Cell phones have come along way in the last 30 years.  In fact, it’s a bit difficult to believe that they’ve been around that long.  As a tween my father had one of the first cell phones, the brick (pictured above), but I’ll always associated that with Zach from the ‘Saved By The Bell’ TV show.  Below is a short list of gaming changing handsets.  Feel free to chime in and suggest other phones as I’m sure I missed some ‘watershed’ devices, but hopefully this is a good catch all.

One of Motorla’s first flip phones.  It truly did usher in a new form factor.  Course battery life still sucked and the form factor was far from pocket friendly, although a leap and then some above the gray brick.

The Motorola Startac was truly a game changer.  It was the first phone that you could slip into your shirt’s front pocket, which if you recall, was how Motorola marketed the phone.  I had one, but don’t remember how battery life was.  I do remember having a plan with 35 anytime minutes.

The Nokia 8810 wasn’t as small as the Startac but somehow provided affirmation that the market was ready for other form factors; in this case the slider phone.

Blackberry’s first email/cell phone.  In the beginning they had an email only device, but does anyone remember that?

This is kind of a jump in years, but I seem to remember the N-Gage being this big deal.  In any case it turned out to be a huge failure and was called ‘the Taco’.

The Palm Treo was a big deal and according to friends and colleagues was the best device on the market.  We all know what happened after that.

The Motorola Razer wasn’t more advanced than many phones previous to it, but since it offered a super sleek format and had a sexy appeal everyone wanted one.  When it first arrived they were $500.  All I could see was Startac.

Yup, we’re already at the iPhone.  But truly, this was the next game changer.  When it first hit the market it cost $600 for an 8GB version.  Of course, there was no contractaul requirement when you bought the device, but it was locked to AT&T.

Well, that’s what I got. What do you think?