80s Actual: April 2015

07 April 2015

Binatone Modern day '80s Style Brick Phone... WOW!

The 1980s of course saw the introduction of the first hand-held cell phone ever, the Motorola DynATAC 8000x, unveiled In America in 1983, on sale in England in 1985. The '80s also saw the beginning and development of the GSM system we use today. What a time it was!

And now Binatone have designed a wondrous tribute to the original analog '80s bad boy - a modern mobie with a look fresh from the yuppie decade. Here's the blurb:

Introducing The Brick: the biggest mobile phone you ever had, or the biggest bluetooth handset you will ever have. Retro 1980s cool doesn't come any more iconic than The Brick, a phone as big as the attitude that used to come with it.Phones are getting smarter, thinner, smaller. They all look the same. Battery performance gets worse every year. Is talking on the phone still fun?

The Brick is simple, bulky, comfy. It will turn heads at every party, and its juice will last for months. Taking inspiration from the early days of mobile phones, The Brick from Binatone was created as the first retro mobile ever. Made famous by Gordon Gekko in 1987's Wall Street and once only affordable to flash city boys, now anyone can afford this fabulous slice of fun nostalgia! The Brick may be amusing but Binatone have still taken it seriously when it comes to getting all the little details right. From the sturdy keys with sound effects to the bling logo on the back, it certainly looks the part.

The style may look back years but the technology is bang up to date, including the option of either putting your SIM card directly into The Brick or using it to make and take calls from your regular smartphone via Bluetooth. The battery gives you an impressive 14 hours of talk time (and nearly a whole month on standby), while you can use the 1.8 inch colour screen with 128 x 160 resolution to scroll through your contacts or enjoy a nostalgic game of Snake.

There's even an SD card slot on The Brick, so you can store up to 32 GB (approximately 6,500 songs) of your favourite music on your phone -just be sure to fill it with plenty of Duran Duran, Michael Jackson, Prince, a-ha, and Flock of Seagulls for the full 80s effect! Combined with a striking costume or outfit, The Brick is the perfect accessory for any 80s fancy dress party, or if the 80s was your favorite decade then use it every day!

I don't usually advertise on this blog, but this I couldn't resist! Think I'll be getting me one of these...

Summertime Andy in Miami Vice gear complete with a brick... mmmmm...

Click on the 'mobile phones' label below for more info on the brick/GSM revolution in the 1980s...

INTRODUCTION

The '80s Actual blog is designed to be an antidote to all those television shows and on-line articles of recent years which examine pop culture - and frequently get it hopelessly wrong!

If you sat watching the BBC's "I Love The 1970s" and exclaimed over items being shown "I could swear that was 1968!" or "Wasn't that 1981?" chances are you were right.

If you look at certain '70s fan sites and think a lot of the material written about is actually from the '80s, you are almost certainly correct.

If on-line encyclopedia articles which state that pop culture of 1983 is really 1977, or similar, have you wishing for reality, then '80s Actual is for you.

There is a huge drive in the media and on-line to negate the 1980s, to attribute that decade's innovations and fond memories to other decades, and basically to present it as a completely vapid ten years, not worthy of examination.

I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's just comforting to have a decade people can scapegoat and declare "HORRIBLE"?

This blog is based on actual memories, media footage (thank you, YouTube!) and snippets of newspaper and magazine articles from the 1980s. If you read it here, I think you can rest assured it's accurate, though I can take no responsibility for the newspaper reports from the decade!

The '80s Actual blog examines the decade's news stories - from the emergence of Lady Diana Spencer into the public eye in 1980, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Was it simply "The Greed Decade" as many like to claim? I think not - the '80s saw the emergence of yuppies, but also Red Wedge, the Greenham Common Peace Women, and increasing concern for the environment. It may be convenient to scapegoat the '80s as the cause of all known ills, but the reality of the decade was far different - absolute bedlam, as Right fought Left, idealism fought corporate ambition. The election of Ronald Reagan as American President in 1980, and his second victory in 1984, had a far more decisive effect on the international political landscape than the three successive general election victories of UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

Fashion came fast and furious - deelyboppers, ra ra skirts with lycra leggings, Swatch watches, pixie boots, jelly shoes, shoulder pads, blonde highlights, hair gel, hair mousse, men in pink, goths, shell suits, New Romantics, donkey jackets, leg warmers...

Musically, the 1980s saw the beginnings of House Music, the exciting and still evolving world of synths taking centre stage, the evolvement of Rap music into the fully-fledged Hip Hop scene, Band Aid and Live Aid, great Indie, startling Acid House, and Raves...

At the amusement arcades, Space Invaders ran rampant and we first met Pac-Man...

And there was so much more! The decade truly had something for everyone - and provided a welcome escape for a while from the long-running and boring saga of flared trousers as fashion, begun back in the 1960s!

It was a brilliant decade for telly - bringing us such wonders as A Very Peculiar Practice, Inspector Morse, Spitting Image, Hot Metal, The BeiderbeckeTrilogy and Edge of Darkness.

The 1980s also saw the creation of The Simpsons, Twin Peaks, and other wonderful (often groundbreaking) American TV shows like Kate & Allie, Cheers, The Golden Girls, Married... With Children, The Cosby Show, Roseanne, and Hill Street Blues.

The '80s gave us some wonderful UK TV ads. Remember Ted Moult advertising double glazing at the Tan Hall Inn with "Fit The Best - Everest"? Remember the Weetabix gang? Remember the Scotch video tape skeleton ("Re-record, not fade away"?). Remember the romantic yuppie couple in the coffee ads? And what about "Lotta Bottle"?

In fact, the '80s totally transformed our telly viewing, bringing us Channel 4 and Sky TV.

The '80s were a fascinating time for science and technology! Video recorders became widespread, the Sony Walkman arrived, the first hand-held mobile phones hit the streets (expensive analogue bricks!), the ZX Spectrum, Game Boy and the World Wide Web (Thanks, Sir Tim Berners-Lee!) were invented, the first computer mouse eeked its way into our homes and Sir Alec Jeffreys accidentally discovered DNA fingerprinting. It's all here!

There are also also '80s Actual sister blogs taking us back to the '70s and '60s - The Real 1970s and Spacehopper.

The view of the 1980s presented here is from an English perspective - much of the original '80s material used is from England, but I hope this blog will prove useful and enjoyable to people in the other nations of the UK and much further afield.