The mobile phone industry bursts into life in the spring, and
March 2004 and 2009 were no exception with devices being announced
from all sorts of different manufacturers.
March 2004
Featuring a design that was radical, innovative but basically
unusable, the
Nokia 7610
was a capable Symbian smartphone with a feature set that was impressive
for the time, but Nokia went completely nuts with the design and
gave the 7610 a very interesting but hard-to-use keypad and an assymetrical
design that at least looked different from most of the competition.
Motorola meanwhile were pursuing Linux as a smartphone platform
with the
Motorola
E680 touchscreen device, they also launched the
Motorola
E398 music phone which resurfaced a year later as the
infamous
Motorola ROKR. Motorola were also an early pioneer of 3G devices,
and the
Motorola E1000
was one of only a very small number of 3G handsets available at
the time.
Featuring a flip-out screen and a big camera mounted in the side
of the phone, the
Panasonic
X300 looked like a combination between a camcorder and a mobile, and
with Panasonic's reputation for camcorders then you would be forgiven
for thinking that this would be an impressive piece of kit. Instead
it was just a design gimmick, the camcorder functions were awful,
the phone had limited memory and it was extremely difficult to get
the low quality videos off the phone, even if you wanted to.
A long-forgotten form factor today, the rotating phone was a
pretty rare sight even back in 2004. The
Sony
Ericsson S700 was one such attempt and it had a rich feature
set for a phone of the time. In the end this type of phone never
took off, but instead we were plagued with slider phones that did
pretty much the same thing but in a more convenient package.
Siemens phones had a unique naming system where the last two
digits indicated when a device was announced, which gave us a trio
of stylish "65" devices. One key area where Siemens had
a particular interest was ruggedised phones, and the
Siemens
M65 was a pleasingly chunky design that could withstand some
pretty harsh conditions. Aimed at consumers, the
Siemens
C65 managed to look fresher than its Nokia rivals, and the
Siemens
S65 challenged Nokia in the business handset market too.
Germany had Siemens, and France had Sagem. Know mostly for cheap
and cheerful devices, the
Sagem
myC-3b was a competent and attractive "girlie" phone
that helped to bring a bit more variety to the market.
March 2009
Nokia focussed on music with the
Nokia
5730 XpressMusic smartphone with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard,
the rather dull and ultimately cancelled
Nokia
5330 XpressMusic and the rather inexpensive but fun
Nokia
5030 XpressRadio.
March was a big month for Samsung, with the launch of several
devices. Our pick of these include the very rugged and completely
waterproof
Samsung
B2100, which is one of our favourite phones of all time. The
Samsung
C5212 DUOS was an early dual-SIM device aimed mostly at emerging
markets. The
Samsung
S5230 and S5600 were a pair of low-cost touchscreen feature
phones that simply couldn't deliver smartphone features although
they did come with a smaller price tag.
In 2009 Motorola was in the doldrums, and the
Motorola
ZN300 was a disappointing phone that didn't seem to do anything
very well. The elegant and glossy
Sony
Ericsson T707 showed just how attractive clamshell phones could
be. If you were looking for something completely different, the
Hyundai MB-910
wristwatch phone might make you feel a bit like James Bond.. alternatively
if you have 007's budget then the exquisitely engineered but rather
pointless
TAG
Heuer MERIDIIST might be more your thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment