I am a Netflix and Hulu addict, cut one thing that I always find jarring is when a character uses an old-fashioned-looking mobile phone.
It seems like phone design fads change pretty quickly, but these days if a character is using anything that looks too different from an Apple or Samsung-style smartphone then I notice it, especially if it is a fairly compact size.
Somehow, the style of wireline phones doesn’t hit me as hard.
And of course there’s Sherlock, which had a major storyline focusing on a “camera phone.” That phrase sounds very odd to me these days. Anyway, it draws attention to some phone styles that are not very old in terms of years, but seem a few generations back already.
Anyone else find it hard to overlook phones used on TV?
I’ve been watching the USA version of Queer as Folk, which ended right before the smart phone era (2000-2005). I immediately notice the flip phones the characters are using (product placement?) but also how much talking they do on the phone. I don’t remember any scenes which showed texting, although basic texting was available around 2004-2005
Texting was available when I was in college which was 1998-2002. I can specifically remember doing it my sophomore year and I know I had the same phone my freshman year. We didn’t to it a lot, probably mostly due to how new it was and a lot of people didn’t really like it. It was also expensive and kind of annoying without a keyboard. But we certainly did it.
ETA, this was without smartphones. In fact, this was when most people had the free/cheap Nokias.
I always tapped on the buttons multiples times as well. My dad, on the other hand, I think would still go back to T9. It was pretty amazing that such a primitive phone (and even then we know it was primitive) had predictive text.
