I don’t remember what lead me to purchase this phone, whether anything went wrong with the Chat 335 or if I just fancied something new. But this would’ve been the 2nd big jump in mobile technology I’d experienced. The first being the Nokia 3210 to the Nokia 3200.
I now had an Android device, albeit a very basic, budget one but I had proper connectivity, access to the “Market” which would later become the play store and the customisation options that come with the Android operating system.
I owned this device whilst I was completing my IT apprenticeship after college, and at the time I had a particularly annoying commute between home and the apprenticeship centre. It involved a 10 minute walk, a 30 minute train and another 20 minute walk. On the way there this was manageable and took an hour but on the way home the time we finished for the day and the train times didn’t coincide, so I’d often be left waiting at the train station for 40 minutes to an hour. I’d charge up the phone before I left and then play games on it solidly through my wait and train journey. On a bad day the battery would be flat before I got home. I still have memories of playing “Dragon! Fly” and early builds of “Hill Climb Racing” on this little thing. While this phone was no powerhouse when it came to specs it worked OK, the capacitive touch screen, while still plastic was responsive to input rather than the resistive hell of the Tocco Lite. I certainly used it to its limits and beyond.
Strangely I remember this being the first phone I ever purchased a case for. I had recently joined eBay and found a cheap, red silicone case for it. I don’t recall too many other people using cases around this time but I remember thinking it needed some protection. Most likely because of the dreadful wage we were given on our apprenticeship I’d have had no chance of affording a replacement!
This is another phone I’ve re-purchased since it’s practically worthless now and it just reiterates to me how far technology has come in the 14 years after this device’s release. This phone has a single core 830mhz processor, 384MB RAM and a measly 512MB of internal storage (Thankfully it had a Micro SD card slot and I remember rooting this device to be able to install apps on the SD card). It has a 3 inch screen with a 320×240 resolution. The last Android version it officially received was 2.3.6. We now have phones with 10 times the resolution, 2000 times the storage and more processing power and RAM than the best gaming machines and servers of the time. However all this has come at a cost. This phone has a removable battery, expandable storage and a headphone jack. None of which is commonplace today. Testament to the build quality of these devices this one still holds a charge on it’s original battery, and if I put a SIM card in it can still connect to the network and use mobile data, it connects to my modern WiFi. Obviously not much else works, the web browser is too outdated to load anything other than Google, it can’t connect to the app store and I can’t sign into my accounts. These are all software limitations though. This device still functions just as well as it did when it was new, and had it’s OS updates not been abandoned and API levels of apps not been increased this would still be a functional (although limited and slow) device today.
Considering this was my first true smartphone it didn’t take long before I started to tinker. It spent a year as my primary device where aside from rooting to uninstall some unneeded software and transfer apps to the SD card it was left untouched. Once I no longer relied on it as I phone I began learning about custom ROMs, installing Cyanogenmod and various other ROMS I could find. I began tweaking the Android operating system to slim it down as much as I could to ease the pressure on its limited resources.
The last duties I remember this phone having were as a seed box for torrents. It had files stored on the SD card, living permanently on charge connected to WiFi. It managed this quite well, often going weeks or months with no interaction from me. I’m not sure what happened to the little Galaxy Y after that, being so small maybe it was lost! I’m glad to have another in my nostalgic collection, even if it was basic and underpowered even for it’s time it will always be my first smartphone.
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