The 13 most popular phones in the UK during the 1980s – revealed!

Looking back at the development of the mobile phone industry can make for dizzying research. The speed of change, and the extent to which phone models got smaller, more powerful and more useful over short bursts of time is jaw-dropping in retrospect. 

If you rewind as far back as the 1980s, you’ll find yourself at the very genesis of the mobile revolution, with the first mobile call ever in the UK being placed in 1985 on Vodafone’s newly-opened network.

It’s 35 years since that first call was made by Michael Harrison, the son of Vodafone’s chairman, and to mark the occasion the vaults have opened to showcase some of the phones that people used back in that seminal decade. In the short five years between 1985 and 1990 you can already trace the speed of development, as the models get smaller and less cumbersome.

Check out the best smartphones available right now if you’re after a more modern touch

We’ve gathered together some of the best-selling phones from those five years, as a trip down memory lane for you, or, if you weren’t around back then, a way of underlining how far the technology you rely on has come. In each case, as a little bonus, we’ll let you know what you would have had to fork out to get one, as well as what that price is equivalent to in today’s money.

Motorola phones through the years: The best and the worst, in pictures