Not exactly a collector of these things but i do believe i still have most of my old phones laying around.

Looking around a little bit i think i have a Kyocera from the 2300 series, monochrome display. One Motorola phone, it looks like a "RAZR" flip-phone, and a blackberry phone, i have no idea about this one's specific model.

Out of all of these i think i spent the most time messing around with all the features of the flip-phone, and i got to say, i liked the design of that flip phone, it felt more compact than the touchscreen cellphones i have to use today!

I wanted to but I now I see no point on doing it since my country started blacklisting IMEIs of older phones that haven't made a voice call in any domestic carrier within the last five years - my beloved Nokia 6131 has become useless.

133MHz wrote:

I wanted to but I now I see no point on doing it since my country started blacklisting IMEIs of older phones that haven't made a voice call in any domestic carrier within the last five years - my beloved Nokia 6131 has become useless.

That makes no sense. Why?

A new law was enacted that requires every GSM device to be registered with the government and to go through a certification process (or should I say proce$$) in order to be whitelisted to be used on the network. The official government spiel goes something like "to ensure the safety of the population through phones that work properly with all the latest mobile technologies and enabled to receive emergency alerts" but I see it as "the powers that be don't want us importing cheap phones from AliExpress or when traveling abroad without giving them their cut, or having tourists swapping a cheap local SIM card instead of getting fleeced with roaming charges, or using older phones without the latest surveillance tech built in". If you buy a phone (or other GSM device) outside the official channels you have to submit it for certification yourself if you want its IMEI allowed on the network, as a regular citizen you get one free certification a year (more than one and you've gotta pay) and only new devices are allowed. Existing phones used in the last 5 years got whitelisted as legacy devices. Got a phone you stopped using in 2012 and want to use it again? You're SOL. Want to visit here and use voice or data? Register your phone, or buy a local phone, or stick to roaming.

Here's the official FAQ (in spanish) if you're curious and want to run it through a translator or something, I can also clarify/translate something specific if you want to as well.

This is from the same country that enacted a net neutrality law as a world first but where mobile carriers still zero rate all over the place through legal loopholes.

133MHz wrote:

my beloved Nokia 6131 has become useless.

I didn't know this. Anyway just like with the analog televisions, I imagine that in the future, mobile frequencies would switch to 3G only frequencies and above, so old tech will become useless just like with the 5 volts to 3 volts sim cards phones switch.
Too bad for many great old phones on the 90's.

Teggun wrote:

Not exactly a collector of these things but i do believe i still have most of my old phones laying around.

Looking around a little bit i think i have a Kyocera from the 2300 series, monochrome display. One Motorola phone, it looks like a "RAZR" flip-phone, and a blackberry phone, i have no idea about this one's specific model.

Out of all of these i think i spent the most time messing around with all the features of the flip-phone, and i got to say, i liked the design of that flip phone, it felt more compact than the touchscreen cellphones i have to use today!

I always thought that flip phones mechanism could break faster than an usual phone and that's the reason I almost never used them. But beside it there were great phones with dual displays that nowdays I've seen some brand try to rebuild but imho without that experience in the feature phones sector.

I really loved my Symbian Nokia phones... too bad the OS died

I use an n73 and it sucks in many ways. I prefer the original 3310 or 1100.

386SX wrote:

I didn't know this. Anyway just like with the analog televisions, I imagine that in the future, mobile frequencies would switch to 3G only frequencies and above, so old tech will become useless just like with the 5 volts to 3 volts sim cards phones switch.

At least with the old TVs you can still get video to display on them from other sources, same with old computers and consoles that were meant to run offline and can be retrofitted with modern storage solutions.

vvbee wrote:

I use an n73 and it sucks in many ways. I prefer the original 3310 or 1100.

Why? It should be quiet fast with its cpu. Obviously the original 3310 was great and still today with a new battery. Imho its only problem is the lack of sent messages folder and too few memory for the sms in general.

keropi wrote:

I really loved my Symbian Nokia phones... too bad the OS died

Yeah, I remember using the S60 v1 version of the Nokia Ngage, a great phone, with its 104Mhz ARM7 cpu. That was a real full smartphone that already had all the features that years later became usual for all the phones. But in the later version imho things should have been different. For example the original S60 3rd edition should have been used instead of the S40 and later lighter os for feature phones.

It's slow for everything and the keyboard is awkward to type. There are various other issues not worth mentioning.

133MHz wrote:

A new law was enacted that requires every GSM device to be registered with the government and to go through a certification process (or should I say proce$$) in order to be whitelisted to be used on the network. The official government spiel goes something like "to ensure the safety of the population through phones that work properly with all the latest mobile technologies and enabled to receive emergency alerts" but I see it as "the powers that be don't want us importing cheap phones from AliExpress or when traveling abroad without giving them their cut, or having tourists swapping a cheap local SIM card instead of getting fleeced with roaming charges, or using older phones without the latest surveillance tech built in". If you buy a phone (or other GSM device) outside the official channels you have to submit it for certification yourself if you want its IMEI allowed on the network, as a regular citizen you get one free certification a year (more than one and you've gotta pay) and only new devices are allowed. Existing phones used in the last 5 years got whitelisted as legacy devices. Got a phone you stopped using in 2012 and want to use it again? You're SOL. Want to visit here and use voice or data? Register your phone, or buy a local phone, or stick to roaming.

Here's the official FAQ (in spanish) if you're curious and want to run it through a translator or something, I can also clarify/translate something specific if you want to as well.

This is from the same country that enacted a net neutrality law as a world first but where mobile carriers still zero rate all over the place through legal loopholes.

Just change the imei?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id … eichanger&hl=en
http://www.imeichanger.net

Could the IMEI on a Nokia 6131 or a 3330 be changed without specialized (unavailable, expensive) hardware interfaces?

my phones from 2004 to date (my sister lost my motorola Rockr z6)
from top left: Motorola C236, C650, V360, Nokia N78, E5
bottom left: Motorola Droid 3, Nokia Lumia 925, 640, Blackberry Keyone

vvbee wrote:

I use an n73 and it sucks in many ways. I prefer the original 3310 or 1100.

Luckily after ten annoying years the n73 broke its charger pin, so I got to go back to the 3310. Love it. Not perfect, but nostalgic and snappy.

Anyone else had a Motorola Q?

Older Samsung GSM phones like to lock up with no SIM in them, but dummy SIM cards will unlock their normal functionality (camera, video camera, audio player). I have a bag of old phones I don't throw away simply because the volume of space they occupy is insignificant, but I cannot use them for anything, even emergency telephone service as US carriers eliminated the 2G/EDGE network to make more space for LTE.

oeuvre wrote:

Anyone else had a Motorola Q?

My step brother bought one refurbished from ebay for $30 when his Envy 3 broke in 2012ish? Anyways ended up Verizon refused to activate it and it was carrier locked. Always thought it looked like a neat phone.