beaker wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 7:06 pm

a the transportable a second generation Motorola transceiver, called a Joan II, in a housing with a lead acid battery...those were tough...a truck driver had a crash ...he and his phone exited thought the windscreen and landed on the road... another motorist used to to call an ambulance...by the way no1. the 8000 series Motorola were called Samantha...the later 8500 series Richards... how do I know this stuff worked for a Motorola service station from the mid 80's repairing these things... the first 8000s sold for £2000, the car phones, 4500 series £1500 +£90 installation monthly contract charge was $25 and minute rate 25 pence....long before phones became consumer items then I ran a repair and customer care centre for one of the UK's first high street retailers...

before the transportable the joan 1 car phones ( these were Motorola in house names for the products) also known as a C0-AM , no recollection why, was a 12 inch square by 2" deep transceiver...we used to install them in attache cases along with a lead acid battery and rent them out. You had an instant phone for new construction sites...when in those days if you needed a land line telephone installed BT took 6 weeks to do it... and that transceiver was less than half the size of the previous old mobile system 4 car phone... the sort of thing you would see in a 70's film...
how the hell do I remember all that but can't remember what I had for dinner last night?

John Bingham wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 2:27 pm
I think it was a 1610 around 1997. It cost around £300 and I had to pay about £30 a month for the line and calls extra paid from my bank account directly. I had a pager before that which cost similar.

Company provided one of those for me around the same time, was a pain to carry round if you didn't have a bag

1996 I guess I inherited a piece of shit Motorola with a 1ft antenna and a flip at the bottom. About the size of a peat briquette and about as good at making calls

Then in 1997 prepaid mobiles launched in my home country & I got one with a crappy panasonic

Traded onto Nokia's by the end of that year until they went to dogshit by 2001

Mine was bought here from the Cellcard shop on Sihanouk in about 2000. Alcatel, $86 including a sim and some credit. It had an aeriel and slots for 2 AAA batteries, presumably for when the internal battery needed charging. Solid and heavy. When I did replace it my wife gave it to her mother to use for breaking ice in her coffee stall.

Motorola 8800x, first of them in 1990. This was the new lightweight and slimline version of the 8500x Brick phone. Fairly useless as so few other people I knew had a phone. Mum was pleased I could be tracked down (until she found out the cost) and so too was the girlfriend. The novelty of being easily tracked down wore off very quickly.

My parents had #1 I used on occasion.

Had 4,6,7,8,9,10

Siemens S1. 1994