Remember your old mobile phones with this new online museum

Motorola Razr V3
The Motorola Razr V3 (Image credit: Motorola)

Thanks in large part to smartphones and their cameras, there are near endless pictures of modern handsets that you can turn up with a quick Google search, while sites like TechRadar also extensively detail these phones, but what about older handsets? That’s where the new Mobile Phone Museum comes in.

This newly launched website houses over 2,100 unique handsets, dating as far back as 1984. As well as seeing photographs of each phone, you can also read a detailed overview highlighting key features, and see other details such as their weights and codenames.

To help you browse the included phones, they’ve been sorted into various collections, such as best sellers (like the Motorola Razr V3), ugly handsets (including the Nokia 7600), and firsts, such as the Sony Ericsson W800, which was the first Walkman phone.

The Mobile Phone Museum is the brainchild of Ben Wood (who’s also Chief Analyst at technology research firm CCS Insight), and it’s designed not just as a way to remember old handsets you might have had, but also to inspire and educate a new generation of engineers and designers.

It’s not complete though. Many handsets are missing from the collection, and the site is calling for donations of those missing mobiles. If you do send an old phone that’s absent from the site then it will be photographed and moved to a secure storage facility, so it will never be lost to time.


Opinion: an important project for remembering the industry’s history

Many histories are patchy and incomplete, but mobile phones are a recent enough invention that no older model needs to be forgotten, and the Mobile Phone Museum is a great way to ensure every key handset is remembered.

While you can probably find photographs and details of most mobile phones online, in many cases it will take a lot of digging, and the images might be low quality. As time goes on, it could become even harder to find these older handsets if they’re not catalogued properly.

But with the Mobile Phone Museum they’ll all be in one place, with complete details, high-quality images, and with the phones themselves carefully stored so that at least one example of each handset will survive for a long, long time.

All it needs now is for people to dig out and donate the missing handsets, so that records of mobile phone history can be made complete.

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.

Read more
HMD Fusion
'The smartphone teens want, with the safety parents desire': HMD’s Fusion X1 is here to save the TikTok generation
Samsung Galaxy S24 hands on handheld back straight white
Mobile phones turned 40 in 2024, but there’s no need for a foldables or AR glasses fueled midlife crisis before they're 50
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge phone on display next to a Motorola RAZR V3 on a red background
Sorry Samsung, the Galaxy S25 Edge is no Motorola RAZR V3 – its camera bump makes the design pointless
AI generated image from prompt: "A photorealistic image of a very large family angry mad bitter fighting at a nondescript family dinner. We are looking at the angry family everybody is angry over the shoulder of an angry young child who is pointing at the rest of the family, accusing them of disappointing him. The rest of the family is in denial or looks ashamed. We are looking over a family feast. Everybody is holding a smartphone and there are smartphones everywhere on plates and even the main course might be a gigantic roasted smartphone. The image is a bit surreal. There are at least a dozen people at the table and everybody is very angry and shouting and yelling and pointing at each other or trying to hide from the anger. It is like a scene from the show Seinfeld during a Festivus episode"
It is time for my Festivus phone rant, and these smartphones have some explaining to do
The OnePlus Nord 4 before a leafy backdrop.
Buying a phone on a budget? Here are 5 hidden gems from 2024 that you shouldn't overlook
Samsung Galaxy S23 screen
I downsized my phone after using a big phablet for years – it’s a breath of fresh air, but it just makes me want a new iPhone SE
Latest in Phones
Three iPhone 16 handsets on show
Apple could launch an iPhone 17 Ultra this year – but we've heard these rumors before
Man using iMessage on an iPhone
Apple will finally enable encrypted RCS messages between iOS and Android, and it's about time
Android 16 logo on a phone
Android 16 Beta 3 has arrived – here are the 4 features I think will be the most useful
Apple iPhone 16e on blue background with big savings text overlay
Total Wireless' latest iPhone 16e deal gets you $300 off plus a cheap plan for a year
Apple iPhone 16e REVIEW
Some iPhone 16e owners are reporting Bluetooth audio issues that could be an iOS problem
The Apple iPhone 16e held at a slant at a window
From iPhone to Android and (almost) back again – the iPhone 16e failed to lure me back to iOS
Latest in News
A super close up image of the Google Gemini app in the Play Store
It's official: Google Assistant will be retired for phones this year, with Gemini taking over
Quordle on a smartphone held in a hand
Quordle hints and answers for Sunday, March 16 (game #1147)
NYT Strands homescreen on a mobile phone screen, on a light blue background
NYT Strands hints and answers for Sunday, March 16 (game #378)
NYT Connections homescreen on a phone, on a purple background
NYT Connections hints and answers for Sunday, March 16 (game #644)
Three iPhone 16 handsets on show
Apple could launch an iPhone 17 Ultra this year – but we've heard these rumors before
Super Mario Odyssey
ChatGPT is the ultimate gaming tool - here's 4 ways you can use AI to help with your next playthrough