Dai Goh Dai

A post about handphones!

In Cantonese, ‘Dai Goh’ means ‘Big Brother’. Dai Goh Dai means “Big Brother Carrying” I think, and the phrase was used in the 80s when mobile phones became available for consumer purchase. Those phones were like bricks then, but no I didn’t own one of those.:)

Handphones are quite the rage here in Asia, and it’s not uncommon for people to change their mobiles every couple of months. Heck. M1 – one of the telco service providers here – even has an offering where you subscribe to a plan and get a free phone you pick from a range equivalent to your price plan, with a free upgrade to a better phone every 10th month.

I thought it’d be meaningful to do a post on the handphones I’ve had over the last 11 years, before I totally forget about what I’ve owned before, so here it goes – the ten handphones I’ve had since 1998.:)

My first handphone was a Nokia 6110 in 1998. Monochrome screen, with an antenna that jutted out its top to boot. The thing wouldn’t fit into a jeans pocket, and could barely fit into business pants. It did replace the Motorola pager I was using up till that point though, so being able to reply to a communication message and not just merely be its recipient was a novel experience.

My next phone was in 1999, and from the pre-Sony Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson: their T28. Now that was the first of the truly more portable mobiles. It was short, and the keypad was hidden by the front plastic flip. It did still have a short stubby antenna, but had no problems fitting into pockets. Mine was a very retro yellow-green one LOL.

I returned back to Nokia the next year in 2000 with the Nokia 8250. This was, and still remains, one of the lightest mobile phones in mass consumer use ever. Very reliable, and I still see a few persons using them when in reservist training. I think this was the phone where I started texting too (I didn’t do so in the first two phones).

My Nokia 8250 was the last of the monochrome screen mobiles, because the next one in 2001 was my first color-screen mobile: the popular Sony-Ericsson T68i. This phone had a hard plastic shell, great build, and a higher resolution screen.

Ok, so it was just 256 colors – some mobiles these days go up to 16.8 million colors – but this mobile had quite a cult following in online forums. I remembered subscribing to an M1 data plan too so I could dial out using this mobile and receive email. And this was before 3G and Wi-Fi days. Each dial-out was expensive!

I had my T68i for nearly 2 years, bringing it to Perth until in June 2003 when I returned to Singapore for semester break, traded it in for a Nokia 6100. Yep, I see-saw between Nokia and Sony-Ericsson phones! Another great phone. Slightly higher resolution screen, better color rendition, smaller and lighter than the T68i too.

The Nokia 6100 was my longest-lived phone at 3 years. I had it until early 2006 when I finally got my first smart-phone: the Dopod 577w. The mobile had a great screen, 320×240, which today is considered entry level specification for most mid-range phones.

The operating system on the Dopod was Windows Mobile. It crashed occasionally, but being able to load your own applications into it was a fun experience. I had pocket versions of the bible, Wiki (!), tons of reading material on it. The phone’s length was just right though a tad thick in depth.

Unfortunately, the phone was just too unstable and frequently hung. Moreover, messaging was difficult, as the left and right keys on the bottom row of its keypad was curved, making for even smaller keys.

So, after a year, I traded that in for the best camera phone I’ve had: the wildly popular Sony-Ericsson K800 in 2007. That was another favorite and sold very well. It had the same high resolution as the Dopod (though in terms of screen dimension it was slightly smaller), and I had it paired up via Bluetooth to Phoneexplorer – which allowed for all those ultra-fast messaging off a computer.

The K800 wasn’t without issues though. It was faaaaaat at a depth of 22mm. You actually felt this thick stubby thing in your pants! Worse though was the design of the camera lens sliding cover. It was too flimsy and had a bad habit of sliding on its own, activating the camera while the phone was still in your pocket.

So, in March 2008, I traded that in for a Sony-Ericsson W890i, which is what I’m still using today, mocha-brown colored. The W890i is a beautiful phone. Very slim at a depth of just 9.9mm,very light at 78g, metallic-casing, and real sexy. The phone isn’t without its issues though, largely having to do with the fact that the MP3 player on the phone seems to start on its own LOL.

Recently, the phone’s started to act up too. It’s started to crash repeatedly, and battery life’s noticeably grown shorter. It barely goes through a day and a half right now. Ling’s Nokia 6300 that I got her 2 years ago for Valentine’s Day is acting up too. So, yep, I’m on the look out for two replacement phones for the both of us.:)

And finally – two more phones which I use during reservist training: the LG KG275, and the Nokia 1650. Both are non-camera handphones given the security of those military camps I serve my yearly training at, but still quite functional. The LG K250 had a rather stubby keypad though which made texting difficult. But at 59g, it was even lighter than the W890.

However, the power charger kaput last year, so I was left with a handphone without a workable charger. OK I could have gotten a replacement charger, but I went instead with a cheapo replacement phone for NS use: the Nokia 1650. That’s the one I use today when I need to be back in camp for one thing or another.

End of post.:)