Origin Story

This was my first phone ever, got it as a hand-me-down from my mom.

I used it with a pre-pay SIM that rarely was topped up. Since it never had credits, I couldn’t make calls. But I found that Vodafone Romania had a handy feature in a menu that would send a message for free to any number asking to call me back, so I’d abuse that feature to get my mom to call me whenever I needed to speak with her. Eventually they updated the service and it was limited to 3 requests per month or year (I don’t remember exactly).

I had the headphones with the proprietary connector for it too, so I’d also listen to FM radio or the few MP3s I was able to get transferred over Bluetooth to the internal storage, which was tiny.

I tried to get the PC software to work on my computer, but after getting it installed it wouldn’t recognize the phone. My dad also brought a Micro SD card from work that we tried to put in the phone, but it did not recognize it. As a sidenote, the installer had some typical 2000s mysthical music that kinda creeped me out as a kid.

Years later, I tried an SD card and it worked, so it was likely a format issue.