Motorola
8500X

The Motorola 8500X was introduced in 1987 and quickly became extremely popular across Europe. The screen used red LEDs which were larger than the original Motorola Dynatac 8000X. It displayed up to seven digits of a telephone number and included an ‘In Use’ indicator to show that a call was in progress, A ‘No Svc’ indicator showed that you were out of network range and ‘Roam’ signified that the phone was trying to connect to a different network. In addition to the standard 12 key keypad, nine keys provided access to special functions. These included RCL used to recall numbers from memory, CLR to erase the last digit entered, SND to initiate a call, STO to store numbers in memory, FCN to access secondary functions, END to terminate a telephone call, PWR to turn the mobile on and off, NAME to store and recall alphanumeric names from memory and VOL for adjusting the volume. A total of 99 telephone numbers and associated names could be stored in the address book memory. A range of timers were included for measuring the duration of calls and the signal strength could be displayed by pressing the FCN key twice. Some information courtesy of Nigel Linge & Andy Sutton, the authors of 30 Years of Mobile Phones in the UK (Paid Link)