Steve Jobs introduces the world to the iPhone in 2007
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The mobile phone defined the technological boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. We flipped, beeped and text our way into the new millennium with removable fascias via the introduction of grainy cameras and colour screens. The novelty of being able to make calls away from the landline made way to the novelty the phone market relied on for its handsets to stand out on store shelves.
Then came the in 2007 and touchscreen smartphones have led the way ever since. At the end of 2024, another year with a slew of great new smartphones, we felt wistful enough to cook up a list of 14 phones we feel have achieved icon status.
These top phones represent the most recognisable – though not necessarily the best – call devices of the last 40 years. And yes, mobiles have been around that long.
We’ve arranged these phones in chronological order of release. If we’ve missed out a phone you think should be on this list, let us know in the comments!
1. Motorola DynaTAC 8000X
This was the first commercially available mobile phone, going on sale in 1983 for about £3,000. It took about 10 hours to charge, and a full tank could give you half an hour of chatting time. ‘DynaTAC’ stood for Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage. It might not be one of the best mobiles of all time, but we had to shout it out for being the first.
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2. Nokia 8110 (1996)
This phone was popularised by its appearance in 1999’s The Matrix, where Keanu Reeves receives an envelope containing the device with a mystery caller on the other end. Fun fact: the automatic slider opening mechanism wasn’t on the commercially available phone – it was added to the film prop. If you bought the 8110, you had to manually slide it open, which was far less sci-fi.
(Image: Wikipedia)
3. Nokia 3310 (2000)
The 3210 came first with its internal antenna design but it paved the way for the 3310, which was a 126-million-selling-mega-hit with people of all ages. It came out in 2000 and was sold for several years afterwards. Its popularity was down to its affordability, Xpress-On changeable covers and the fact it could send long SMS messages three times the length other phones could manage – even if it cost you 30p to send.
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4. Sony Ericsson T610 (2003)
One of the most iconic phones from the now-defunct Sony Ericsson collaboration, the T610 is as close to perfect as a feature phone got, in our book. The black and silver design got dinged up quite fast but it was an affordable mobile with great looks and a golf game that was genuinely good. You could challenge another T610-wielding buddy to 18 holes using Bluetooth, if we remember correctly.
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