I bought my first cellular phone back in the mid 1990's. It was a Motorola bag phone.
These photos were taken when I finally disposed of it in 2021. It had of course been packed away in a box for decades as these old analog phones no longer work. This thing was a great phone in its day though. In 1998 we were travelling across Wyoming and never lost coverage. We made a call from there and it was clear as can be. We were miles from anything. For years I would keep it in the trunk when we went on trips as it had far superior range to any of the handheld phones.
On September 11, 2001 I was in the air on a flight to Atlanta. Yes, bad day for flying. We landed in Atlanta to find an empty airport just before lunch. Not something you will likely ever see. Finally we did find some people gathered around the bars where they had the news playing on the TVs. Just as we walked up, the 2nd plane hit the tower. We spent the rest of that day and night driving back home. At the time I did not have a portable cellular phone as that bag phone was not something you took on a plane. I was unable to contact my wife for hours. When I got back home, the first thing we did is get me a cellular phone. It was a basic handheld, no frills, and of course it was a Motorola.
We eventually upgraded to flip phones. Finally, in 2009 I bought the first Droid. Honestly I was really disappointed at first with this device since Android was barely half-baked at the time. It was version 2.0 and it lacked many basic features like proper Bluetooth support. It finally had a few updates and because pretty good. For its day it was really pretty good. We had a Droid 2, and a Droid 3, and several Bionics over the next few years. Next we got Droid Max which finally had a big battery for the time. After the Max I got a Z2 Play. My wife had a Moto G. Then we all upgraded to Z4s when they came out.
I really loved the Moto Z phones. Its unfortunate they ended that line. The mods were a great idea, especially the batteries. Most of the other mods had limited usefulness for me. I did use the 360 camera a fair amount. The batteries were awesome though. Most people just use them wrong. I alwasy had a mod battery attached. The batteries I had all had a great grippy rubberized coating so the phone did not slip out of your hand. The also protected the back of the phone from drops. You could hot swap batteries too. I had a 3500mAh and a 2200mAh. I normally used the 2200mAh but on trips or times I needed longer battery life I could swap in the bigger one. If I really needed even more, I could take them both.
In 2021 every update that Motorola pushed out to these phones would break at least 2 of the 3 we had. By break I mean you could no longer make calls or send/receive texts most of the time. It would work in some places around town, bot not in most. It was really bad. I tried both Motorola and Verizon support but the only fix was to wipe the phone and start over. This happened about 5 times. Neither Motorola or Verizon could ever fix it. At that point I decided no more Motorola phones.
Today I just activated my Pixel 6 Pro, replacing my Moto Z4.
Over the years I had several other Motorola devices including a Xoom tablet, a Moto 360 watch (2nd gen), several T605 Bluetooth car kits, a TK30 car kit, and a lapdock for the Bionic. Some were great, some just OK, and some had issues. My Bionics were great for their day. My Droid 3 had issues. I really liked the Z4s until 2021. Motorola had some great features like the twist to capture gesture to open the camera, and the chop-chop to turn ON the flashlight. I will really miss those features. I will also miss the Moto-mod batteries and the 360 camera.
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