When Phones Were Fun: AOL Mobile Communicator (2001)

I remember having the “Im free” that you plugged transmitter into computer and was able to use it around the house

i wish there were a way to get a device like this for €5 instead of being forced to spend €1500 in a modern phone, for €1495 of useless features.

Damn you and Oxhorn sound alike

Had opportunity to use pager blackberry services and even first nokia 4096 colors mobile phone our generation has seen telecom sector evolve

AOL was popular even here in Mexico. I remember watching a lot of commercials on TV, and by the way, it was my first ever internet service, weird telecommunications sounds included.

That is crazy that you found an AOL Mobile Communicator new in box on eBay. You have to wonder what kind of person thought to hide this away for a couple of decades until the device became a collector's item, and the company associated with the machine, a mere instant messenging app. 📟

I had one of these units. It worked very well. RIM did an awesome job with these. Solid and reliable using a 2 way paging network. The keyboard was the most comfortable compact keyboard Ive ever used, even today. Designed for two thumbs. It truly was fun to use. It's intended replacement the T-Mobile Sidekick was horrible. It worked well as a phone but frequently lost it's data connection. So IMs would not get through either way until it regained a cellular data connection. It was so frustrating I returned the Sidekick to T-Mobile. Which was a shame because I had been looking forward to the next leap with wireless AOL with it's color display and more PC sounding alert tones (the mobile communicator used 8 bit sounding beeps). So glad I didn't cancel my other phone back then. It was after all a phone. I didn't need another phone, I already had one. Other things on it I didn't need were games, like an Asteroids like game. I was hoping for AOL Mobile Communicator 2.0. Maybe with the ability to enter chat rooms and display pictures (which of course is was not at all what the Sidekick was). I used the mobile communicator right up until the day the plug was pulled on it's service. It would still send out pulses of data to a no longer existent service. It's last emails and IMs stuck inside the unit as they were when last received. I threw it away. I wish I had it now as a keepsake but it would be of no practical use today. Service shut off forever in 2003. Even AOL Instant messenger itself is now dead.

I used to have insta message I’ma Millennial I had that in 2001 I was 4

BGM anyone ??

Pagers are still used , and that is why I think that is really cool

I Never Had This Stuff before. But I Still Enjoy Videos like this because I Get to experience the Pruduct even if I never used it.

"Takes a lot more effort to go offline".......true.

I'm starting to hate how signing off the internet is now practically illegal

Thanks a lot man , for making this video , it's really a lot for me , EVOLUTION

Your sign off was on point! 😂

I had one of these. I also had some kind of stupid cellphone radio thing that came out before this that was made for teens. I forget what it was called. Found it. It was V-Link. It never worked because none of my friends had one. I don't know what happened to my AOL communicator. Probably laying in a landfill somewhere.

I still have one and it works!

hmm how about the history of the iDEN/Nextel era?

I still don’t know why you want to connect a microwave to the internet but ok lol

But you CAN go back to that world…. Just turn on airplane mode 😂👍

Michael Fisher, congratulations on the great videos and the interesting topics you touch on, especially interesting are the topics with old telephone devices, of which I am a big fan. Keep up the good work! Greetings from Bulgaria!

I wholeheartedly agree, phones were fun back then. Nowadays, besides making or taking the sporadic phone call, my iPhone 12 mini, works as a glorified mp3 device for my podcast listening.
Enjoyed the Motorola Talkabout, Palm, Blackberries and Nextel, way more.

stumbled on this video, your videos are always fantastic, one small slip, no BBM on the 950, P2P only, although the precursor to it!!! Thanks for the great content

Can you do the Motorola 2 way? The talkabout?

There's a BlackBerry 950 at the 9/11 memorial museum. It's was carryed by a CEO of a company in the second tower, he was late to work and saw the first plane hit tower one from the ground. He used it to email his employees and told them to get out, he saved everyone at his companies life. He donated it to the museum as said blackberry was the reason why his employees survived 9/11.

I was a Compuserve customer so I never really got into AOL messenger.
Today however I only get online through a handheld device. It's been about 10 years since I used a computer on a regular basis.

LUMBERGH

Petition to bring something like this back. Connect your smart phone to it, leave your smart phone at home, and take this with you. Make quick replies to texts and a single email and set other important notifications (to see not respond). A sort of "smart pager" so you don't have to be fully connected to a screen.

As someone that been in the telecommunications business for over 30 years the beeper/pager, two way pagers, AOL, Nextel, sidekicks was innovating. If you didn’t experienced these Devices and service you didn’t live life.

Wow why would he sell something that was password locked? SMH

Watching this on my nokia 3310

I want to marry this dude so bad. 😐

ironically id love one of these but for discord! would be kinda silly but i think id love it haha

I didn't know this existed! I had the one that had the base station that connected to your PC.

Would love to see an episode on iMate JasJar PDA.

That last line was the sound of someone starting into Pandora’s box and being like “let’s just close that”

Dang, you should have said the item received was not as described and that ebayer would have to kick rocks.

Is there anything like this now? I miss theses

OMG I REMEMBER THIS

Pagers are alooot more expensive than that nowadays. For the good ones like alpha numeric messaging that tell weather/news and 1yr of service, you're looking at around 500 bucks.

Thank you for the fascinating look at early mobile devices. Much appreciated!

I heard he got hired by the blackberry company research in motion you could say he got a rim job

With the quality of these videos he deserves more than 7 million subs