In the year 2001, could cell phones display the caller’s NAME or did it just display the caller’s PHONE NUMBER?
Name + number
Was it matching the number to a name pulled from the phone’s contact list, or displaying the name provided by the telco’s Caller ID data? ISTR that the telco-provided name was an extra-cost feature.
Here are some 2001 phones
This is kind of an odd question unless you give us some background for it. I worked on some telecom software around that time. For the most part, cell phones of that era just displayed what the provider sent and they were designed to show. That was often both the name and number but it was host provided and did not come from the phone itself. The exception may or may not have been Blackberry phones. They were arguably the first major smartphones but I never owned one nor built software specifically designed for them. I do know that they had advanced features that catered mainly to business users like advanced contact lists. Most other cell phones had some rudimentary features that would allow you to (theoretically) connect to the web and establish contact lists but the interface was so obscure and hard to use that they were no smarter than a household cordless phone for most practical purposes.
The general answer to your question is that cell phones of that era generally showed both the name and number exactly the way land lines did but that depended on the data that the phone companies had.
I remember sometime back in the '90s our landline provider had Caller ID and Caller ID Deluxe as optional premium features. Regular caller id showed the number. Deluxe showed the name, if available. By 2001, I’m pretty sure Number and Name (if available) were standard as Caller ID was a standard feature on cell phones, at least for me. It was how numbers were listed with the telephone company. IIRC, for landlines it would have been as they were listed in the phone book.
As noted above, even with the most basic caller ID feature enabled by the carrier, mobile phones would try to match an incoming call with numbers in the phone’s own caller list. Some phones were better at this than others, as there could (and still are) be issues where the number in the list doesn’t exactly match the ID, since one of the other may contain more prefix numbers. GSM often carried the complete number - including country code. But not always. By 2001 even the most basic phone had more than enough capability to do this. Even my 1996 GSM phone did.
I am asking because I am interviewing someone for a story on 911. This person is claiming that he saw a cell phone in a severed hand on the ground, with the phone ringing, and showing the word “Home” on the screen. His accounts are coming across as inconsistent and I am having difficulty verify a lot of his claims.
It seems unlikely at best that the Caller ID system is sending “Home” as the identifier. Today’s phones might say that if you associate your home phone number with the word “Home” in the address book. I don’t know if you could do that on a 2001 era phone.
A name was much more likely to come from the user’s address book than from the caller ID system, and it’s perfectly plausible that someone might put their home phone number in their address book as “home”.
Agreed. I worked for a national wireless carrier in 2001 (Nextel) and did product training, I remember specifically the ability of phones to match up incoming caller ID numbers with phonebook labels was a feature.
So it’s possible the anecdote is true, but seems a little too Hollywood to be trusted, IMHO.
A big problem with the story; the collapse of the towers damaged or disabled much of the cellular infrastructure in the area. So could a cell phone have even worked after the buildings fell? (If there was a severed hand, I’m assuming this was within blocks of the towers.)
Hm, that’s true. Not only was the cellular infrastructure damaged, but what was left was overwhelmed, by so many people trying to use it at once.
Yes, that’s true. I was in Greenwich Village, presumably using different towers, and it was impossible to make a call. Even landlines were jammed. I would up emailing a friend in England and asking her to call my parents to say I was all right. However, SOME people must have been able to get through–when capacity gets strained, it’s not like the Three Stooges trying to get in the door, right? Some people are still able to connect. But it would have been especially difficult to reach someone actually at the Towers.
The idea that a severed hand would still be holding a phone is what pings my meter…
Heck, I used to have my home phone number in my phone as “Home” So if it were my severed hand, this is exactly what would have been seen. As noted above, the severed hand still holding the phone is the unlikely bit - but the idea of a phone ringing and displaying the word “Home” on the screen is not just plausible, but most likely. It is only since I got an iPhone that the phone would probably say the call was from me, rather than from “Home”.
My work phone in 1999 would match contacts with incoming phone numbers, and it worked internationally. I was working in Mexico at the time with my company-provided GSM phone, and most of the people that called were from Michigan with a bit from Mexico. Now the phones weren’t too smart or the Mexican phone system wasn’t too smart; details are fuzzy, but somewhere along the line country codes went missing which would screw up the matching.
I have no idea what the phone was, but it’s very likely it was a Motorola or Nokia.
My personal cell phone from ca. 1997 only displayed whatever caller ID information was available, and so the fact that my work phone used the address book struck me as a super awesome feature. Of course at the same time I was a Palm V user, and so in my mind, I really invented the iPhone in 1999.
I truly appreciate everyone’s involvement in trying to answer this for me. I, too, was under the impression that cell tower service was out or jammed. Unfortunately, I can’t verify ONE aspect of his account of the events - - I have to tank the story. Thank you, again.
Whatever event could sever a body appendage would likely have destroyed the phone. Unless there was a hitherto unknown Ninja assualt team on that day?:dubious:
One more idea, if you still want to pursue this. I believe the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is the group that collected all the bodies and body parts, with the goal of returning them to the families. Presumably, there is a database someplace. You might ask them whether any hands were found, either with or without a cell phone. I suspect that they’re not going to want to answer, but might if you explain that you’re a legtimate journalist trying to vet a story.