This was a unique point in time when people had cell phones but had to carry a phonebook because there was no mobile internet. Some time between 1992 and 2005?
Even once mobile internet was introduced, it was really expensive and many businesses didn’t have a web presence that would work on mobile. It’s only since maybe 2011 that someone could look up a business on their phone and be relatively confident that they’d find contact info on a mobile friendly page and not blow out their monthly data allowance in the process.
Even in 2005, mobile internet was so shit, it might as well not have existed. 2007-2008 was when 3G was starting to get rolled out I believe, but even that was pretty damn slow and expensive. 3.5G in ~2010+ is when things were usable enough that you could perform a Google search without giving up before the your first result loads.
I remember in 2005, pulling over and calling my sister for directions on my flip phone because I got lost.
I didn’t get mobile internet until like 2010. Not because I couldn’t, but because it was wildly expensive for a bad experience, since “mobile-friendly” was non-existent.
This was also during the era when Google Maps was a brand new website, not a app. I think I was still MapQuesting.
What sites are you having issues with on a desktop? I find pretty much everything is desktop first, and most are mobile-friendly. But maybe it’s the sites we visit.
Every website that’s mainly for displaying text (think into pages, blogs, Q&A) assumes your browser window is portrait like a phone screen. If I have widened my window I want the text to reach the edges, not float in a central column with masses of useless whitespace either side.
That has nothing to do with phones and everything to do with readability. It turns out, people have trouble reading overly long lines of text, so website developers tend to limit text to a certain width. It’s also a little bit of carryover to pre-responsive design when websites had to work well on 800x600 desktop screens, as well as 1080p screens, but that hasn’t really been a thing for many years now.
I agree with the user Jared Farrish: it’s to make the content more readable. If a paragraph spans the entire width of the browser window, it can be taxing on the eye to move from the end of one line to the start of the next line if the paragraph takes up many pixels in width. Many websites tend to limit the width of the page for this reason. In addition, some Web sites use media queries to change the font size if the user’s browser window width is very large.
Well I disagree, because I find having to scroll up and down more often makes it less readable, and if I wanted it to be thin I’d make the browser window thin. Return to 90s websites where the site just gives you the info and how to display it is left entirely to the browser and the user.
I remember paying a ton because I enabled mobile data in 2009 to check the score on a football game. My normal bill was ~$50/month for unlimited talk/text, and a few megs of data to check the score on one game doubled my bill that month.
It wasn’t until 2011/2012 until I had a plan w/ data, and even then it was kind of expensive and slow. I remember switching to Google Fi pretty early on because it was only $10/GB, which was a really good deal at the time.
There was also goog411 from 2007 to 2010. It was nice for finding phone numbers quickly and for free, but in hindsight, they were collecting vocal data.
Around that time I was a swamper on a moving truck, we had been just using a map book, worked fine. The owner decided TomTom was the future, and wanted us using it, no arguments!
We’re going down the highway, fully loaded, probably going a bit faster than we should, and TomTom, in it’s infinite wisdom, yells “Sharp left here!”
This is Canada, and we were halfway between exits, a sharp left turn would have put us through the concrete barriers and into oncoming traffic. Needless to say, we turned Tom off, and carried on with the map book…
In the UK at least, mobile phone ownership per household was only 16% in 1996 and didn’t reach 50% until the year 2000.
To have a phone in '92 you’d need to either be wealthy or have it through a company for business.
My dad had a phone in 95 for work and it was an absolute brick.
As for mobile internet, that wasn’t really a thing until smartphones happened with the iPhone. Yes we had WAP and other precursors to the full internet but it was awful and nobody used it, ever. In 2007 I was a geeky nerd at uni doing Comp Sci and had a Windows Mobile PDA in a belt holster, with full internet! But most people didn’t have Internet until about 2009-10
Do you mean the Cisco iPhone from the 90s or the Brazilian iphone from the early '00s? I’m totally just taking the piss though, I know you mean the Apple one from the later '00s but it wasn’t that rare to have mobile internet before it, they were just riding the wave that was already breaking across society.
Apple had a major advantage though, lots of people were already eyeing their popular mp3 player, if a phone could be a phone, internet, and a good music player you can sync easily, it won for a lot of people. I couldn’t justify the price and really liked physical keyboards, by the time those became rare I disliked Apple too much to try them.
Somewhere I have my old BB 8320 from 2007, it was awesome because it had WiFi so much better speed when WiFi was available.
I’m with the op on this one, I had just about every device under the sun, but mobile internet wasn’t a thing in Australia until we had a proper mobile browser, and that was with the iPhone. I vividly remember whipping out my 3gs to browse the internet, people being amazed, but it also being absolute shit if you were on the move or in most places. I would say ubiquitous reliable mobile internet wasn’t a thing until maybe 2012-13
I was a post-doc during this period. I had a mobile phone but data was eyebleedingly expensive, and there wasn’t much to do on mobile. Most companies had a minimal web presence and very little directed towards mobile. I drove across the US in 2009 and even then it was better to use the information preloaded on my Garmin than the mobile web.
I remember it being iffy when I used it back then, the 8320 didn’t have GPS so it was trying to use cell towers to figure out the turn by turn. It was slower, but not as slow as the connection speed would seem because every page load wasn’t dependent on a thousand different CDNs and a hundred different trackers.
A dedicated GPS was essential for cross country (if you didn’t want paper maps or printouts).
I first bought a phone as soon as the first GSM networks opened, in Norway, in 1993. My first phone was a Pioneer PCC-D700 and, if memory serves, it cost 2995 NOK / ~300 EUR.
Before GSM became a thing, phones were crazy expensive, though. Almost as expensive as an iPhone, he.
later than 2005 for most people, the first iPhone was released in 2007, first Android phone in 2008, those things made a lot more people practically able to access the Internet from outside, and even then it took until 2009 to 2011 for many people to get one
I had Google maps on my Nokia SymbianOS phone before the iPhone was released. It worked just as well as modern version but was I little clunkier to use without a touchscreen. I’m pretty sure that Palm Treos had it as well. There where also some other options, I kinda remember Garmin selling map packs for Palm devices.
Smartphones existed before android and iPhone, even if they weren’t as widespread they were catching on with the broader consumer before the iPhone was released. You saw more more people getting blackberries for personal use instead of just business.
Are you sure it wasnt another app? What I see is that it launched with the first iPhone. (Was a website previous to print directions like MapQuest and what not)
My Father had a ‘car phone’ from 1990-1999ish and then switched to a nokia 3210 or similar.
While he had the ‘car phone’, he kept a phone book in the car.
By the time of the Nokia, his outbound calling was predictable enough that he either had it saved on the phone or he used ‘411’ to have an operator look up the number.
I don’t think I’ve ever called 411, or known anyone who has. I have known about it for ages, but I guess I was always under the impression that it was expensive or something.
This was a unique point in time when people had cell phones but had to carry a phonebook because there was no mobile internet. Some time between 1992 and 2005?
Even once mobile internet was introduced, it was really expensive and many businesses didn’t have a web presence that would work on mobile. It’s only since maybe 2011 that someone could look up a business on their phone and be relatively confident that they’d find contact info on a mobile friendly page and not blow out their monthly data allowance in the process.
Removed by mod
Even in 2005, mobile internet was so shit, it might as well not have existed. 2007-2008 was when 3G was starting to get rolled out I believe, but even that was pretty damn slow and expensive. 3.5G in ~2010+ is when things were usable enough that you could perform a Google search without giving up before the your first result loads.
WAP was a bit of an attempt, but in truth you couldn’t do much of anything with it.
…wet ass pussy??
Yep, premium flip phones had optional wet ass pussies in the early 00’s
I remember in 2005, pulling over and calling my sister for directions on my flip phone because I got lost.
I didn’t get mobile internet until like 2010. Not because I couldn’t, but because it was wildly expensive for a bad experience, since “mobile-friendly” was non-existent.
This was also during the era when Google Maps was a brand new website, not a app. I think I was still MapQuesting.
And now everything is mobile-first.
WIsh we could go back to the time where mobile-friendly was a thing, but using a desktop browser was a valid option too.
What sites are you having issues with on a desktop? I find pretty much everything is desktop first, and most are mobile-friendly. But maybe it’s the sites we visit.
Every website that’s mainly for displaying text (think into pages, blogs, Q&A) assumes your browser window is portrait like a phone screen. If I have widened my window I want the text to reach the edges, not float in a central column with masses of useless whitespace either side.
That has nothing to do with phones and everything to do with readability. It turns out, people have trouble reading overly long lines of text, so website developers tend to limit text to a certain width. It’s also a little bit of carryover to pre-responsive design when websites had to work well on 800x600 desktop screens, as well as 1080p screens, but that hasn’t really been a thing for many years now.
I like the second answer here:
Well I disagree, because I find having to scroll up and down more often makes it less readable, and if I wanted it to be thin I’d make the browser window thin. Return to 90s websites where the site just gives you the info and how to display it is left entirely to the browser and the user.
I remember paying a ton because I enabled mobile data in 2009 to check the score on a football game. My normal bill was ~$50/month for unlimited talk/text, and a few megs of data to check the score on one game doubled my bill that month.
It wasn’t until 2011/2012 until I had a plan w/ data, and even then it was kind of expensive and slow. I remember switching to Google Fi pretty early on because it was only $10/GB, which was a really good deal at the time.
There was also goog411 from 2007 to 2010. It was nice for finding phone numbers quickly and for free, but in hindsight, they were collecting vocal data.
Around that time I was a swamper on a moving truck, we had been just using a map book, worked fine. The owner decided TomTom was the future, and wanted us using it, no arguments!
We’re going down the highway, fully loaded, probably going a bit faster than we should, and TomTom, in it’s infinite wisdom, yells “Sharp left here!” This is Canada, and we were halfway between exits, a sharp left turn would have put us through the concrete barriers and into oncoming traffic. Needless to say, we turned Tom off, and carried on with the map book…
In the UK at least, mobile phone ownership per household was only 16% in 1996 and didn’t reach 50% until the year 2000.
To have a phone in '92 you’d need to either be wealthy or have it through a company for business.
My dad had a phone in 95 for work and it was an absolute brick.
As for mobile internet, that wasn’t really a thing until smartphones happened with the iPhone. Yes we had WAP and other precursors to the full internet but it was awful and nobody used it, ever. In 2007 I was a geeky nerd at uni doing Comp Sci and had a Windows Mobile PDA in a belt holster, with full internet! But most people didn’t have Internet until about 2009-10
Do you mean the Cisco iPhone from the 90s or the Brazilian iphone from the early '00s? I’m totally just taking the piss though, I know you mean the Apple one from the later '00s but it wasn’t that rare to have mobile internet before it, they were just riding the wave that was already breaking across society.
Apple had a major advantage though, lots of people were already eyeing their popular mp3 player, if a phone could be a phone, internet, and a good music player you can sync easily, it won for a lot of people. I couldn’t justify the price and really liked physical keyboards, by the time those became rare I disliked Apple too much to try them.
Somewhere I have my old BB 8320 from 2007, it was awesome because it had WiFi so much better speed when WiFi was available.
I’m with the op on this one, I had just about every device under the sun, but mobile internet wasn’t a thing in Australia until we had a proper mobile browser, and that was with the iPhone. I vividly remember whipping out my 3gs to browse the internet, people being amazed, but it also being absolute shit if you were on the move or in most places. I would say ubiquitous reliable mobile internet wasn’t a thing until maybe 2012-13
I was a post-doc during this period. I had a mobile phone but data was eyebleedingly expensive, and there wasn’t much to do on mobile. Most companies had a minimal web presence and very little directed towards mobile. I drove across the US in 2009 and even then it was better to use the information preloaded on my Garmin than the mobile web.
I remember it being iffy when I used it back then, the 8320 didn’t have GPS so it was trying to use cell towers to figure out the turn by turn. It was slower, but not as slow as the connection speed would seem because every page load wasn’t dependent on a thousand different CDNs and a hundred different trackers.
A dedicated GPS was essential for cross country (if you didn’t want paper maps or printouts).
The T-Mobile Sidekick had a full browser in 2002 and was wildly popular with younger people.
A large part of DangerOS’s architecture was later used to create Android.
I first bought a phone as soon as the first GSM networks opened, in Norway, in 1993. My first phone was a Pioneer PCC-D700 and, if memory serves, it cost 2995 NOK / ~300 EUR.
Before GSM became a thing, phones were crazy expensive, though. Almost as expensive as an iPhone, he.
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later than 2005 for most people, the first iPhone was released in 2007, first Android phone in 2008, those things made a lot more people practically able to access the Internet from outside, and even then it took until 2009 to 2011 for many people to get one
Google maps didn’t exist prior to the iPhone/android period as well, so people with blackberrys didn’t have access to that before Android/iphone 07-08
I had Google maps on my Nokia SymbianOS phone before the iPhone was released. It worked just as well as modern version but was I little clunkier to use without a touchscreen. I’m pretty sure that Palm Treos had it as well. There where also some other options, I kinda remember Garmin selling map packs for Palm devices. Smartphones existed before android and iPhone, even if they weren’t as widespread they were catching on with the broader consumer before the iPhone was released. You saw more more people getting blackberries for personal use instead of just business.
Are you sure it wasnt another app? What I see is that it launched with the first iPhone. (Was a website previous to print directions like MapQuest and what not)
https://en.softonic.com/articles/google-maps-goes-native-on-symbian
This is one of the only things I can find talking about it, but I’m sure I used Google maps with GPS on SymbianOS.
Nice, never used Symbian before, did you like it?
Google Maps seems to have been launched in 2005, so it did exist, though maybe not as a smartphone app.
Yeah it was a website like MapQuest, just a bit better.
It still is a website too, that was never abolished.
I don’t think anyone took a phone book with them. This is the first time I’ve ever heard it suggested.
My Father had a ‘car phone’ from 1990-1999ish and then switched to a nokia 3210 or similar. While he had the ‘car phone’, he kept a phone book in the car. By the time of the Nokia, his outbound calling was predictable enough that he either had it saved on the phone or he used ‘411’ to have an operator look up the number.
I don’t think I’ve ever called 411, or known anyone who has. I have known about it for ages, but I guess I was always under the impression that it was expensive or something.
I had mobile internet around 2002/2003 I believe. It was slow as shit and pages were just text but it was internet.
You should have seen the internet before 1993 lol.