re: My first phone was a dumb phone
Like Dabi, who wrote about this topic here, I got my first phone when I as in 6th grade. It was a Christmas gift. My dad asked me to choose which phone I thought my cousin would like to get, and I was really angry that they were going to give a phone to them before I had one (barely did I know). It was a Motorola KRZR K1m —here's a WIRED review from 2007, and I probably got it in 2009. At the time, I only used it to text and call my parents and friends. I was very afraid of turning the mobile data on, as it was very expensive!
I had that phone for a couple of years (until it broke) and I then got what is still my favourite phone ever: the Sony Ericsson W910i. Again, not a smartphone by today's standards, but it had a really cool feature: there was a button you could press before swinging the phone to the right or left to skip the song that was playing. Can you imagine how cool that gimmick was for any 13/14-year-old kid? Unfortunately, that phone started having charging issues before the end of the two-year warranty and Vodafone stopped trying to fix it and gave us the choice of replacing it. That was when I got my first phone where I could install apps: the Nokia Lumia 620—I'm fairly certain it was this model.
This was the first time I could use mobile data "freely" and install things on my phone! However, I only used Snapchat, which was big at the time (2013/2014). While reading Dabi's post I realized I used my phones like they did: mainly to contact other people and especially to listen to music (even though I had an iPod Touch for a couple of years). This was good for me, as that Nokia was absolutely awful and broke down in less than a year, from what I remembered. Afterwards, I got a cheap Vodafone-branded smartphone that worked fine until I left it in the back seat of a cab after a night out in my first semester at university. Again, I resorted to a cheap smartphone from a brand called Elephone, which was not great, but it worked for me.
I used this phone until I inherited a Huawei P8 Lite and then a P30 Lite from my girlfriend, when she switched to the dark side of iPhones. I only switched phones this year as 1) I wanted to get a Google Pixel so that I could further degoogle my life—which is ironic— and 2) my father needed a new phone, so he inherited the Huawei P30 Lite.
Reading Dabi's post and writing this made me think about my phone usage. It has stayed consistent over the years, as I still use it mainly to contact other people, and for banking apps, a clear sign that I'm no longer a kid with a cool Motorola, sadly.