Back to the Future: our favourite smartphones, past & present

The Huffington Post recently published their list of the 10 Best Smartphones currently available. It’s not a hugely surprising list, but it makes for interesting reading:

• 1.       Apple iPhone 6/6Plus
• 2.       Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge
• 3.       HTC One M9
• 4.       Sony Xperia z3
• 5.       Huawei P8
• 6.       Google Nexus 6
• 7.       LG G3
• 8.       Motorola Moto X2
• 9.       Samsung Galaxy Note 4
• 10.   Nokia Lumia 930

It is obviously the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy S6 which have had the most press, but the HTC and the Huawei in particular are stand out phones which show promise for the future of the companies. It is worth noting that there is only one Windows phone on the list, but we fully expect that to change over the next five years, with the upcoming introduction of the multi-platform Windows 10.

Reading this list, though, got us all thinking about our favourite phones that we’ve had over the years. There were some favourites that we all had in common, and many of them are on the list of the all-time bestselling mobiles:

• 1.       20. Nokia 2650, 2004, 35 million units
• 2.       Apple iPhone 3GS, 2009, 35+ million units
• 3.       Samsung Galaxy SII, 2011, ~40 million units
• 4.       Samsung Galaxy SIII, 2012, ~40 million units
• 5.       Nokia 6230, 2004, 50 million units
• 6.       Nokia 3100, 2003, 50+ million units
• 7.       Motorola StarTAC, 1996, 60 million units
• 8.       Motorola C200, 2003, ~60 million units
• 9.       Apple iPhone 4S, 2011, 60+ million units
• 10.   Nokia 5130, 2007, 65 million units
• 11.   Nokia 6010, 2004, 75 million units
• 12.   Nokia 1208, 2007, 100 million units
• 13.   Nokia 1600, 2006, 130 million units
• 14.   Motorola RAZR V3, 2004, 130+ million units
• 15.   Nokia 2600, 2004, 135 million units
• 16.   Nokia 3310, 2000, 136 million units
• 17.   Nokia 5230, 2010, 150 million units
• 18.   Nokia 1200, 2007, ~150 million units
• 19.   Nokia 3210, 1999, 160 million units
• 20.   Nokia 1110, 2005, 250 million units

Both the Motorola RAZR and the Nokia 3210 appeared on our favourites list – especially for those in the office in their mid-thirties! But there’s a few of us who definitely had a soft spot for the Sony Ericsson T610, and the W200i. The T610 was one of the first mobiles to have a quality in-built camera; even if it was just 0.1MP. And the W200i featured the Walkman tie-in, allowing users to play MP3, AMR, MIDI, and WAV files (amongst others).

The one thing that we all remembered, was playing Snake. Either on our own Nokia 3210 (remember the battery life on that thing?!), or borrowed from a friend. So imagine the elation when the Fivebars office discovered that you can download the Snake ’97 app for both Android and iOS.

We pride ourselves on providing the best mobile phone deals for our business customers, but there is a little pang of regret that we can’t sell you one of our favourite late 90s, or early 2000s phones.