Beiruting News

1. Pushing multiple keys to write texts. You had to type a key on the left and a key on the right and hold down a shift button all at the same time just to write "Hey," and you did it happily because the technology was so ~*CoOl*~.

2. When a key would get stuck and you couldn't use that letter anymore.God help you if you lost an "A."

3. Ringback tones. Aka "I hate calling your phone because I have to listen to Mozart while I wait for you to pick up the phone. What are you, a dental office?"

4. T9. T9 was like the autocorrect of yesteryear, except it didn't know any more words than a 7 year old who never swore.

5. Phone charms. My fellow Cosmo editors swear this was a thing but I had never in my life seen something this upsetting.

6. Just getting a phone in the first place was a big deal. Most people didn't have them, and if they did, they were crazy-rich, so when you finally got one, it felt like a crazy-big deal.

7. Especially if it was a flip phone. Until owning a flip phone became socially unacceptable. And flip phones are classic, assholes. Especially if they also have a super-sweet antenna.

8. Choosing one of, like, three ringtones, all of which sucked. Wouldn't it be funny if I had this weird spaceship ringtone? But it never was funny and I'd change it back, like, two minutes later.

9. "Can I call you back after 9 p.m.? I'm almost out of minutes." Nine at night was when all my phone calls got so fucking bumpin'. Because then I was tapping into those sweet, sweet night and weekend minutes. It felt so freeing! Some people claimed they had unlimited anytime minutes but whenever they talked about that I just assumed they were lying/had sold a child to the devil to get them because yeah right.

10. "Is that long distance?" If your phone number wasn't in my exact area code, it may as well have been in Tibet because there was no way I was paying out the ass to call that shit.

11. The endless cover options that came with owning a Nokia. You could buy different snap-on cases for your Nokia, different colored buttons. They were totally customizable. And then you could also add phone charms to your Nokia if you wanted to... JK, I still cannot believe that happened in life.

12. You and your friend laughed at Zach Morris for having a big, doofusy phone. And you look back at your phone from 10 years ago and you look...

13. "Hehe, it vibrates." This function was hilarious for some reason.

14. The battery only needed to be charged, like, every eight centuries. Seriously, can we bring that part back?

15. You wanted to have the tiniest phone possible. "It's so small!" was, like, the biggest phone compliment you could get.

16. You loved playing Snake. Which looks like LOL garbage now.

17. You were nothing if you didn't have a Razr. Why did we all want this? It's literally just a long, smooshed phone.

18. When you were told to only use your phone "for emergencies." Well, I want to talk to my best friend and/or someone I hope to kiss before the school year ends. Seems like an emergency to me. *Dials number*.

19. Camera phones came out and they blew your goddamn mind. First your mum got one and then you got one ... like a year later.

20. Text messages cost, like, 12p each so you would either owe a ton of money or make your parents really mad if they paid your bill. And there was always that one friend who had unlimited texting and would text you all the time, but you didn't have unlimited texting so you wanted to murder them every time they sent you another stupid text because it was costing you, like, £50 a second and how the hell do you not know that, Sheryl? What is wrong with you? Tb.x[cosmopolitan]