Are ancient handsets returning as status symbols?

We spend so much time staring into the white hot lights of the mobile future, it’s worth looking back once in a while to remember just how far we’ve come in such a short time.

Retrobrick, an online retailer of, well mobile so old they feel like bricks. They’ve got it all, from the classic beginnings of the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X…

This is the original mobile phone design icon

In 1983 the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X received approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and become the world’s first commercial handheld cellular phone. When it was made available for purchase just a few months later on March 6 1983 it ignited a demand for personal wireless communication. Everyone wanted to be the first to get their hands on these awesomely unwieldy portable analogue brain-fryers.

Motorola’s DynaTAC ‘Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage’ let you talk for 30 minutes, could go a full eight hours between charges, was 13 x 1.75 x 3.5 inches in dimension, boasted eight hours of standby time, took 10 hours to recharge, featured an LED display and memory to store thirty “dialing locations”. Wooo.

Oh yes, the price was some $3,995 in 1983 dollars.

…To my favorite image of the retro-future, courtesy of its starring role in The Matrix– The Nokia 8110:

Year of production: 1998 [Has it really been a whole decade?]

Battery type: Li-Ion 400 mAh

Talk time up to 2h 5 standby time up to 70 h

Supports SMS text messaging [You could Twitter with it!]

Dimensions: 141 x 48 x 25 mm

Of course, The Matrix version did things the real version didn’t — there was no “switch blade” mechanism to make the slider spring open in real life. And let’s face it, that was the coolest thing about the movie version.

What was your favorite old school phone?