Have you been to the phone store lately?

I stopped at the local mobile phone store tonight and bought a new phone. I should clarify it is a new phone but not one of the greatest and latest (4G) phone.

I have a really cheap rate plan and cannot go to the newest & coolest with shelling out a lot more money each month.  Probably some day I will but not until I have no other option.


I need to give you a bit of history.  I worked in the mobile phone industry from 1995-2000. It was a crazy job. Being in the middle of the growth of a new industry was really exciting.

The phone service (coverage) was terrible and they where EXPENSIVE to buy and use.(No free  phones back then) Most families only had one phone to share. Then we added one for mother, then one for the kids who left for college....now little kids have them.
 I bought a "real" phone for my  granddaughter's 4th birthday a few years ago-it was she asked Grandma for:) When I asked her why she wanted a phone, she said to call her "friends". I had a lot of fun calling her on her own cell phone.

In 1995 most people bought a "bag phone". It was a  phone in a bag, it plugged into your cigarette lighter.  Hard to believe people where excited about getting a phone like that:)

Or a "brick phone"  below. This is the first "handheld" phone. Brick describes it perfectly!

Then they came out with the "flip phone" (The black thing beside it, is the charger.). We could not keep them in stock--  light grey, dark grey or black where the color options back then!

 My daughter's claim to fame is they where one of the first "people" to have cell phones in their high school. The teachers did not even have phones. My girls did since I worked at the local phone store.

The rate plan they had cost $24.95 per month.
 It included 20 day time minutes, 20 night time minutes...and $1.00 a minute if they went over the 40 minutes per month. 
(If you take the 40 minutes and divide by 30 days = 1.3 minutes of talk time per day)

No text messaging- (not even heard of yet)
No free nights
No free weekend
No free long distance
No free mobile to mobile

(Take a look at your teenager's bill- how many text messages per day are they doing? How many minutes are they using per month?)

It is a amazing how far the technology has come & how much we depend on our "mobile" phones.

I just had to write about it! ~~~Amazing trip to the phone store, I see the new technology, it is crazy what is available.

Do you remember getting your first mobile phone?