Before Phones: The Last Generation Before Smartphones

💬 The first mobile phone went on sale in 1983, weighing nearly a kilo and costing the equivalent of $12,000 today. Just four decades later, smartphones have reshaped the world - and many of us can’t imagine life without them.

⚡ Yet in 2026 something strange is happening. People are buying landline phones again, switching to dumb phones, deleting apps like WhatsApp and TikTok, and trying to reclaim a way of life that’s still within living memory.

So in this episode we take a nostalgic journey through the early days of mobile phones, explore what life was like before smartphones, and ask whether some of the limitations of past technology might actually have been a good thing.

💬 Part 1 of a 2-part phone special.

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🎧 Stay tuned to learn about:

➡ The massive size of the world’s first mobile phone - and its terrible battery life

➡ Why “text speech” became a thing - and why there was a 160 character limit

➡ How ringtone sales briefly became a multi-billion dollar industry

➡ The challenges of landline telephones and no caller ID

➡ The surprising role car phones played in the history of mobiles

➡ The mental and physical impacts of smartphones - and why we can’t live without them

About the podcast:

What We Did Before is a podcast exploring the history of everyday life, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.

About your hosts:

Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.

Matt Pyle is a lead software developer and tech enthusiast with a keen interest in media, and a love for interesting conversation and learning.

Connect with Ollie:

Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou 

Email: hello@ogpodcasts.co.uk

Image credit: Avicente05, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons