That November I boarded an overnight flight to London, the first leg of yet another once-in-a-lifetime trip that would take me onwards to Bangkok, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo.

I was met the next morning in Piccadilly Circus by Tom Hall of WOM World, who graciously gave up his Sunday to give me a personal tour of London and loan me a Nokia for the destinations that lay ahead. Over brunch an N900 and N97 mini appeared on the table, plus a handset that was earmarked for me: the N86. Truth be told I was initially more drawn to the N900, being a desktop Linux user and all. But the N86 quickly proved to be the better choice — in fact, its camera was so good that my standalone point-and-shoot didn’t leave my suitcase for the next two weeks.

In Bangkok I took spectacular photos of the gold and purple Grand Palace and documented my first-ever tuk-tuk ride on video. I was also lucky enough to catch Al Pavangkanan, whom I’d met that summer on the N97 24/7 tour. Thanks to him I got to see Bangkok’s two famous IT malls, Pantip Plaza and MBK Center.

In Singapore I documented my first-ever durian fruit and a sunset view of the city skyline aboard the Singapore Flyer. I also got stood up by someone I was supposed to meet there. But I’m over it, really. More importantly, I snagged a local SIM card with unlimited data — a good thing, because by my fourth day abroad I had already burned through a two-week data roaming package from my carrier back home.

In Taipei I scored another local SIM, and kind of went insane with Qik, the live streaming video app that I first used on my E71. I kept it running over an entire breakfast in my hotel’s restaurant (much to the horror of the other guests there, I’m sure) and streamed an end-to-end walk-through of a night market. I’m pretty sure this is what would eventually win me that white N97 from the company.

In Tokyo there was sadly no option for local unlimited data. I spent about half an hour in a DoCoMo service centre before giving up and walking out, having come to the conclusion that the staff there were too afraid to talk to me. I also had a moment with one of the N86’s few shortcomings, Nokia Messaging. Nokia used to have a regular email client that worked great. Nokia Messaging was their “improved” next-generation email experience, designed to mimic the push email you could get on a BlackBerry. But this was no BlackBerry — quite possibly due to the low amount of RAM, Nokia Messaging on the N86 was crap. Deep within the bowels of Shibuya station I spent what seemed like an eternity struggling to find an email with directions to a dinner engagement; then I remembered that I could find that same message using a free email-over-WAP service.

Despite that little hiccup I ordered an N86 to call my own almost as soon as I got back to Toronto. The next spring it would accompany me on a visit to Moscow and a high school friend-turned-diplomat. That summer I got invited on another WOM World tour, this one promoting the N97mini to Canada. In a tricked-out recreational vehicle from Montreal to Toronto I got to hang with a Mr. James Whatley, whose 2009 bungee-jump over Victoria Falls with an N86 strapped to his wrist had first piqued my interest in this device.

The swan song for my N86 was a Kenyan safari in September of 2011. I had been to Mother Africa twice before and knew how popular Nokia phones were there. But I was caught completely off-guard by the presence of Android devices, at least in Nairobi. Every local carrier had not just one but an entire selection, from the cheap and cheerful to the high-powered and high-end. Kind of ironic considering I had left my Android phone at home and brought the N86 just for this trip.

That’s right, this unabashed Nokia fanboy was now a full-time Android user.

The N79 was a lot like Sony Ericsson’s T610 in that it had no groundbreaking features of its own, but instead wrapped up the innovations of the day in an attractive and affordable package. Though small enough to fit into a pants pocket the N79 had a 5 megapixel camera with lens protection, plus a front-facing camera for videoconferencing. 3G and WiFi radios were at the ready to serve your data needs. Navigating through the old school S60 UI was made easier (or at least different) by the innovative Navi™ wheel. What I liked best was the return of Nokia’s Xpress-On covers — updated for the 21st century with some clever technology that made the background colour of the screen match the back cover of the phone. Had I kept my N79 longer I would have a fairly large collection of Xpress-On covers by now.

But I didn’t. You see, regressing from a qwerty keypad to a T9 number pad was made considerably more difficult by the N79’s awful buttons. They were flat, offered almost no feedback and felt extremely cheap. Hammering out text messages, a breeze on my Eseries phones, was now a painful chore.

Still, I was definitely won over by what Nseries had to offer — in particular Nokia’s gaming platform of the day, called N-Gage. A favourite title was Mile High Pinball, my first modern-day gaming addiction since Bejeweled on my Treo almost a decade prior. Imagine a pinball table that extended infinitely and you get the general idea.

Though the days of N-Gage were numbered, Nseries devices were getting better and better. My N79 got to tag along with me on a points-burning mission around the world in November of 2009; sadly, it spent most of that trip in my suitcase, sidelined by the Nseries that would take its place as soon as I got home…

There was just one problem: The damned things didn’t work.

Okay, that’s not entirely fair — I was able to send and receive text messages, at least. But repeated attempts to get the web browser to connect to something, anything, failed. Nor could I make either of our A835s do that other thing mobile phones are supposed to do. What was that again… oh right, make phone calls.

The handsets were butt-ugly, especially for Japan. Perhaps it was a good thing that the data didn’t work; I’d sure hate for the wrong person to see me use it, and be chased out of Akihabara by a jeering mob of keitai otaku (mobile phone geeks). I did manage to snap some blurry, pixelated VGA-quality photos here and there — certainly nothing worth printing out and getting framed.

What I  remember most about this phone was using it to text my girlfriend in a frantic attempt to find her among the many and confusing aisles of Shibuya’s Tokyu Hands “Creative Life” store. When I finally found her she told me that all the while her phone had been in her purse and turned off, and why was I asking anyway?

And yet I used this “dumbphone” (along with two other nearly identical models) for over a year, thanks largely to a technological standard called SyncML.

If you didn’t know, SyncML stands for Synchronization Markup Language. It allows one’s personal data — calendars, contacts, to-do items and more — to be synchronized between phone and desktop computer. Now here’s the important part: Unlike Palm’s proprietary HotSync, SyncML is an open standard, so anyone can make software for it. By this time Apple’s OS X desktop had SyncML support through an app called iSync; while my T616 wasn’t fully supported from the get-go, a third-party program called PhoneAgent did everything that iSync didn’t.

I didn’t even need a data cable; Bluetooth finally proved its worth as a means to wirelessly synchronize my data and install files to my handset. And thanks to Sony Ericsson’s sizable fanbase in Asia and Europe I was able to trick out my T616 with all manner of custom ringtones and themes.

All of the above actually applies to three separate handsets — the T616, T610 and Z600. The two “Ts” were virtually indistinguishable from the outside; on the inside, the T610 had a radio with an extra European band (900MHz) while the T616 swapped that out for an extra North American band (850MHz). This was more or less irrelevant, as both handsets worked on both continents, and Fido didn’t support the 850MHz band at the time.

The Z600 shared the same camera and internals, but was a bigger flip phone with customizable front and back panels.

It’s hard to say which one I liked more; the Z600 felt like a Japanese keitai but clearly needed a protective case, while the T610 and T616 were small enough to fit into the lighter pocket of my jeans. Of course I ended up dropping two out of the three, each in a different exotic locale. I managed to dent the metal case of my T616 by sending it crashing to the hard wooden floor of a swanky Bermuda hotel, and did about as much damage to the plastic housing of my Z600 as I fumbled with it in a public washroom atop Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa.

I also remember these handsets for their goofy accessories. I bought a Bluetooth-controlled toy car for my T610 that my cat chased for all of thirty seconds, then never again. For the Z600 I got a snap-on game controller, which was far too ridiculous-looking to ever use in public. I still have both of them tucked away in a drawer somewhere.

Any takers?

Sony had already been making their own handsets — at least in the UK — for quite some time. Their join venture with Ericsson was inked in 2001 but the T68i, the combined companies’ first product, took almost two years to arrive in Canada. Its standout feature was an available camera accessory that plugged in to the bottom of the phone.

It was an expensive add-on that I never even bothered with; in fact, this particular phone/PDA combo lasted maybe a week before I sent both back to their respective stores. In theory, using a phone as a Bluetooth modem was a godsend. One could enjoy the mobile Internet on an expansive touch-enabled screen while the signal source was safely tucked away in a pocket. In practice, though, this setup was a pain. A constant Bluetooth connection easily halved the battery life of both devices; your only other choice was to pair and un-pair them manually throughout the day.

I vowed that I would never again separate PDA from phone, and my next device kept me to that promise…

When Fido introduced their packet-based GPRS data service they yanked the CSD option at the same time. While the minutes from my calling plan would no longer take a hit from data there was now a data transmission charge, 5¢ per kilobit sent or received. Even on small WAP pages that could add up, and exponentially so if you were roaming abroad and needed valuable information at your fingertips. It should be noted that by this point in my life I didn’t just have a travel bug; a parasitic host had set up a permanent residence, relentlessly steering my career and cash flow towards the next overseas flight and hotel booking. My actor friends couldn’t afford to go or weren’t interested, but the mobile Internet proved to be a dependable and compliant travel companion.

Thus this new pay-per-use mobile Internet simply would not do. I called Fido and threatened to cancel my account — an obvious bluff, since there was no other GSM carrier in Canada at the time. I got to speak to someone in their retentions department, who offered me a $400 handset for $50 if I would stay on with them through the summer. Being the device whore that I am I could hardly say no, and the $400 phone I got was the Nokia 8390.

Like the 3390 before it, the 8390 had Xpress-On covers and could dance. But this newer, smaller Nokia also had a GPRS radio and onboard WAP browser. And yet I was entirely underwhelmed by it, never even gave it a chance, really. Maybe it was the small monochrome screen, maybe it was the constant, painful reminder that the mobile Internet would never again be as cheap as it once was. Whatever the reason… meh.  I seem to remember taking it to a bar that was open all night to broadcast a World Cup game from South Korea, but that’s about it. The phone would go up for auction on eBay the very next month.

What replaced it, however, would prove to be quite epic…

“A Bluetooth headset is a great way of letting the world know how much sex you’re not getting.” — someone on the Internet

My comedy shows in Hong Kong were a big success, even though the first one was cancelled (it was a corporate show, not part of our regular run). That cancellation gave us a full week in Hong Kong before our first gig, with nothing to do but take in the sights and shop. We soon found ourselves on the famous Nathan Road in Kowloon, where one of my fellow actors got himself fitted for not one but two custom-tailored suits. And I paid about as much for an Ericsson T39m, my second-ever unlocked phone. I also walked out with a wireless Bluetooth headset as part of the deal, but since such things have never really found favour with those who know better — “douchebag earrings”, I believe they’re called — you won’t read any more about that here. But we will return to Bluetooth in just a bit.

There was nothing particularly wrong with the Fido-branded Ericsson T28w that I’d brought with me from Canada; it was pretty much a one-trick pony, though, offering dual band “world” service and not much else. But the T39m was a different story. Its killer feature was a GPRS data radio, allowing it to connect to the Internet at will, rather than locking down the phone entirely by making a data call via circuit switched data. The difference was akin to a dial-up versus broadband Internet connection on a home computer.

Sadly, like other Ericssons before it the T39m was cursed with a tiny screen, so browsing WAP pages on it was quite pointless. Thus, upon my return to Canada the Ericsson T28w went back to Fido and my T39m went into storage — that is, until the following April (2002), when I became aware of a Bluetooth module for my Handspring Visor. Like infrared, Bluetooth allowed for a connection without wires; unlike infrared Bluetooth was a lot faster and didn’t require line-of-sight for transmission.

Two hundred bucks later I was dismayed to find that the only task this Bluetooth module could accomplish was dial my phone from my PDA. Shortly thereafter the Bluetooth, then cellular radio died entirely. The only explanation I could surmise was that my T39m was made for developing markets, and was not up to the same build standard expected for the west, or even Hong Kong. To put it another way, I was scammed.

But if it sounds like my imported Ericsson was a waste of time it honestly wasn’t. This wouldn’t be the last Ericsson I’d ever own; the Saturday night Hong Kong movies on a local Chinese television station taught me that Ericsson was the brand of choice for discerning mobsters. And the experience of buying mine overseas showed me the freedom that could be gained in using unlocked devices, along with the perils of buying them from sketchy vendors.

Such a device wouldn’t work on Japan’s mobile networks; carriers in Hong Kong, however, used the same GSM service that I enjoyed with Fido, just on another frequency. And why are we talking about Hong Kong all of a sudden? Unbelievable as it sounds, barely a week after my return from Japan I got booked on a comedy tour of Hong Kong, China and Singapore. The call came from the Toronto branch of The Second City — the same theatre I was working at five years prior when I received my first cell phone as an unwanted gift. And now, as a crowning achievement of my stint as an actor there, I was to represent them on three different stages half a world away.

Of course I couldn’t go without a working mobile phone at my side, so I headed to the nearest Fido store for help. At the time they offered two dual-band handsets: One was the beautiful Nokia 8890, a slider with a brushed aluminum shell that when closed was even smaller than my 3390. The only problem was that it cost almost a thousand bucks. The other, cheaper option was the Ericsson T28w. At two hundred and fifty it was still pricey, but with Fido’s generous thirty-day return policy I really had nothing to lose. So I brought one home and charged up the battery for my trip.

Then 9/11 happened.

Amazingly, the trip was still on. We travelled on one of the very first flights out of Toronto on Saturday, September 15th when planes were allowed to fly again. Our five-hour flight to San Francisco wasn’t just quiet, it was solemn — punctuated only by an emotional thank-you from the United Airlines crew. At SFO we transferred to a 747 and were upgraded to Business Class. The luxury proved to be a much-needed distraction from the events of the previous week.

And now, back to the phone…

What I remember most about this particular handset was what happened immediately upon my arrival in Hong Kong. A signal was acquired without issue; in fact, I got a voicemail notification as our overseas flight from San Francisco was still taxiing up to the gate. The problem was that I couldn’t actually dial in to hear it, and thus couldn’t impress my colleagues with my globe-hopping connectivity on the go. This was still 2001, remember, and I was in the company of actors, not high-flying executives. I had to settle for a call to Fido customer service instead, and spent the next half hour complaining while on a bus into town. Fortunately, that call was free.

Though my T28w stayed with me for the duration of my two weeks in Asia I didn’t end up using it all that much. There was nothing particularly wrong with it, but thanks to Hong Kong’s advanced mobile culture I was about to discover the wonder of unlocked phones and bring home a rather expensive souvenir.

And like my old StarTAC the 3390 was blessed with a vibrate function. On its own the feature was convenient enough, but another Nokia engineering feat made for the stuff of legend. I discovered quite by accident that if I put the phone in vibrate mode, placed it upright on a flat surface and called it the 3390 would magically rotate about a centimetre or so on its base, without falling over.

In other words, it could dance.

For this to be even possible the handset would have to be weighted just so; ditto for whatever produced the vibration inside. Long story short, the dancing was clearly a planned feature — either pointless or awesome depending on your point of view — but proving nonetheless that Nokia’s engineers were light years ahead of anyone else.

Unfortunately, as an entry level phone the 3390’s days as my personal sidearm were numbered. But I kept it as a spare, and years later it would perform another feat matched by no other handset before or since: it was the first (and so far only) cell phone to ever be thrown at me by an angry girlfriend. It missed its target and smashed into a wall behind me, and thanks to its Xpress-On cover we both lived to see another day.

Why is any of this important? Only because I spent four intensive months in the company of other geeks, and for the first time didn’t have to keep my mobile phone lust in check. Add to this Fido‘s blanket 14-day no-questions-asked return policy on handsets. The result? I could justify burning through any number of Fido-branded phones in the name of “scholarly research”. And that’s exactly what I did.

First up was Motorola’s V2282. Two things drew me to it: (1) changeable plastic skins for customization not unlike my Nokia 5190, and (2) a built-in FM radio. Unfortunately, no amount of colourful plastic could hide the fact that this was one butt-ugly Moto. Truth be told, the cheap skins actually made the phone look more tawdry than without. And the FM radio, groundbreaking as it was for the time, didn’t end up being such a killer feature after all. Making a wired headset do double duty as an antenna was clever enough, but the bulk of the commuting I did in those days was underground on the Toronto Subway system — where there was no reception of any kind to be had. There still isn’t. We’re kind of backwards that way.

I don’t think this Moto lasted a week before I sent it back. Apparently it had a web browser, but I never used it. The mobile Internet would have to wait for my next handset.