We used pagers to tell people to call us back on payphones, possibly using collect call service. Music was listened to on Sony Walkmans, maybe a boombox if you wanted to be obnoxious about it. Newspapers were sold at every street corner to provide reading material.

I wouldn’t say it was so different before smartphones. Everyone on the train was browsing the news using the copy of the local paper instead of a cell-phone connected to some news network.