Flip phones are where it was at. Conversation had you mad? Bye! CLACK!
Slam it so hard you could make it ding. If you were still mad, you could then yank the cord out of the wall. If you still weren’t done, you could throw it across the room, and it would be just fine, when you calmed down, plugged it back in, and set it on the table again.
The phone would, but the wall impacted would have a hole
This was so unbelievably satisfying….Fuck you! SLAM … brrring …SLAM … brrring … over and over again
We had one that had a really long cord on it and when my older sisters would walk into another room with it, I’d run up and unplug it from the base then disappear. Fuck I had some good hiding spots.
I would usually call my friends from lowest to highest digits in their phone number
You can still do that if you don’t mind buying a new phone after.
And slam it over and over. And the phone was fine.
Beating the earpiece against the metal pay phone and not even a scuff mark.
JERRY!
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No soup for you.
“Why don’t they make the whole plane out of Bakelite?”
Reminds me of the first time I worked in a newsroom in the early 2000s. When the repeated slamming wasn’t enough, the whole phone would go flying across the office. I, unfortunately, had the desk by the wall, in the prime firing line. My reflexes became boss in those first 3 months.
“YOU’RE AN INANIMATE OBJECT!!!”
I enjoyed the flip phone, like, this convo sucks, clap and closed
Answering on flip phones was equally boss. When you master that perfect wrist flip where you can just crack the hinge a little with your thumb and let the flip do the rest of the work.
So satisfying every time.
The older startacs where you could whip if out of a pocket and wrist flip it open without fear of ending up with a 2 piece phone
And the ringer in the phone was a physical bell with a little magnetically-actuated hammer, so if you slammed the receiver down hard enough, the bell would actually resonate for a little while after. You know how some people use a bell slowly fading out as a meditation tool? That’s the association I have for that sensation.
“You know how some people use a bell slowly fading out as a meditation tool? That’s the association I have for that sensation.”
Oh man, this comparison is going to stick with me; it’s one of my favourite things I’ve read in recent weeks
Thanks! I debated whether to include it, because it’s definitely one of those “well my brain sure isn’t normal!” things, but now I’m glad I did.
“AND NEVER CALL ME AGAIN!” slam
ding
+1 enlightenment points
And, the phones were built to take it.
AFAIK, one reason for that is that AT&T was the monopoly provider of telephone equipment. They didn’t have to compete with anybody who might undercut them for price. In addition, people often rented their phones, paying a small rental charge every month. That meant that AT&T built the phones to last. They were extremely solid because AT&T didn’t ever want to have to replace a phone that someone was renting.
Nowadays, we see the answer to the question “What if we made the hinges plastic?” in almost everything we do, everywhere we go.
Landline phones were mostly plastic and took lots of abuse for years just fine.
I was speaking generally of most consumer goods that have cheapened on design and materials, but to address phones…
While the material of the shell was plastic, there were huge differences in both shape, density (bakelite has different compressive properties than polyurethane) as well as engineering.
IE, the shells of lets say, and old 1985 motel phone, were made of pretty thick bakelite or poly plastic, and the insides were made of very simple metal and copper wiring, there were no integrated circuits, there were no moving parts, no computers, no video screens, no charging ports, no boards with parts, they were almost entirely mechanical, the function of the keys only served to send signal tones and didn’t connect to anything more advanced than a switchboard somewhere. That’s why they could withstand a lot of abuse.
Modern electronics, including the rare home landline phones we have now, are made of much thinner polyurethane or styrene shells, they have almost entirely solid-state parts inside, chips and boards that capacitors can come loose from, charging ports that can break off the housing and make shorts in connections, wiring isn’t designed to withstand someone accidentally yanking the whole thing, they have LCD screens and are basically just more fragile in all regards.
The issue has a lot more to do with the wider array of consumer goods though, like vacuum cleaners or microwave ovens and home goods that are supposed to last for years and years, but tend to break after only a couple years, and this is now by design.
no moving parts
Mechanical bells in phones were nice. If you slammed the phone on the receiver you would get a nice ring from them.
People also didn’t own the phones themselves. They were usually rented from the phone company as part of the service contract. So the phone companies had an incentive to buy sturdy equipment. Consumers buying things for themselves often buy the cheapest they can, resulting in lower quality. Yes, lots of products today are worse than they could be, consumer demand for cheap devices plays a role here as well.
microwave ovens
There are only a handful of companies making the core component magnetrons. Various brands just package it differently.
My Bosch vacuum cleaner is 11 years old and works great. The only problem it has is weaker cable retraction. My Bosch washing machine is 7 years old and works fine. My Samsung fridge is 5 years old and great. My Miele dishwasher is at least 15 years old and works great. My no name brand cheap toaster is 17 years old and works great. So from personal experience, I think this is acceptable.
I never had a microwave magnetron give out, they last far longer than the plastic housing, plastic handles, hollow frames and thin plastic films over the buttons. I’ve also lost five vacuum cleaners of various brands in the last decade, full on smoke and melted plastic. Only Dyson has lasted more than a decade.
And I also realized that by discussing the durability of branded houseware, I am absolutely too old to be on the internet anymore.
The old heavy ones were bakelite
Bakelite is plastic
Dropped my old Nokia 5 floors. Mom on call didn’t even notice. Thing worked afterwards too.
Like straight down? On what kind of surface?
I spiked the fuck out of an old Nokia in like 2093 against the carpeted floor in my office. Sadly I slightly cracked the corner of where the battery case met the phone. The phone still worked but the battery wouldn’t stay connected. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person on the internet who ever broke a Nokia.
Yes straight down to smooth Concrete. Fell out of my hand as i was opening a door at the top. Thing wasn’t even damaged. Battery popped out was all. Thing was epic for a cheap phone.
So it kept your mom on the call with no battery?
Old Nokias are so great, they don’t need battery.
No she didn’t notice the falling just the call drop.
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If you had a Touch Tone phone, you could hold any button while on a call and the noise would annoy sales callers, or the creepy heavy breathers that would call.
Also, each button was a combination of 2 frequencies, each row and each column had a certain frequency. So, each button was a combination of those two.
But, if you pushed two buttons on the same row, or two buttons in the same column, you could get a single “note”. So, you could play very basic tunes.
beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
“…so, anyway, as i was say–”
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP
“…”
That still works with modern phones no?
Cell phones only register a momentary tone. Landlines (POTS) still do this though, yes.
And if you were on the receiving end, you heard the slam. Or, so I’ve been told…
Because the handset ended up in a “cradle”, there was almost always contact between the handset and the cradle before the switch cut off the phone. That was true even when someone was hanging up normally. There was a bit of a rattle as the phone went into the cradle. When someone slammed the phone down, that contact between the handset and cradle was much louder, but was cut off much more quickly. It wasn’t painfully loud, but the person on the other end was very aware that the phone had been slammed.
Nah bro, they actually felt it. You probably never got slammed so you don’t know, but the person on the other end would suddenly fly across the room like a truck hit them, that’s why we saved the phone slam for when someone REALLY deserved it. Good times.
I got phone slammed once. I died.
Condolences, you will be missed.
Through the announcers table.
