Many of us have some old phones They take up space in drawers, and some may have even kept special devices in their boxes after putting them aside when upgrading, but we have nothing on the man who claimed the title of largest mobile phone company in the Guinness Book of World Records. Phone collection? A whopping 3,615.
Wences Palau Fernandez lives in Barcelona, Spain, and got his first mobile phone, a reliable Nokia 3210around 1999, as a Christmas present. In 2008, he began collecting Nokia phones in earnest, apparently starting by buying models he couldn’t afford before. Initially, the collection was housed in a few display cases, but soon needed its own space when, about 10 years later, the number of phones he owned reached 700 Nokia phones. Today, it’s even bigger, surpassing any other collection in the world.
The great thing about Fernandez’s collection is that you can see. They have created a dedicated website with photos and videos of their Nokia phones, and it is an incredible look into the history of the beloved brand. Of particular nostalgic interest are the Asha models, which include some of the first Nokia phones with a touchscreen, the Communicator series, which was the foldable smartphone of its day, and a host of Nokia analogue phones, including the Nokia 5130 Star. Very unusual wars released for Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
While Nokia phones seem to make up the bulk of his collection (and his obsession), he also has phones from a wide range of other manufacturers, including recognizable names like Apple, Samsung, LG and Sony, as well as less common names like luxury phone maker Vertu and Yezz, which once had big plans for modular phones, as well as old favorites from BlackBerry and Palm.
Fernandez took the Guinness World Record from Romanian Andrei Bilby Argentis, who only managed to win the title in 2023 with 3,456 mobile phones. It appears that Fernandez is still actively collecting and adding to his collection, which he now views as a museum, meaning that another, even larger existing collection may need to be unveiled to be surpassed in the very near future.
Source: Digital Trends
