The Rise and Decline of Sharp Mobile (2002 to 2008)

Fifteen years ago this month, Sharp released the Sharp 903 – a high-end 3G phone that was the high watermark of Sharp’s efforts to break into the European market. Distinctly different from the Nokias and Motorolas that dominated the market, the 903 should established Sharp as a contender in the market. But it faded from sight instead.

In the early noughties Asian firms were having a hard time making an impact outside their home markets, with the notable exception of Sony… but even they had to join forces with Ericsson in 2001. But the result of this was that there were some weird and wonderful ecosystems developing – especially in Japan.

Sharp were dipping their toe in the market, initially with some fairly standard devices but then starting to leverage their expertise in other technologies. In 2000 they made the world’s first camera phone – the J-SH04 – but in particular devices started to appear that used some of Sharp’s world-leading display technology.

Sharp J-SH04

In Europe Sharp started cautiously with the O2-only GX1 which sold in limited quantities. Then came the almost identical Sharp GX10 and GX10i (the latter exclusive to Vodafone) in 2002 and 2003 which were attractive but pretty undistinguished clamshells.

The next handset to be launched (in late 2003) was a ground-breaker. Exclusive to Vodafone in most regions, the Sharp GX20 featured a high-resolution 240 x 320 pixel continuous grain silicon (CGS) display which easily beat everything else on the market at the time. Added to that was a competitive VGA resolution camera with a multi-coloured LED, along with a relatively large colour external screen – all in a package smaller and lighter than the more basic GX10. The GX20 created a real buzz around Sharp’s products and consumers were eager to see what would come next.

Sharp GX10i and GX20

The Sharp GX30 built on the superb display in the GX20 and added the world’s first megapixel camera. The GX30 also had a full-sized SD slot, added video recording, Bluetooth and an MP3 player. And in early 2004 all of those things together were a big deal. Even if the software wasn’t as easy to use as a Nokia, the hardware was class leading in almost every respect, again this was a Vodafone exclusive in many regions – although some other carriers had the functionally identical GX32.

Sharp GX30

You might guess that the next phone from Sharp would be the GX40… but you would be wrong. The Sharp TM100 was exclusive to T-Mobile rather than Vodafone, but was basically a slider version of the GX20 with minimalist looks at the same CGS display that Sharp were becoming famous for.

Sharp TM100

Vodafone again had the exclusive for the next handset – the very popular Sharp GX25. Still a 2004 product, this had a similar specification to the older GX20, but it had a sleeker design and notable it tucked the antenna inside the case. Bluetooth was added into the mix but the external screen shrank considerably. The result was a smaller, lighter, more capable and cheaper phone that was cheaper than the GX20 while retaining the excellent display. One highly sought-after version of the GX25 was the attractive Ferrari edition in bright red, but some markets had other eye-popping colours available too.

Sharp GX25

Sharp returned to their clamshell-with-antenna design for the Sharp TM200 in late 2004. This was exclusive to T-Mobile and was broadly similar to the GX30 except it had a smaller external display and crucially a two megapixel camera, making it the first such device in Europe. The oversized camera assembly on the TM200 was rather pointless, but it did draw attention to its class-leading camera capabilities.

Sharp TM200

Although most of these handset had been designed with European and Worldwide markets in mind, the next product releases had a more distinctive Japanese origin. One of the stars of Vodafone’s fledgling 3G network was the Sharp 902 which was essentially almost a straight import of the 902SH handset Vodafone Japan used.

Sharp 902

The 902 was like (almost) nothing else on the market. A large 3G-capable swivelling clamshell phone, it featured a 2.4” QVGA TFT display, a 2 megapixel camera with 2X optical zoom and a flash,  video calling, expandable memory on a full-size SD/MMC card, an MP3 player, web browser and email client. The 902 looked like a compact digital camera from one side, and you could swivel the display around to act as a huge viewfinder. The 902 had plenty of “wow factor” but flaws in the camera design meant that the pictures were disappointing, and Vodafone was having a hard job persuading customer that 3G was worth having. Launched alongside it was the cut-down Sharp 802 with a more conventional 1.3 megapixel camera, although this didn’t have the same market appeal. A special bright red Ferrari edition was the most desirable version, that that still commands a premium today for collectors.

Sharp 803

Most customers were sticking with their 2/2.5G devices and the GX range was still popular despite 3G competition. Rumours of a Japanese-style GX40 clamshell with a 2 megapixel camera were doing the rounds, Sharp having impressed potential consumers with the radical design of the 902. But this crucial market seemed to be overlooked.  It meant that customers with a GX30 who wanted an upgrade but didn’t want a bulky 3G phone would have to look elsewhere.

Sharp’s next launch was the Sharp 903 and Sharp 703 – another pair of G devices. The 903 was quite similar to the 902 in design, but sported a 3.2 megapixel camera with a 2X optical zoom that fixed the flaws of the 902. The full-sized SD card slot had gone to be replaced by a miniSD slot, but strangely the phone was actually bigger than the 902 despite that. Better looking than the 902, it came in a variety of colours as well. Launched at the same time was the more conventional 703 with a swivel-less design and a 1.3 megapixel camera.

Sharp 903 and 703

We didn’t know it at the time, but the Sharp 903 was as good as it was ever going to get for Sharp fans in Europe. When the Sharp GX40 finally came out later in 2005 it was a huge disappointment. It sported good multimedia features but a very disappointing 1.3 megapixel camera and even the screen was a slight downgrade on previous versions.

Sharp GX40

Three elegant but fairly low-end phones followed in 2006 – the Sharp GX29, 550SH and 770SH. The 770SH was the most elegant with a QVGA display and expandable memory, but it was still only a 2G phone with a 1.3 megapixel camera. The 550SH was essentially a candy-bar version of the 770SH. The GX29 was a simpler phone with only a VGA camera and limited features. This time the most desirable of the bunch was the 770SH McLaren Mercedes edition which certainly looked the part even if it didn’t deliver much.

Sharp GX29, 550SH and 770SH McLaren Mercedes Edition

After this Sharp pretty much faded out of markets outside of Japan, although years later they did return with some decent Aquos branded Android handsets which developed a following but have never really sold in large numbers.

Sharp certainly seemed to be poised on the verge of a breakthrough, but what went wrong? Sharp were certainly leading in display and camera technology. Very much at the leading edge Sharp and Vodafone also bet strongly on 3G, coming up with the class-leading 902… the problem was that consumers really didn’t want 3G and sales of that, the follow-up 903 and the 802 and 703 were weak. Sharp were also very much stuck with carrier exclusive deals, mostly with Vodafone but also to some extent T-Mobile. This was good news for the carriers, not such good news for Sharp. A failure to update their 2G line also left fans with nowhere to go - and when Vodafone left the Japanese market in 2006 the ties with Japanese manufacturers became much weaker. And of course the market was dominated by Nokia, and despite their handsets lagging behind in hardware terms they were usually the best-looking devices and very easy to use.

Sharp 902 and GX25 Ferrari Editions

Today the Ferrari editions are sought-after and a humble GX25 in Ferrari livery in very good condition can sell for hundreds of pounds. The 902 can cost around £150 in good condition, but most other Sharp phones are worth much less. However many of them - especially the GX30 and 902 - would make an ideal addition to a collection.


Image credits: Sharp, Vodafone, T-Mobile
Morio via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0

Amazon Kindle (2007)

Launched November 2007

Ten years ago this month, Amazon started a surprise revolution with the launch of the original Amazon Kindle e-book reader. Launched at a time when single-purpose devices were beginning to converge into smartphones, the Kindle created a niche for that type of product that it still dominates today.

These days we are used to having our cameras, handheld games consoles, music players, GPS navigation, web browsers, email clients and telephones all in one smartphone. And while you certainly can read e-books on your mobile device, dedicated readers such as the Kindle still sell very well.

Probably the most significant element that the Kindle brought was the large 6” electronic ink display. Lightweight and with a very low power drain, the display operated best in bright light where other devices would struggle. A Kindle would run for weeks on a single charge, and the 250MB storage of the original was good for a couple of hundred books.

It wasn’t the first consumer product with an electronic ink display (that was the 2006 Motorola FONE F3), and it wasn’t the first e-reader such a display either (that was the Sony PRS-500 also from 2006) but Amazon’s unique selling proposition was that they could sell you the book from their own catalogue and it would be delivered instantly to your Kindle without any waiting around.

When launched, the Kindle sold out almost instantly and it took another five months for stock to become generally available. This initial success seemed a bit of a surprise, given that the original Kindle cost a staggering $400 and there were only a limited number of titles available. Oh yes... the original Kindle was also a bit weird looking too.

The original Kindle was only available in the US, but the second generation device launched in the US in February 2009 started shipping in worldwide markets in October of that year. The third generation devices hit the market in 2010 by which time Amazon had a major hit on its hands. These later models tend to be available in both WiFi and 3G variants.

Subsequent models lost the keyboard, came with better displays of varying sizes and capabilities but the basic principle has remained the same. In 2011 a range of more conventional Android-based tablets were launched called the Amazon Kindle Fire (later shorted to just Amazon Fire) – these were a significant success for Amazon, but an attempt to make a smartphone to follow this up flopped.

In the US one of the quirky first generation devices will cost you about $40 used, a new basic Kindle costs around $80 (£60 / €70) with the popular Paperwhite model coming in at $120 (£110 / €130). And although not every digital e-book is cheaper than its paper rivals, book lovers have certainly found that they don’t have to worry about the never-ending battle for shelf space, which is a little victory in itself.

Image credits:

Gino Zahnd via Flickr

John Blyberg via Flickr

Android (2007)

Announced 2007

January 2007 saw the launch of that smartphone from Apple, but while that was helping to usher in a new epoch of smartphone the competition wasn’t exactly sitting around doing nothing. Partly in response to Apple, and partly seeing an opportunity to grab a slice of the smartphone ecosystem itself, Google and its partners announced the Open Handset Alliance and the Android operating system in November 2007.

Although Android is a Unix-like operating system just like Apple’s iOS, it is designed to be more open and less tightly controlled. Any manufacturer with a compatible device can be loaded with a free open-source version of Android, with additional features that can be licensed from Google. Applications can be downloaded from Google Play or indeed any other application store, and applications are permitted on Android that simply are not allowed by Apple (for example, programming languages).

Philosophically, Android had a similar approach to Symbian (led by Nokia), which could also run on a variety of different devices with no restrictions on the types of applications available. In the end, Android proved that it could do it better, and since Nokia didn’t pursue Android at the time it ended up being side-lined.

T-Mobile G1 (2008)

Today, Android has a market share of around 85% for new handset sales, with Apple accounting for almost all the rest. This has come at the cost of fragmentation though, and while Apple have made only about 40 different iOS devices over ten years, Samsung on its own has made nearly 400 different devices which are all different (and often have limited support). On top of that, different manufacturers like to put different add-ons on top which can make it confusing to move from phone to phone.

It took a long time for the Open Handset Alliance to bear fruit, with the first Android device being the T-Mobile G1 (also known as the HTC Dream) in September 2008. The first Samsung Galaxy handset was launched nearly a year and a half later.

Despite millions of handsets being sold, the website of the Open Handset Alliance has not been updated since 2011. Android however has gone from strength to strength despite its problems. Ten years ago Symbian was the biggest selling OS… will Android still be the biggest in another ten years time?

Image credits: T-Mobile and Open Handset Alliance

ASUS Eee PC 701 (2007)

ASUS Eee PC (2007)

Launched October 2007

Ten years ago we were seeing a big leap forward in the capabilities of smartphones, which was great if you wanted to see the world through a tiny little screen. If you wanted something larger, the choice was usually some sort of expensive laptop. Tablets as we know them today didn’t yet exist, with Nokia’s niche Internet Tablet only coming in with a 4.1” screen.

In October 2007, Taiwanese manufacturer ASUS came up with their solution to the smartphone/laptop gap with the ASUS Eee PC 701. A tiny laptop with a 7” 800 x 480 display, the eee 701 also came with a 4GB solid state hard disk, 512MB of memory and a 900 MHz Intel Celeron processor. It also had a built in WiFi adaptor, Ethernet port, sound and a microphone, three USB 2.0 ports, an MMC/SD card reader and one available PCI Express Mini Card inside (another one was used by the WiFi adapter). The operating system was either Xandros Linux, although Windows XP became available later.

All of these features came for a very low price of £169 in the UK, which was a good deal cheaper than the Nokia 810 and probably a lot more practical. It was a very small device, about the size of a hardback book… which of course led to quite a cramped keyboard. Also, it wasn’t the most powerful machine in the world but Xandros ran just fine on it (or you could install another version of Linux if you wanted).

The Eee was dubbed a “netbook” – primarily designed to accessing the web and email rather than games or heavily-computational apps – and it became a huge success.  In the UK, the Eee was sold through Research Machines who had launched the equally ground-breaking 380Z thirty years earlier.

Despite selling in large numbers, the Eee and rival netbooks struggled against the iPad and Android tablets that came out a few years later, eventually dropping out of production. However, ASUS still make similar devices based on Google’s Chromebook specifications which are equally inexpensive.

These days, pre-owned Eee PC 701 machines can be had for around £30 to £50, although you might struggle to find a contemporary operating system to run on them.

Image credits:

Jess C via Flickr

J Aaron Farr via Flickr

Nokia N810 (2007)

Launched October 2007

Back in 2007, Nokia was happy designing elegant but technically limited feature phones, and although they did have a flagship smartphone with the N95, rivals Apple were stealing the show with their own way of doing things.

But away from Nokia’s mobile phone division, another project had been working on a series of what they called “Internet Tablets”, launching the 770 in 2005 then the improved N800 in early 2007. The Nokia N810 was the third-generation device, launched in October 2007 and it started to show some real promise.

Although the N810 looks very much like a modern smartphone, this wasn’t a phone at all. A tiny Linux computer with WiFi and an then impressive 4.1” 800 x 480 pixel display it certainly shared a lot a characteristics with a modern mobile, but this had no cellular connectivity and was being sold as a rival to small form factor computers.

Running the Maemo operating system, the N810 was running a version of Linux developed especially for touchscreen devices. The 128MB of RAM and 400MHz processor isn’t much by today’s standards, but it was equivalent to what was in the first-generation iPhone. Unlike the original iPhone, you could download applications onto the N810 (or even compile your own).

It appealed to a very different type of customer than the iPhone – N810 users had a tendency to be established Linux users, gadget freaks or technologists. This relatively small community did help to drive things forward, but progress was slow. It took another two years to evolve the Maemo platform into a smartphone with the Nokia N900 which ultimately was not the commercial success it needed to be.

I’ve written about Maemo many times, but I’ll say it again – Maemo was Nokia’s best hope to move away from the restrictions of Symbian and come up with a smart device good enough for the second decade of the twenty-first century. Fundamentally, Maemo was every bit as capable as Android or iOS because it was based on essentially the same Unix-derived platform. With enough resources behind it, there was a good chance that it would have succeeded but in the end Nokia missed a vital opportunity and suffered for it.

Today the N810 is an interesting relic of what could have been, with prices today ranging from about €50 to several hundred depending on condition, although it isn’t a particularly common device.

Samsung / Bang & Olufsen Serenta (2007)

Launched October 2007

One of the oddest looking – and possibly coolest – mobile phones ever, the Serenata was a joint effort between Samsung and Bang & Olufsen, and it created a handset that was quite unlike almost anything else.

B&O and Samsung had been here before, with the radical and exceptionally expensive Serene launched in 2005. The Serene was clever in many ways, but it had some severe technical limitations. The Serenata (launched two years later) was probably the phone that the Serene should always have been, but the market had moved on since then.

The Serenata copied the Serene by having the display on the bottom (so it didn’t get greasy when making a phone call), but here there was a rotary control for the phone – very much like the iPod. Where the Serene surprisingly lacked music playback features, the Serenata was a proper digital media player with 4GB of storage. 3G data was added, but the Serenata did not come with a camera.

Because this as a B&O device, it came with a variety of stylish accessories. It was also extremely expensive at €800, and despite all the cleverness the launch of the iPhone had changed the expectations of consumers. For all its stylish and esoteric charm, the Serenata’s features looked dated compared to what Apple was doing.

Although both the Serenata and Serene caused a stir when launched, neither were a sales success. A year after the launch of the Serenate, B&O shuttered their phone business along with several other product lines. But, as with many other rare and unusual phones the Serenata remains quite collectible with good examples selling for around €400 to €500.

Nokia and the pursuit of elegance

2007 was a key year for the mobile phone industry, when big-screen smartphones really started to capture the public imagination. However, over at Nokia this point hadn't really struck home and they continued to do what they had always been good at - making phones look interesting instead.

A number of product were launched in August 2007, but headlining the releases were the first two handsets of Nokia's "Prism" range - the 7900 and 7500. Both these phones featured a repeated triangular pattern across the front and back, and the same theme was carried on in the user interface itself. In most respects these were pretty conventional feature phones, with the 7500 being a standard GSM affair. However, the Nokia 7900 Prism was also an early example of OLED display technologies, and this supported 3G as well.

Nokia 7500 Prism (left) and 7900 Prism (right)

Moving away from the polarising design of the Prisms, the Nokia 6555 was an extremely elegant clamshell phone with a smooth and glossy outer case which maybe owed a little bit in design to the RAZR. This too was a 3G device, although the small 2.0" screen and 1.3 megapixel camera were a bit disappointing.

Nokia 6555

Where the 7-series phones tended to be fashion phones and the 6-series were "classic" phones, the 5-series were designed to be more fun to use. The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic had a similar technical specification to the 7500, but it was designed as a music player and could take an 8GB memory card. The 5610 XpressMusic added a slightly bigger screen and 3G support in a sliding body that still looked very much like a Nokia. Both these devices are good examples of the understated elegance that was always a characteristic of Nokia design.
--

Nokia 5310 XpressMusic (left) and 5610 XpressMusic (right)

All five of these devices were pretty much perfect examples of feature phones of the time. Indeed, Nokia still make devices that are pretty similar to this today. Of course, it's much harder to experiment with handset design when a modern smartphone is basically all touchscreen on one side, but it does sometimes seem that modern smartphone manufacturers don't try very hard.

OpenMoko Neo1973 (2007)

OpenMoko Neo1973

Launched July 2007

We’ve mentioned this many times before, but 10 years ago saw the launch of one of the most successful consumer products of all time, the Apple iPhone. An elegant device, the iPhone is really an appliance that locks customers in to the Apple ecosystem with strict limits on what they can do with the device. But what if there was another way? OpenMoko certainly seemed to think so with an approach where everything was “open” instead of “closed”.

Launched ten years ago this month, the OpenMoko Neo1973 was designed purely on open source software that users could theoretically do anything with. Even the hardware was designed to be hackable, and a knowledgeable user could do virtually anything with what was in effect a tiny open source computer. For people who wanted to tinker with the OpenMoko kernel or do other advanced tasks, a debug board would become available too.

The phone itself seems a bit primitive by today’s standards. A 2G-only device lacking even WiFi, it had a small (but very sharp) 2.8” VGA resolution screen, GPS, Bluetooth and a microSD slot which could take SDIO peripherals. The Neo1973 by default ran a version of Linux called OpenMoko Linux… but of course there was nothing to stop you adapting another OS for the platform and many people did.

A chunky design with a hole in the bottom for a lanyard, the design was unusual even for its time. The 1973 in the name referred back to the world’s first mobile phone, the 1973 Motorola Dynatac. The “Neo” indicated a hopeful new chapter in the world of mobile telephony.

It didn’t quite work out the way OpenMoko expected, and the Neo1973 was a bit of a niche item with a small but highly enthusiastic group of users getting involved. 2008 saw the launch of the OpenMoko FreeRunner which added WiFi and some other hardware enhancements. Development fizzled out in 2010, but a firm with the fruity name of Golden Delicious Computers went on to make the BeagleBoard based GTA04 after that. The ongoing Neo900 project also takes on board some of the OpenMoko ideas.

Although it only ever remained a device used by enthusiasts, in retrospect it can be seen as a precursor to devices such as the Raspberry Pi (launched in 2012). That device was more of a return to the bare-bones boards of the 1970s, and crucially it was cheaper and easier to work with than the OpenMoko designs.

OpenMoko handsets today are very rare but don’t seem to be expensive when they come up. Although the OpenMoko project is no longer active, there’s still a wealth of information about them on their Wiki.

O2 Cocoon (2007)

Announced June 2007

What would have happened if there was never an iPhone, and smartphones remained an expensive niche? Perhaps the interesting design of the O2 Cocoon gives us a few clues as to how design might have evolved.

Designed by a company called Syntes Studio in Sweden, the Cocoon was basically just a 3G feature phone at its heart. But it was the physical design of the Cocoon that set it apart. The phone had a curved case that gave it the "Cocoon" name, and that case could be mounted sideways into a docking station turning it into a music player or clock. A hidden display on the outside of the phone gave some basic readouts. The musical abilities were enhanced by an FM radio and a microSD slot for storing music.

Although the Cocoon wasn't as radical as the radical B&O Serene launched a couple of years earlier, there seemed to be some similar ideas at play. But unlike the exclusive and expensive Serene, the Cocoon was an inexpensive device that anyone could get from their O2 Store. The phone went on to be a modest success, but the market was changing and the iPhone launched in Europe just a few months after the Cocoon did.

These days Cocoons are hard to come by, but not expensive. As an interesting piece of Swedish design it is perhaps worth adding to your collection of esoteric devices.

Motorola RAZR2 (2007)

Motorola RAZR2 V9

Launched May 2007

We've mentioned many times before that 2007 was a landmark year in the mobile phone industry. A little product from an outfit in Cupertino changed the direction of the industry forever. It would eventually become apparent to most companies in the sector that they had to follow suit.. or if they didn't, they would head into oblivion.

So, apparently boarding a bus on the highway to hell, Motorola decided to tackle the smartphone phenomenon by launching.. errr.. a new version of the RAZR feature phone.

Back in 2004, Motorola had scored a massive hit with the original Motorola RAZR. That phone combined stunning design with clever marketing, and it created one of the most influential mobile phones ever. The RAZR turned around Motorola's fortunes, and every other company had to go off and have a good think about industrial design.

The original RAZR promised great things, but failed to deliver. It was an awful handset to use, and the feature set really was actually pretty old-fashioned for the time. Variations followed - the RAZR V3i added some crucially missing features, the KRZR was even more stunning to look at, the RAZR V3x added 3G - but customers really didn't take to them.

Despite the law of diminishing returns, Motorola came out with the RAZR2 in 2007, coming in a 3G variant (the V9) and a GSM-only one (the V8). Surely enough, everything was better.. but compared to the iPhone it was still a heap of shit.

The sales figures should really have shown Motorola that the strategy wasn't working, but eventually they pushed out two dozen handsets based on the RAZR concept, with the last model being the GLEAM+ in 2012. By and large.. nobody cared that much about any of them.

At the time, we said that Motorola's obsession with the RAZR was killing the company. Motorola's PR people responded furiously, but it was plainly obvious that the company had their strategy completely wrong. In the end, Motorola's survival plan was to ditch their mobile phone business completely.. and now it is owned by Lenovo.

Despite everything, the RAZR2 is a decent flip phone and there seems to be a lively trade in them online, with good ones being about €60 or so. Yes, probably any mobile phone collector should  have some sort of RAZR in their collection.. but probably not this one.

Sony Ericsson P1 (2007)

Sony Ericsson P1

Launched May 2007

In the early noughties Sony Ericsson had pioneered touchscreen smartphones, starting with the P800 announced in 2002, which was followed up by other high-end "P-Series" smartphones, the P900, P910 and P990. All of these featured a distinctive flip-down keypad that covered part of the display, and these devices ran Sony Ericsson's own flavour of Symbian running the UIQ interface.

Although initial models had been well-received, the P990i (launched in 2005) ended up being a bit of a disaster. It was later, buggy and Sony Ericsson dropped support for it leaving owners in the lurch. So, the P1 was a bit of a reboot of the P-Series and it came at a time where they were renewed interest in smartphones.

It wasn't an entirely new design. Based heavily on the lightweight M600 and its Walkman variant the W950, the P1 (called the P1i in most markets) ditched the keypad and instead had a more conventional QWERTY/numeric hybrid keypad instead. In order to fit this in, the screen shrank slightly to 2.6" but with the same resolution, and the whole thing was significantly less bulky than its predecessor.

The removal of the flip pad simplified the software experience quite a lot. With the earlier P-Series phones, applications needed to adjust for the different screen sizes when the flip was open and closed. In some cases, the software behaved very differently. It's still a common problem today with landscape and portrait orientations, but it was a really annoying one with those P-Series devices. Other specifications were also improved and the P1 came with a capable 3.2 megapixel camera on the back, an FM radio, expandable memory, 3G support, WiFi and handwriting recognition.

However, the world had moved on and the new Apple iPhone which was about to hit the market after being announced at the beginning of the year had a more polished user experience, a bigger screen and crucially that screen was a capacitive one which was easier to use.

The P1 was not a huge success. P-Series users had been alienated over the P990i debacle, and the change in keypad on the P1 put off some customers even further. Without the loyalty of their user base and up against tough competition from other smartphones, the P1 struggled in the market. Successors to the P1 were planned but eventually cancelled, leaving the P1 as the very last P-Series phone. Sony Ericsson stuck with Symbian for a few more devices, notably the rather interesting Satio in 2009 and the awful Vivaz in 2010.

Sony Ericsson's P-Series devices are quite collectible today, and although the P1 is uncommon it typically ranges in price between €30 to €120 depending on condition.

Image credit: Sony Ericsson

Going nowhere: The BlackBerry Curve (2007 to 2012)

BlackBerry Curve 8300 (2007) and 9320 (2012)

Launched ten years ago this month, the original BlackBerry Curve was RIM's attempt to make their classic BlackBerry messaging smartphone more appealing to consumers. The Curve 8300 had the classic physical keyboard of all BlackBerry devices up to that point, and it added a camera (which was a rare feature on BlackBerry devices at that point) and had a media player with a standard 3.5mm jack plug.

BlackBerry's push email service for both businesses and consumers was second to none, and if you wanted to do messaging on the move then this was definitely the device to have. The 2.5" 320 x 230 pixel display was incredibly bright and clear compared to the competition, and although it wasn't a touchscreen it did have a little trackball underneath to navigate with. Crucially the Curve 8300 lacked 3G, WiFi or GPS at a time these features were becoming common. However, despite some limitations the Curve 8300 was a big success for RIM and it sold in large numbers.

Following on from the Curve 8300 were a variety of other models, adding WiFi, GPS and eventually 3G data. Although early versions sold well, increasingly it became difficult for BlackBerry to compete with all-touch devices such as the iPhone and Android smartphones.

Almost exactly five years after launching the original Curve, RIM announced the final device in the Curve line, the 9320. Shockingly, despite five years of development, the Curve 9320 had hardly evolved at all from the 8300. The physical keyboard remained, the screen was the same size, the camera a little better, the trackball had been replaced by a more reliable trackpad, it was faster and had more memory and could finally support WiFi, 3.5G and GPS.. but it certainly wasn't an iPhone-killer.

Worse still, the BlackBerry 7.1 OS included in the 9320 was fundamentally the same as the 4.5 OS included in the 8300 with some cosmetic changes. And although the Curve 9320 retained the excellent email capabilities of all BlackBerry handhelds, consumers had moved on and were more interested in things like web browsing.. and web browsing on the Curve 9320 was a very unpleasant experience. By 2012 both the iOS and Android platforms were destroying BlackBerry when it came to quality apps too.

In five years, RIM had essentially gone nowhere. It wasn't just the Curve either, but the entire BlackBerry product range was out of date. But conversely, a hard core of businesses and fans still went out and bought these devices, but it couldn't stem the collapse in sales. Even today, the BlackBerry 9320 still sells to people who are wedded to the platform.

To be fair, RIM realised that they were in a predicament but the next-gen BlackBerry devices that they needed were subject of boardroom battles that had crippled the company. The disastrous launch of the Z10 in 2013 is a story for another time though.

Image credits: Research in Motion / BlackBerry

Palm Foleo (2007)

Announced May 2007

Ten years ago we were seeing the start of widespread smartphone use, but although these devices were getting increasingly powerful and allowed people to work and communicate everywhere, their small size was a limiting factor in what they could do. Sure - you could get yourself a laptop computer, but these were designed to be used in the office or at home and taking one out on the road could be difficult.

Palm Foleo

Having helped popularise handheld computing in the 1990s and early 2000s, Palm had missed the boat when it came to smartphones and was struggling to keep up. But instead of just looking at what was happening in the market now, Palm were looking forward to the next problem - specifically trying to overcome the limitations of smartphones when it came to serious work.

Launched in May 2007, the Palm Foleo looked like a small laptop but it was really something different. The idea was that the Foleo would integrate with a smartphone via Bluetooth or USB and act as an extension of that device. This wasn't just limited to PalmOS devices, but also Windows, Symbian and there were plans for the new-fangled iPhone too.

The Foleo itself ran a modified version of Linux, relied entirely on flash memory for storage and it was fan-less due to the low-power CPU, making it very quiet in use and extending the battery life. It weighed just 1.3 kg and had a 10.2" 1024 x 600 pixel screen and a physical keyboard. Email access and cellular connectivity would go through the phone, but as a standalone computer it was pretty capable by itself.

Everything looked rather promising, with developers coming on board and pledging support for the device into the summer of 2007. And then - rather abruptly - Palm cancelled the entire project, presumably very close to the anticipated launch date.

At the time, Palm was facing considerable financial problems. The PDA that it dominated has collapsed, and it was only a very small player in the smartphone market, so given limited resources Palm had decided to step back from the rather innovative Foleo and instead developed the ill-fated Palm Pre launched at the beginning of 2009.

Although the launch of the Foleo would have had its risks, 2007 was the year that Netbooks really started to take off with devices such as the ASUS Eee becoming very popular. Had Palm done the Foleo well, it could have turned around the company's fortunes. Netbooks took a hit the the launch of the iPad in 2010 but then newer devices such as Chromebooks followed in the same vein.

Despite never hitting the market, a small number of Foleos were built, some in full retail packaging. These are very rare and prices of $1500 have been seen for units still sealed in the box.

Video

At the time, Palm provided various bits of B-roll. We've added some cheesy music. Enoy

Image credits: Palm Inc

Nokia 8800 Sirocco Gold (2007)

Nokia 8800 Sirocco Gold

Launched April 2007

A decade ago there were two approaches to making a high-end phone. You could either make a high-end smartphone with all the features that you could squeeze in, or you could take an existing phone and bling it up a bit. Nokia took the latter approach with the Nokia 8800 Siricco Gold.

The Nokia 8800 was always a high-end handset. The original 2005 version was launched at a price of around €800, and the 2006 "Sirocco" update was even more expensive. In 2007, a gold edition of the Sirocco was announced costing an eye-watering €1000 plus tax.

The most obvious feature was the 18 carat gold plating on top of the sliding metal case. The 8800 had always been a good looking handset, but not necessarily a very practical one. It wasn't a smartphone, instead this was a Series 40 feature phone lacking even 3G support. The scratch-resistant 1.7" 208 x 208 pixel display was pretty good for a feature phone, it had a two megapixel camera, Bluetooth and an FM radio. Although it could play MP3s, the storage capacity was just 128MB and there was no memory slot. On top of that it had some special ringtones, a charging stand and it came in a nice box.

Gold-plated phones polarise opinion. Some people think that they are elegant and attractive, others think they are tacky and rather gauche. Regardless, the 8800 was a carefully engineered product which would turn heads even in the plain stainless steel form.

OK, so it had a shiny yellow coating, the screen had sapphire glass and it was very carefully engineered... but underneath it was just a cheap and cheerful Series 40 feature phone with a very high price tag. So, almost inevitably there were forgeries..

There were three main ways to faking the 8800 Sirocco Gold. One was to start with the normal 8800 Sirocco and plate it in yellow metal. The second was to take another cheaper model of Nokia phone and to install the internal components and screen into a fake 8800 housing. Some even just fabricated a clone of the whole phone with a rip-off version of the OS. The last two techniques had been used for make fake 8800s ever since they came out.

Even today, the 8800 Sirocco Gold is a minefield for collectors with many fakes still in circulation. Prices on eBay vary wildly from less than €50 to over €1500 depending on condition, and it isn't easy on an auction site to tell a real one from a fake.

The 8800 wasn't the only massively expensive Nokia feature phone, as pretty much the entire Nokia-owned Vertu range pulled off the same trick but were even more exquisitely engineered and expensive. The 8800 Arte and 8800 Carbon Arte followed in late 2007 and 2008, and the similar 8600 Luna followed in May 2007. Even though there remains a market for low-tech high-end phones, most people these days would probably sooner have a good smartphone for the money instead.

Image source: Nokia

HTC Advantage X7500 and Shift X9500 (2007)

HTC Advantage X7500

Announced March 2007

Even before the launch of the iPhone a decade ago, one company was pioneering smartphones with a vision years ahead of everyone else. That company was HTC. In March 2007, just a few months after the launch of Apple's iconic device, HTC came up with a rather different vision of what it thought the future should be.

The HTC Advantage X7500 (sold under many names including the T-Mobile Ameo) pushed the boundaries of what a smartphone could be. The 5" VGA resolution display was enormous for the time, there was a QWERTY keyboard that was detachable and a then very impressive 8GB of internal storage and an internal hard disk (yes, made of spinning metal). This was a Windows Mobile 5.0 device, and it also supported HSDPA and WiFi data, had GPS, a TV output, came with a 3 megapixel primary camera and VGA camera for video calling and had a microSD slot. Inside was a 624 MHz Intel Xscale processor with 128MB of RAM. In hardware terms it completely stomped over the iPhone, but it was two-and-a-half times the weight. It was quite an expensive device at about €850 SIM-free (€200 more than an unlocked iPhone) but it was pretty obviously a premium product.

It wasn't a huge sales success, but it is credited by some as helping to popularise big-screen smartphones. In 2008 HTC followed it up with the X7510 with more storage and Windows Mobile 6.0. Today you can pick up either model for around €50 to €70 for an unlocked version.

HTC Shift X9500

Launched the same month was the HTC Shift X9500. Sporting a 7" WVGA touchscreen, the Shift was actually an ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) with some clever tricks up it's sleeve but an eye-watering price-tag to match. The Shift could boot into either Windows Vista (which probably really, really counted against it in the long run) or an application called SnapVUE which was basically a specially-written mobile operating system. In order to accommodate these two OSes, the Shift required both an Intel x86 processor for Windows and an ARM11 CPU for SnapVUE. It came with a 40 or 60GB hard disk, a microSD slot, HSDPA and 3G data plus WiFi, a fingerprint reader and 1GB of RAM. Priced in the US at about $1500, when it finally did get to market in 2008 it was four times the price of a 7" Asus EEE PC.

It took a long time to come to market. It was not a sale success, but the 7" format ended up being a popular size for the tablets that were to come a few years later. But neither Windows Vista nor Windows Mobile 5.0 were ever really popular platforms, but eventually HTC switched its emphasis from Windows and produced the first Android smartphone. But that it another story.

Image source: HTC

Ten years of "Google Phone" rumours

Just over ten years ago, Apple announced the first iPhone. But shortly after that rumours started to swirl that Google was working on a platform of its own. The then managing director of Google Iberia laid out plans to Spanish news site Noticias which presumably were meant to be a secret.

The general manager of Google Spain confirms that the company is working on the development of a mobile phone

14/03/07 - Estefanía Pérez
Isabel Aguilera, General Manager of Google in Spain and Portugal, has confirmed to Noticias.com that the company is working, "among others", in the development of a mobile phone. "A part of the time of our engineers we have dedicated to the investigation of a mobile phone to access information," Aguilera said.

Speculation about Google's possible entry into the area of ​​mobile phone design and sales came after the company recently posted a job advertisement seeking engineers and analysts in the telecommunications industry. In that same claim, Google specified that it is undergoing experimentation with various wireless communications systems.

In a conference on the integration of the Internet into business strategy, organized by the Association for the Progress of Mediterranean Area Management, Isabel Aguilera explained to Noticias.com that while 70% of engineers' time is spent "To develop our core business, that is, search and advertising," and 20% to develop "products that have enough to do with this core," it is true that 10% of that time is focused on development Of products "that at some point could have to do with our business."

Within this last area, Aguilera has indicated that "it has been investigated" in a mobile phone through which you can "access information", as well as "how to extend the information society in less developed economies ". In this sense, the Director General of Google in Spain and Portugal has pointed out that although "there may be products that may seem strange, they are all part of our innovation process."

At the moment, the search engine has 36 products and "18 others that are in the laboratory" and, therefore, undergoing experimentation, among which would be the mobile phone.

At the time we speculated over the possible features of a Google phone, and concluded that it would probably be a Linux-based phone with applications tightly integrated into Google services such as Gmail, Maps and Calendar once the user had logged in with their Google account. This seamless connectivity seemed pretty advanced for the time, but it is essentially what Google delivered.

We also speculated about possible partners, and in the end we thought the Nokia was the most likely.. but in the end they were one of the few major manufacturers not on board. It took another eight months for an official announcements to come out, naming the operating system as Android and the first handset (the T-Mobile G1) appeared in September 2008, a year and a half after the first rumours.

Almost immediately after Android came to market, it began to fragment with manufacturers doing their own thing. Google responded to this problem in 2010 with the first of a series of "Nexus" devices made with various partners, and in 2016 it went the whole way and launched a phone in it's own right, the Google Pixel.

T-Mobile G1 (2008)

In 2017 around nine out of ten new smartphones run Android, and almost all the rest are iPhones. Windows, BlackBerry and other platforms have been squeezed out almost completely, and profit margins have been squeezed too. Apple seems to be the only company consistently making any money, but as far as consumers are concerned Android has brought a huge variety of choice for people on all sorts of budgets and has helped to transform mobile computing completely.

Nokia N77, E65, E61i and 6110 Navigator (2007)

Launched February 2007

Launched alongside the headlining E90 Communicator in February 2007 were a whole bunch of Symbian smartphones all looking for their particular market niche. As was common with Nokia 10 years ago, you could have any feature you wanted.. just not all in the same device.

The Nokia N77 was a normal-looking "candy bar" phone 3G phone with the unusual addition of a DVB-H TV receiver. Whether you wanted to watch TV on a 2.4" QVGA screen or not was another question, and of course these days most video is streamed over high-speed networks which the N77 lacked. DVB-H was seen as a great hope ten years ago, with quite a few devices launched in between 2007 and 2009, at which point it fizzled out.

Nokia N77

Looking a bit like any other Nokia slider (not exactly a huge range of devices, we know) the Nokia E65 was a Symbian smartphone with 3G support and WiFi. The clever thing with the E65 was that you could integrate it into your corporate PABX system which is something that manufacturers are still struggling to get accepted a decade later.

Nokia E65

A warmed-up version of the year-and-a-half-old E61, the Nokia E61i was another Symbian smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard underneath, making it look like a Nokia version of a BlackBerry. But BlackBerry was always about more than just phones, and ultimately the E61i couldn't compete with BlackBerry who were just beginning to hit a period of rapid growth.

Nokia E61i

In 2017 we expect almost all of our phones to also be navigation devices, but in 2007 this was still rate. The Nokia 6110 Navigator was yet another Symbian device, but this time with GPS and turn-by-turn navigation. In essence, it was a cut-down version of the N95 which was a far better device.

Nokia 6110 Navigator

Perhaps Nokia's strategy with the E90, N77, E65, E61i and 6110 was to throw everything it had at the wall to see what would stick. Unfortunately for Nokia, most of these devices just slid off..

Image sources: Nokia

Nokia E90 Communicator (2007)

Launched February 2007

By the beginning of 2007 the smartphone wars were entering a new phase, ushered in by the original Apple iPhone announced in January. Nokia had its own idea of what should go into a phone, but for some frustrating reason you couldn't have it all in one device. The Nokia E90 Communicator continued this frustrating tradition.

Nokia E90 Communicator

The latest (and indeed last) in the long line of Communicator devices, the E90 was a brick-like beast that was a bit of a monster when it came to specifications.

Outwardly, the E90 looked like an old-fashioned brick phone. Measuring 132 x 57 x 20mm and weighing a stonking 210 grams, it looked like a relic from the past. But as will all Communicator devices, it opened up to reveal a big screen and full QWERTY keyboard  hidden inside. The 4.0" 800 x 352 pixel display thrashed most of the competition when it came to both size and resolution, and the E90's feature list was impressively long including 3.5G support, WiFi, GPS, FM radio, expandable memory, a 3.2 megapixel primary camera and this all ran on Nokia's massively popular S60 platform.

Nokia 9210i, 9500, E90 Communicators

Starting in 1996 with the Nokia 9000 Communicator, it was followed in 1999 by the 9110, then the 9210 in 2000, 9210i in 2002, the 9500 and 9300 in 2004 and the 9300i in 2005. Despite their aspirations, these Communicators were also deeply flawed. The E90 was the first handset in the range to support 3G (despite it being common in smartphones for 5 years), and it took until 2004's 9500 until any type of cellular data (in this case GPRS) was supported. Frustratingly, the E90 didn't have a touchscreen display either.

The E90 also upset fans by ditching the capable Series 80 version of Symbian found in previous models and replacing it with Symbian S60 which was found in every other Nokia smartphone. Although this brought the E90 into line with other Nokias, it wasn't quite as suited to this type of devices as the older OS.

Despite its potential brilliance, the E90 also underlined the flaw in Nokia's strategy. Their consumer smartphone was the brilliant N95, but if you wanted to actually type stuff and work with documents then the E90 was the offering you wanted. Each different smartphone product (and there were many) catered for a particular niche. Apple didn't bother with that approach... one single device was designed to do absolutely everything, and of course it was this approach that prevailed.

Nokia never made another Communicator device after this, although the Nokia E7-00 launched in 2010 did adopt the QWERTY keyboard of the Communicator series of devices. Today typical prices for an unlocked E90 in good condition range from between €100 and €200 or so. Although the E90 is of limited use in the modern age, it is certainly an antidote to the endless parade of slabby touchscreen devices that we see today.

Nokia E90 Communicator

 Image sources: Nokia, Retromobe / Mobile Gazette