First one that was mine personally (but work bought for me), was this Sony Zuma around 1998/9, and I loved it (and still would):
First one that was "mine" (I had to keep it 24/7, but it was the Army's) was this Motorola in 1988. There were about 10 of them in the entire US Army V Corps in Germany, my boss was the only non-General to have one in the Corps. This one was a MASSIVE improvement over the one it replaced because people only had to dial a single phone number to reach you anywhere, and you could call globally. The one before this required the following: In Germany, if you were driving from Fulda to Frankfurt, the country code was always +49, but on that drive, you traversed about 6 local "area codes." So, if someone wanted to reach you, they had to call each "area code" along the route until they got you. It was very similar to this one, but in a hard case.