Originally Posted by 92saturnsl2
Surely you're joking about the Happy Meal?
Not sure about with a Happy Meal, but I found this saying that McDonald's had a promotion where one got a free Ericsson 768 with a minimum donation to the Ronald McDonald House charity. That was their nonprofit that housed the families of patients at several major children's hospitals.
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https://honda-tech.com/forums/gener...you-had-cell-phone-3265686/#post50666940
1998 and it was an Ericsson 768 that you got for "free" when donating to the Ronald McDonald house. Service was through PacBell, which then changed to Cingular.
I remember ads for some place in the mid 90s selling MicroTACs for maybe about $200 without a plan. However, back then in California the providers couldn't subsidize the phones. On a visit to NYC in 1994 I was in a department store where a friend I was visiting pointed out the prices and noted that it was subsidized with a minimum contract. Not 100% sure when contract subsidies were legalized in California, but it was by the time I had my first cell phone.
My first phone was a Nokia 5100 Series back in 1999. I was laid off and the job search consultant retained by my former company recommended that everyone have a cell phone just in case one might be late to an interview. My contract was with Cellular One. I think it had maybe 60 included minutes per month, plus any long distance and roaming fees outside of a fairly small area of Northern California. I was able to use it in Stockton without additional fees. I rarely used it given the limits, and I think it might have been $1/minute over the included minutes. My subsidized price might have been about $99, but I had to pay sales tax based on the full retail price, which was maybe $600. It was easy to use but the standard NiMH battery might last 60 minutes of talk time and a couple of days standby. The battery was easy to swap, but it would have been extra for a charging dock to charge it outside of the phone being connected to a power adapter. They had a variety of available batteries including one that was double-capacity and one that had a vibration feature.