s true masterpiece was Bounce.
Kids today will never understand how dedicated you could be to one single game if there were no other apps on your phone and your battery is strong enough to power a small car. If you were a true Bounce addict, the numbers ’787898′ will still hold a special place in your heart.
