Thursday 11 December 2014

Retro 5|10: December 2004 and 2009

December is usually a quiet month as manufacturers concentrate on shipping already-announced products to the shops in time for Christmas, but there were a handful of announcements five and ten years ago.

December 2004

Ten years ago, Sharp was leading the pack when it came to screen and camera resolution, but most devices were exclusive to Vodafone. The Sharp TM200 was only the second two-megapixel camera on the UK market, and the other one was the Sharp 902. Despite this, Sharp didn't really capture the public imagination, which seemed to be a curse facing the Japanese mobile manufacturers.
 Sharp TM200
Sharp TM200
Another Japanese handset this month was the Sanyo S750, a capable enough device but in a slabby and unattractive package which must have lacked shelf appeal in the shops. Sanyo didn't stick around in the market for long.
 Sanyo S750
Sanyo S750
Motorola on the other hand kept pumping out variations of the same clamshell, and the Motorola V330 was yet another example of this. Despite a lack of imagination, Motorola sold quite a lot of these attractive but somewhat unfriendly devices.
 Motorola V330
Motorola V330

December 2009

The original Nokia 6700 Classic was a tasteful feature phone.. until Nokia covered it in some sort of yellow metal and called in the Nokia 6700 Classic Gold Edition. It was either a must-have fashion accessory or deeply tacky, depending on your point of view. We will let you make your own mind up.
 Nokia 6700 Classic Gold Edition
Nokia 6700 Classic Gold Edition
Rather less garish was the Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition which was a GPS-equipped Series 40 feature phone, bringing budget satnav capabilities at just over €100. Of course, it was never going to be as easy to use as a dedicated navigation device or modern smartphone.
 Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition
Nokia 2710 Navigation Edition
Two phones that attempted to be more environmentally friendly than average, the Sony Ericsson Elm and Hazel came with reduced packaging and a higher level of recycled plastics, but they didn't really address all the problems and met with a cool reception from consumers.
 Sony Ericsson Elm
Sony Ericsson Elm

 Sony Ericsson Hazel
Sony Ericsson Hazel


Saturday 1 November 2014

Retro 5|10: November 2004 and 2009

With the year coming to an end we tend to see a last flurry of announcements, usually trying to get products in the shops in time for Christmas.

November 2004

The Nokia 7710 was Nokia's first production touchscreen smartphone, easily beating the iPhone to market. Despite Nokia's efforts the technology of 2004 wasn't quite up to it, but instead of sticking with the concept and improving it, Nokia made the fateful decision to abandon touchscreen phones altogether.
 Nokia 7710
Nokia 7710
Ten years ago the whole concept of 3G was failing to get off the ground too, and pioneering network Hutchison 3 was instead concentrating on being cheaper than the competition. To this extent, the underwhelming but cheap NEC E338 and a trio of LG handsets actually succeeded in driving customers looking for a bargain to the network.
 NEC E338
NEC E338
 LG U8100 Series
LG U8100 Series
For a long time we had been hoping for a replacement for Nokia's iconic 6310i handset, and the Nokia 6020 promised a lot on paper but it failed to live up to expectations. The Nokia 3230 looked like a promising music phone too, but it also turned out to be a disappointment.
 Nokia 6020
Nokia 6020
 Nokia 3230
Nokia 3230
Sitting somewhere in the range of over 200 Samsung clamshell phones is the Samsung E610, a device that tried to be fashionably thin but which just ended up looking squashed. Samsung have produced nearly 200 slider phones too, and the Samsung E850 stands out because of the unusual pop-out rotating camera.
 Samsung E610
Samsung E610
 Samsung E850
Samsung E850


November 2009

The worldwide version of the DROID launched the previous month, the Motorola Milestone was the first Android 2.0 device in Europe with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a high-end feature set that should have made it sell rather better. Competing against this was the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 which only ran Android 1.6 out of the box (but Android 2.0 arrived shortly afterward) in a very pleasing package that sold rather well. Also competing in the Android market was the Dell Mini 3 range which failed to make an impact.
 Motorola Milestone
Motorola Milestone
 Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
 Dell Mini 3
Dell Mini 3
Even five years ago, coming up with a completely new smartphone platform was a very risky thing to do, but the Emblaze First Else attempted to bring a radically different user interface and some cool hardware to market, but unfortunately it never really got off the ground.
 Emblaze First Else
Emblaze First Else
Nokia announced several devices this month, but the most interesting ones were the Nokia 6700 Slide which was a Symbian smartphone that came in a variety of bright colours, the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition which was part of a brief trend of putting digital TV tuners into mobile phones. Also, the Nokia 1280 was a €20 phone which was the cheapest Nokia handset ever, and the Nokia 2690 was a smart-looking and very inexpensive feature phone.
 Nokia 6700 Slide
Nokia 6700 Slide
 Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition
Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition
 Nokia 1280
Nokia 1280
 Nokia 2690
Nokia 2690

Sunday 12 October 2014

Retro 5|10: October 2004 and 2009

October 2004

The Samsung D500 was the first Samsung phone to feature Bluetooth, something that other manufacturers had done for a long time. A good all-round slider phone, the D500 was also very successful and helped expand Samsung's small but growing market share.
 Samsung D500
Samsung D500
Palm more-or-less created the PDA (personal digital assistant) market in the 1990s, but for some reason it didn't make the logical step to creating a smartphone for a long time. The PalmOne Treo 650 was the first smartphone that they designed in house, based in a large part on technology acquired from a firm called Handspring. Palm could never quite crack the market, however.
 PalmOne Treo 650
PalmOne Treo 650

Motorola were firmly entrenched in clamshell phones in 2004, launching a whole range of them. The most notable was the Motorola V620 at the higher end of the scale, along with several devices from the Motorola parts bin such as the Motorola V535.
 Motorola V620
Motorola V620
 Motorola V535
Motorola V535
By the end of 2004 Panasonic were floundering badly. The Panasonic Z800 was meant to be a reasonably equipped and somewhat compact 3G phone, but it is quite probable that this phone never existed in anything other than prototype form.
 Panasonic Z800
Panasonic Z800
If you were looking for a budget phone a decade ago, then you may well have looked at the attractive and relatively cheap Sagem myC5-2 clamshell phone.. although you can buy a smartphone these days for the price you would have to pay for a prepay phone a decade ago.
 Sagem myC5-2
Sagem myC5-2

October 2009

Motorola had only announced their first Android phone the previous month, but the Motorola DROID easily trumped that. It was the world's first Android 2.0 smartphone, and it came with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a high-resolution screen and fast processor. Although the DROID was a CDMA handset, a worldwide GSM version soon followed called the Motorola Milestone.
 Motorola DROID
Motorola DROID
Samsung have produced literally hundreds of different Galaxy smartphones and tablets in the past five years, but the Samsung Galaxy Spica (or Galaxy Lite) was one of the first, and was designed to be a bit cheaper than the original Samsung Galaxy.
 Samsung Galaxy Spica
Samsung Galaxy Spica
A couple of more esoteric Samsung devices announced this month, the Samsung Blue Earth finally started to ship after a long wait, featuring a large solar panel on the back, but it was not a success. The Samsung SCH-W880 was an early example of merging a proper digital camera with a touchscreen phone, but this gadget was heading for Korea only.
 Samsung Blue Earth
Samsung Blue Earth
 Samsung SCH-W880
Samsung SCH-W880
Samsung were still pushing Windows phones very hard, but the Samsung Giorgio Armani smartphone was something out of the ordinary, with lots of bling and a price tag to match. Five years ago many manufacturers thought that BlackBerry was the company to beat, and the Samsung Omnia Pro was a BlackBerry-style Windows phone with a little QWERTY keyboard.
 Samsung Giorgio Armani Smartphone
Samsung Giorgio Armani Smartphone
 Samsung Omia Pro
Samsung Omia Pro
The most impressive phone launched this month in terms of hardware was the HTC HD2, which featured a then massive 4.3" WVGA display and had pretty much all the bells and whistles you can think of.
 HTC HD2
HTC HD2

BlackBerry meanwhile was attempting (and failing) to challenge the full-touch market with the BlackBerry Storm2, a revision of the problem-prone original Storm model. Rather more successful was the BlackBerry Bold 9700 which appealed to BlackBerry fans by not messing with the formula too much.
 BlackBerry Storm2
BlackBerry Storm2
 BlackBerry Bold 9700
BlackBerry Bold 9700



Sunday 14 September 2014

Retro 5|10: September 2004 and 2009

Traditionally, September marks the end of the summer vacations and the start of announcements for products that will be in the shops for Christmas. And September 2004 and 2009 certainly brought some interesting-looking devices to the public view.

September 2004

Nokia announced several devices this month, but the most remarkable were a trio of fashion phones. We hated the Nokia 7260 with a passion when it came out because it was a very poor handset underneath its very bold design, but these days it looks much better than the bland black slabs we get. The Nokia 7270 clamshell phone was the middle phone in the range, a rare foray into clamshell phones for Nokia and a nice looking device too. But the attention grabbing one was always the Nokia 7280 "lipstick" phone. With no keyboard and a tiny screen, the 7280 wasn't the easiest thing in the world to use.. but it looked fantastic and to a modern audience it is almost inconceivable that the thing is actually a phone at all.
 Nokia 7260
Nokia 7260
 Nokia 7270
Nokia 7270
 Nokia 7280
Nokia 7280
A somewhat overlooked entry into Nokia's range of Communicator smartphones, the Nokia 9300 distilled the essence of the much bigger 9500 into a compact and rather elegant package. The lack of high-speed data held it back though, and it took more than a year for a WiFi version to come out which was much more popular.
 Nokia 9300
Nokia 9300
In our view the Nokia 6670 is one of the ugliest Nokia handsets ever made. Based on the radical, interesting but not terribly usable Nokia 7610, the 6670 attempted to sober up the design by inserting a more conventional keypad where the 7610 had one with swooping lines. The result is a device that doesn't work in terms of ergonomics, or in terms of styling.
 Nokia 6670
Nokia 6670
Japanese firm Sharp were an important partner for Vodafone who were pushing hard into the 3G marketplace. Headlining a number of 3G handsets to be announced this month was the Sharp 902, which was a very Japanese-style swivelling smartphone with a high-quality QVGA display, 2 megapixel camera with optical zoom, expandable memory and of course 3G support. The 902 was significantly more advanced in many respects than anything else on the market. However the 902's modest sales were overshadowed by the cheaper and very much non-3G Sharp GX25, a lightweight and stylish clamshell featuring Sharp's ultra-sharp display which sold very well to Vodafone customers on a budget.
 Sharp 902
Sharp 902
 Sharp GX25
Sharp GX25
Sony Ericsson also leveraged some of its Japanese know-how to come up with the Sony Ericsson V800, also exclusive to the Vodafone network. It was a generation behind the Sharp 902 in terms of features, but in the end Sony survived in the European mobile marketplace where Sharp did not.
 Sony Ericsson V800
Sony Ericsson V800
HTC wouldn't start selling phones under its own name until 2006, but in September 2004 it was busy making devices for other companies. The HTC Magician was sold as the T-Mobile MDA Compact, the HTC Blue Angel became the O2 XDA IIs, and two different versions of the HTC Typhoon were sold as the T-Mobile SDA and SDA Music.
 T-Mobile MDA Compact / HTC Magician
T-Mobile MDA Compact
(HTC Magician
)
 O2 XDA IIs / HTC Blue Angel
O2 XDA IIs
(HTC Blue Angel)
 T-Mobile SDA and SDA Music / HTC Typhoon
T-Mobile SDA and SDA Music
(HTC Typhoon)
Marketed at young children, the Siemens CX70 Emoty was a rather cute device with animated characters, emoticons and special sensors on the outside. Like a lot of other Siemens products from the time, it was interesting to look at.. but not really much of a success.

 Siemens CX70 Emoty
Siemens CX70 Emoty


September 2009

The Motorola CLIQ (or Motorola DEXT, depending on market) was Motorola's first Android phone, and although it was a welcome change of direction it wasn't quite the breakthrough device that Motorola needed.
 Motorola CLIQ / DEXT
Motorola CLIQ / DEXT
These days all "Xperia" devices are Android smartphones, but the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 (and its predecessor the X1) were both Windows devices instead, although Sony Ericsson's experiment with Windows turned out to be a brief one. The Xperia name was also stretched to the strange but rather wonderful Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness fashion phone, which had a transparent monochrome display and a concierge service. It's an esoteric and very rare device, but at the time of writing brand new ones are still available at the cost of up to €550 or so.
 Sony Ericsson Xperia X2
Sony Ericsson Xperia X2
 Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness
Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness
LG were also in on the fashion phone act with another "Chocolate" phone, this time the LG Chocolate BL20, but it never reached the successes of the original KG800. More successful was the fun LG GD510 Pop, a little touchscreen feature phone that sold quite well.
 LG BL20 Chocolate
LG BL20 Chocolate
 LG GD510 Pop
LG GD510 Pop
Samsung also had several touchscreen feature phones, and the Samsung Corby S3650 was a very popular device indeed. Less popular but remarkably odd looking was the Samsung B3310 messaging phone. Samsung also made the Vodafone 360 H1, an attempt by Vodafone to build a platform based on their own content and smartphones running the Linux-based LiMo operating system. The H1 was a failure, but LiMo eventually became Tizen and ended up on Samsung's smartwatches five years later.
 Samsung Corby S3650
Samsung Corby S3650
 Samsung B3310
Samsung B3310
 Vodafone 360 H1
Vodafone 360 H1
Nokia tweaked the original rather buggy N97 to come up with the significantly better Nokia N97 Mini Symbian smartphone. The Nokia X6 was another attractive Symbian touchscreen device, launched alongside with the pretty but basic Nokia X3 feature phone. One weird handset launched this month was the Nokia 7705 Twist which had a hole in it.. that idea didn't catch on.
 Nokia N97 Mini
Nokia N97 Mini
 Nokia X6
Nokia X6
 Nokia X3
Nokia X3
 Nokia 7705 Twist
Nokia 7705 Twist
And this month in 2009, Palm attempted to follow-up their moderately successful Pre WebOS smartphone with the Palm Pixi, which was cheaper and had a more conventional layout. But while the Pixi was decent enough, it couldn't compete with the iPhone and the new wave of Android handsets that were coming to market in late 2009.
 Palm Pixi
Palm Pixi