NEC E228

This was a phone I only owned very briefly in 2004. My Father (parents separated) wanted to make sure he could keep in touch with me and that I could call him whenever I wanted (I often ran out of credit on my pay as you go SIM) so he got me this on contract. The reason it didn’t last long with me was that being on contract I was terrified of it running up a massive bill. Ultimately we returned it after a brief period.

Compared to the Nokia 3200 this was a much more advanced phone. For starters it had 3G connectivity, so network speeds were much faster. The screen was a lot bigger and of a higher resolution. I also remember the speaker being much louder and the Polyphonic audio being much better. It also had a front facing camera, not that I ever explored the feature but I imagine it could make video calls.

It was a strange device though. In comparison to other mobiles of the time it was massive, unnecessarily so and felt strangely hollow and light. Similar to the cordless telephones that a few people still have around today. I also remember it consuming battery fast. The Nokia’s I’d become used to could easily go a week between charges with light to moderate use, this one needed charging at best every other day. I assume the early 3G modem was the cause for this.

Overall not a device I was very fond of, partly due to it being a difficult point in my life and the memory of this phone is probably associated with that. However, objectively speaking this was a very advanced device for its time, it took me until around 2010 to get another device that matched the functionality of this one.

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