My phone story is similar, though I saw back then how important GSM was, and tried to go that route. In 1999, I had the Nokia 5110 with T-Mobile for GSM. The cool thing back then is that I could have this small (for the time) phone, that also had an extra piece that could be added on for analog compatibility. I never needed it, but my mother had the same phone and did use it due to where she worked at the time.

Later that year, Nokia released the really tiny 8210, and I ended up buying one in 2000. Since I had a GSM phone prior, I simply swapped the SIM and had all my contacts. Being able to do this help cement me into GSM, as my account and contacts lived on a smart chip movable between phones. The 8210 lasted me for a while, and I resisted switching to something else, instead just changing out the battery once to extend the life of it.

After the 8210, Apple started influencing my phone choice, due to my recent adoption of the OS X platform. iSync was released along with full bluetooth support in 10.2, and that had me eyeing the Sony Ericsson T68i because it was the phone used in the demos. It was very similar in size to my 8210, so I didn't have to go to a bulkier phone to get the new features. I finally picked mine up in early 2003, and was able to do some pretty cool things with it like auto locking my computer at work based on bluetooth proximity. There were even apps that allowed me to control iTunes and such from the phone.

At this point, I remember Nokia started fading in the US. Most of the tech people I knew were either moving to Sony Ericsson phones as well, or some sort of early Windows/Palm powered smart phone. When it came time to replace the T68i, I went with a T610. And even on the cheep side, other providers were rising up and taking market share away from Nokia. They had left their mark though, because most people knew about the Snake game built into their phones. Also the Nokia default ringtone was embedded in most peoples minds and is even sung in the closing song for This Week in Tech.

After T-Mobile stopped expanding their network aggressively in 2005 and refused to fix common areas for dropped calls, I looked at switching providers to Cingular. With the switch I picked up the Motorola RAZR as well, and kept that up until my first iPhone.

Ironically, the T68i I had in 2003 had certain features the iPhone doesn't have when interfacing with OS X. It used to be possible to see incoming call alerts on the computer via Address Book linking over Bluetooth. You could then either answer, reject, or respond via SMS. And any incoming SMS messages would show up on screen, allowing an IM style chat window.