We take a look back at some of the weird and wonderful handsets
that were making the news five and ten years ago this month.
November 2003
One of the strangest (and arguably most beautiful) Nokia handsets
ever and certainly one of the rarest, the
Nokia
7700 was a deeply flawed attempt at a multimedia smartphone
that looks quite unlike anything else ever made. This strikingly
designed handset never made it beyond a handful of engineering samples.
Nokia have never been big on clamshell phones, but the
Nokia
7200 added a unique twist with the addition of fabric covers.
The
Nokia 3200 came
with printable covers which enabled owners to make a completely
unique designs.
The
Nokia 6600 was
an advanced device for its time but was rather podgy looking. And
with yet another unusual design, the
Nokia
6810 and
Nokia 6820
phones came with a fold-out QWERTY keyboard which never really caught
on.
3G phones were still few and far between, but the
Motorola
A835 was quite popular if only because it was actually
available.
Ten years ago manufacturers were still producing Windows smartphones
with number pads, and the rather unattractive HTC-built
Orange
SPV E200 was one of them.
The
Panasonic X70
clamshell phone is a reminder that this Japanese company was once
a major player in the European market, and the
Sony
Ericsson Z600 was that joint venture's first attempt at a clamshell
phone.
November 2008
Remembered now for being a notable flop, the
BlackBerry
Storm 9500 was RIM's first attempt at a touchscreen device,
but it was poorly implemented and initial negative reviews dented
sales. Rather more successful was the
BlackBerry
Curve 8900 which brought a useful feature set to a budget
BlackBerry.
BlackBerry's influence was apparent in the
Nokia
E63 which competed directly against the Curve with an arguably
better feature set. The rather anonymously named
Nokia
6260 Slide brought N95-class specifications into an elegant
sliding device. Designed as an inexpensive music phone, the
Nokia
5130 XpressMusic had front-facing speakers and an appealing
design.
The
Sony
Ericsson W705 was the 28th "Walkman" branded phone
from Sony Ericsson, and in our view marked something of a crisis
in the history of the firm. The
Samsung
Tobi was a colourful phone aimed at children, but at a time
when the whole issue of mobile phones and children was becoming
a hot health topic. Aiming a completely different market the
Sonim
XP3 Enduro was a pleasingly chunky and very rugged device designed
for hostile environments.
The
LG KC560
was an unspeakably foul slider phone with gold accents, aimed mostly
at Russia. Five years ago manufacturers were still trying to put
TVs into phones, and the
LG
KB770 with DVB-T used the same standards as used in normal digital
TVs, but takers were few and far between.
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