Nov 27 2001
A Very Dead Cell Phone
My first cell phone was an analog/digital Ericsson model, which was absolutely enormous compared to more modern models, and had no additional features whatsoever. Its battery life, even when idle, was never more than 12 hours. After about a year of use (and abuse, since I dropped it on numerous occasions, and left it out in the snow once for 6 hours), the phone began to wither away. The screen would flicker randomly, and the whole system would crash, requiring a hard reset every hour or so. Then, one fine evening in the winter of 2001, the phone said its final goodbye, as seen in the picture.
No further hard resets would revive it, and all attempts at charging it would fail. I had a theory that the arrangement of pixels on the display is really a suicide note from the phone, but I haven’t had time yet to decipher it. Suggestions?