History TechnologyMarchesOn / CellPhones

For extra laughs, see the SubTrope, JustForFun/CellPhonesCouldHaveSolvedThisPlot.

*** In addition, many cable/satellite companies still offer “bundles”(TV/internet/phone).

* In ''Film/ToWongFooThanksForEverythingJulieNewmar'', a RoadTrip movie about a trio of {{drag queen}}s, it's a big deal when Vida tosses their road map after a bad encounter with her parents early in the trip. Chi-Chi wonders how they'll get to LA without it, and when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, they have no idea where in [[FlyoverCountry "Gay Hell"]] they are. The movie came out in 1995; had it been more contemporary, the queens would have had smartphones with Google Maps or a standalone GPS in the car.

** Another episode about a five year old girl finding her house empty would seem like an IdiotPlot today. What normally happened was that she rode the bus to another school where her mom would pick her up. However; instead that day, her friend's parents gave her a ride home, and word didn't make it to her mother, who was at the other school. Nowadays; her friend's parents would ''surely'' have called her mom's cell phone if they were going to drive her home. Or, if she came home and found it empty, she should have thought to call her mom's cell phone to tell her she was home.

* In an example that was already obsolete when the song came out, "No, No, No" by rapper Music/{{Eve}} opens with her rewinding her answering machine to listen to a message. By 2001, answering machines were using digital memory in place of cassettes.

-->Have AOL make my email stop[[note]]Not only do people rarely use email to socialize anymore, but most people today prefer free hosts like Gmail or Yahoo rather than using the email that comes with (and is tied to) their internet service provider. Also AOL has long since faded to irrelevence.[[/note]]

-->Have AOL make my email stop[[note]]Not only do people rarely use email to socialize anymore, but most people today prefer free hosts like Gmail or Yahoo rather than using the email that comes with (and is tied to) their internet service provider.[[/note]]

-->Tell MCI to cut the phone poles[[note]]MCI was bought out by Verizon in 2006.[[/note]]

-->Have AOL make my email stop[[note]]Not only do people rarely use email to socialize today, but most people today prefer free hosts like Gmail or Yahoo rather than having using the email that comes with (and is tied to) their internet service provider.[[/note]]

->You make me wanna throw my pager out the window[[note]]Within 10 years of this song's release, improved cell phone technology would render pagers obsolete for everyday use.[[/note]]
->Tell MCI to cut the phone poles[[/note]]MCI was bought out by Verizon in 2006.[[/note]]
-Break my lease so I can move
->'Cause you a bug a boo, a bug a boo, a bug a boo
->I wanna put your number on the call block[[note]]To block a number back then you had to call the phone company, a much more complex task than the block feature that's standard on cell phones today.[[/note]]
->Have AOL make my email stop[[note]]Not only do people rarely use email to socialize today, but most people today prefer free hosts like Gmail or Yahoo rather than having using the email that comes with (and is tied to) their internet service provider.[[/note]]
->'Cause you a bug a boo, a bug a boo

* In the same vein, {{Pay Phone}}s have disappeared from some areas but still remain in others. In some areas, the government has stepped in to prevent payphones from being taken out of service because they're still commonly used by the poor. It might also be cheaper to keep a payphone in operation than to erect a cellphone tower in a remote location where few people would use the cell service. And, on the other side of the coin, many cities went out of their way during the 1990s to remove pay phones in order to curtail their use as anonymous contact points for drug dealers, who are now forced to make do with disposable prepaid "burner" phones instead. In many places, especially in railway stations and airports, phone booths have been replaced by public terminals, that still function as payphones if you really need one, but their main function is to allow Internet access for tourists without laptops.

* Music/Maroon5's song "PayPhone" is about a guy [[BreakupSong trying to call his ex-girlfriend]]. It would have made sense in TheNineties or earlier, before the widespread availability of cell phones and the subsequent decomissioning of many pay phones. Even if, say, she isn't answering calls from his cell phone and that's why he's calling her from a public phone, it would likely take him a long time in TheNewTens to find a pay phone and even longer to find one that actually still works. (And there's no guarantee she'd still answer, because it would likely show up on her caller ID as "unavailable" or "unknown," which many people these days read as "telemarketer or other nuisance call.")

* In the comic book anthology [[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/423154.The_Big_Book_of_Losers "The Big Book of Losers"]], there is a chapter that discuses the "video phone," which says that telecommunications companies have wasted "millions, if not billions" of dollars to allow people to see each other while talking on the phone, only for no one to adopt the technology outside of business teleconferences, and also mentions that there may negative side-effects with children seeing a loved one through a screen, and that perverts may use the technology to flash people from anywhere in the world. This argument may have made sense at the time the comic book was published (1997), but today (2022), people casually use services like face time and whatsapp to see each other while talking with one another, and other services like Skype, or, specially during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic, Zoom, allow regular people to conduct business with one another from the comfort of their homes.

* Phone books. Back in the days before the Internet was in wide use, if you didn't know a phone number off the top of your head, you had to look it up in a large book database, distributed by the local phone company every year. In North America, for example, there was a section for residential phone numbers printed on white paper, the "white pages,"[[note]]One could pay a yearly fee to not have their number listed if they so desired[[/note]] and a section for business phone numbers on yellow paper, the "yellow pages." If the service area was large enough, these would often be separate books. There were also smaller specialized directories as well: the "Blue Pages" for government listings (usually in the back of the Yellow Pages), and some cities had "Black Pages" for black-owned businesses, "Pink Pages" for LGBT resources, etc. Nowadays, you can just Google the number to any local business you like. And during the brief time when white pages and widespread cell-phone use coexisted, cell phone numbers were never listed, meaning the white pages became unreliable once people switched to cell phones en masse. For all these reasons, phone books went out of print in the 2010's.

* While still around, highway call boxes are starting to fade out due to the proliferation of cellphones. A lot of call boxes still get active maintenance, though, especially in deserted areas where cell signal is [[CellPhonesAreUseless spotty or nonexistent]]. The dispatcher would also know exactly where you are without having to wait for cell tower or GPS triangulation from the caller. Call boxes are also useful on college campuses (where students are [[TruthInTelevision always getting robbed of their phones, or misplacing them during wild nights out]]), suicide hot-spots (in case the perpetrator intentionally leaves their cell phone behind and [[InterruptedSuicide suddenly has second thoughts]]), if you need help ''immediately'' (cell phone emergency calls usually have to go [[BeleagueredBureaucrat through a statewide highway patrol dispatcher first, who has to first figure out where you are, then route your call to the appropriate local station]]), if you survive and escape a car accident and your phone is still in your [[MadeOfExplodium possibly dangerous-to-go-back-into vehicle]] or if your [[MurphysLaw cell phone just dies on you]].

** The earlier episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E12BartGetsFamous Bart Gets Famous]]" (1994) had Bart given one only because he was Krusty's assistant. If the episode aired today, the joke of an elementary school student answering a phone in class wouldn't be as funny.
** Towards the end of "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E9HomerBadman Homer Badman]]" (1994), Marge's line [[SpoofAesop "As long as everyone keeps filming one another, justice will be done." was a joke]]. Since then, cell phones with built-in cameras have become commonplace, making it possible to film various transgressions and incidents.

* ''Series/IShouldntBeAlive'': Almost all of these episodes were uploaded to [=YouTube=], and have multiple people poiting out that they should have cell phones. A good portion of the stories took place in TheNineties or TheTurnOfTheMillennium (Literally only one story takes place in TheNewTens), when cell phones were not only less commonplace as they are now, but also suffered from poor reception. On occasion the survivors ''have'' pointed out that they were [[WhatAnIdiot stupid for having not taken it with them]], or mentioned that it was lost and/or broken due to the fact some of these stories deal with plane crashes or shipwrecks.

* In ''Literature/TheBabySittersClub'', published in the late '80s-early '90s, a big deal is made of Claudia's having her own phone line so that they can use it as the Club's number. [[CaptainObvious Nowadays, the girls would all have their own phones]].

* In ''Literature/TheBabySittersClub'', published in the late '80s-early '90s, a big deal is made of Claudia's having her own phone line so that they can use it as the Club's number. Nowadays, of course, the girls would all have their own phones.

* ''Film/{{Matilda}}'': A point of tension in the film comes from the fact that no one believes the children about how [[SadistTeacher ridiculously abusive]] the Trunchbull is to her students ([[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and Miss Honey]]). The film was released in 1996. Nowadays, such a problem would very easily be fixed by the fact that most cell phones have video-capture capabilities, and really ''have'' been used by students to document child abuse in classrooms.

* ''Film/{{Matilda}}'': A point of tension in the film comes from the fact that no one believes the children about how ridiculously abusive the Trunchbull is to her students ([[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and Miss Honey]]). The film was released in 1996. Nowadays, such a problem would very easily be fixed by the fact that most cell phones have video-capture capabilities, and really ''have'' been used by students to document child abuse in classrooms.

* ''Film/{{Matilda}}'': A point of tension in the film comes from the fact that no one believes the children about how ridiculously abusive the Trunchbull is to her students (and Miss Honey). The film was released in 1996. Nowadays, such a problem would very easily be fixed by the fact that most cell phones have video-capture capabilities, and really ''have'' been used by students to document child abuse in classrooms.