IN the late 80s and early 90s, they used to be the coolest of the cool, a phone that you could carry around in a bag and call your friends on when you stopped for a coffee.
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And that’s about all you could do on your Motorola 2950 special edition bag phone, ring someone, you certainly couldn’t take a picture of your latte art.
Gary Davidson found his old bag phone when he was sorting through his father’s shed.
“I used to have it sitting between the seat in my XD Falcon,” he said. “Whenever anyone rang up I had to pull over to plug it into the cigarette lighter because otherwise it would run flat.”
The phone ran on the old and the now defunct analogue network, but Mr Davidson said that his phone had terrific reception, if it was available.
“The coverage wasn’t great back then,” he laughed.
“But when it did work, it was really clear, just like a landline.”
Like most people Mr Davidson uses an iPhone for nearly all his communications.
“It’s amazing to think that we’ve come from this massive bag, to something that has all these gadgets in it and fits in your pocket.”
The Motorola 2950 was marketed to people in regional areas because it was considered to be the most robust of all their models with a stronger signal, the special edition also boasted a 14 digit alphanumeric colour LCD.
Mr Davidson said that his children, who are all in their 20s and 30s, were shocked when they saw it.
“They really couldn’t believe how big it was,” he said. “And that all it was, was a phone, with no texting and certainly no Facebook.”