Retro 5|10: March 2005 and 2010

After Mobile World Congress (traditionally in February), the next big trade show is CeBIT in March which in the past used to generate quite a few new product announcements.

March 2005

Partnering Sony Ericsson's range of "Walkman" handsets were the somewhat less memorable "Quickshare" phones, which took what was essentially the same hardware with a few tweaks to make it more of a digital camera rather than a music player. The Sony Ericsson K750 was an attractively understated two megapixel camera phone, which also showcased Sony Ericsson's "dual front" design where the back of the phone was every bit as interesting to look at as the front. If you were on T-Mobile in Germany, you were offered the slightly different Sony Ericsson D750 instead.

Sony Ericsson K750

Sony Ericsson D750

Because CeBIT is a German show and Siemens were a German mobile company, it was usual to see a lot of Siemens devices at this event. The Siemens CL75 was probably the last major sales success though, a simple but very attractive clamshell phone with a definite "girlie" vibe. Siemens were certainly capable of more technically interesting phones, and the Siemens SXG75 was a 3G device with a QVGA display, 2 megapixel camera, FM radio and even GPS. But time was almost up for Siemens, and the SXG75 failed to make much of an impact when it actually did hit the market.

Siemens CL75

Siemens SXG75

Motorola were on something of a roll at the beginning of 2005, and they followed up February's announcements with a 3G version of the RAZR initially called the Motorola V1150. Motorola were also pioneering smartphones, and the Linux-based Motorola E680i showed a few promising features, but ultimately was only a niche device. Motorola were also going after the low-end market with two devices called the Motorola SLVRlite and Motorola SLVRcam. They were pretty similar to each other and the previous month's SLVR, so much so that even Motorola got confused over which was which.

Motorola V1150

Motorola E680i

Motorola SLVRlite V270

Motorola SLVRcam V280

The Nokia 6230i was a popular business phone, with a surprisingly sharp 208 x 208 pixel screen, 1.3 megapixel camera, FM radio, music player and Bluetooth in a handset that looked good but wasn't too showy. If you couldn't afford the €350 price tag, the cheaper €200 Nokia 6021 did at least feature Bluetooth and for €150 you could get the very basic Nokia 6030.

Nokia 6230i

Nokia 6021

Nokia 6030

Samsung were getting heavily into slider phones, and the Samsung D600 offered a useful improvement over the very popular Samsung D500. More esoterically, the Samsung i300 was a Windows-based smartphone with a 3GB physical hard disk inside, an idea that was briefly popular a decade ago but soon because obsolete with cheap flash memory.

Samsung D600

Samsung i300

Imported more-or-less directly from Vodafone's Japanese subsidiary, the Toshiba TS921 was a highly-specified 3G clamshell which competed against the more popular Sharp 902. Despite several attempts over the years, Toshiba never managed to break into the European market.

Toshiba TS921

March 2010

Android continued to gain momentum, and the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S was the very first high-end "Galaxy S" smartphone, featuring a then large 4" 480 x 800 pixel screen, a 1GHz CPU with 512MB of RAM, 8 or 16GB of storage, 3.5G and WiFi data, GPS and all the other features that Android devices come with, this was an impressive but expensive device. It is also notorious for being one of the key elements in a huge lawsuit between Apple and Samsung, with Apple claiming that this and other devices "slavishly copied" the iPhone.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S

The Nokia handsets of 2010 didn't look that different from the Nokia handsets of 2005, and the Nokia C5 really wasn't a million miles away from the 6230i in terms of what it did.

Nokia C5

Perhaps inspired by Apple, Dell was also trying to break into the smartphone market. The Dell Aero was a pretty unexciting device in many respects, and with Dell's mixed reputation it was never going to be destined for success.

Dell Aero

Dual-SIM devices are getting pretty common these days, but five years ago they were still pretty rare. The LG GX200 was a simple dual-SIM device that did the job. And possibly more notable for a name that brings to mind home baking, the LG Cookie Fresh was a cheap-and-cheerful feature phone clearly aimed at the youth market.

LG GX200

LG Cookie Fresh

Retro 5|10: February 2005 and 2010

The Mobile World Congress usually takes place in February, and as a result this is the biggest month in the calendar for new releases. We look at some of the more memorable devices announced five and ten years ago this month.

February 2005

The T-Mobile MDA IV (otherwise known as the HTC Universal and a wide variety of other names) was one of the first smartphones that really did try to offer everything including the kitchen sink. It had a 3.6" VGA-resolution display, QWERTY keyboard, 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, dual cameras and expandable memory. The Universal ran Windows Mobile 5.0 and it was probably the most powerful smartphone launched up until that point. It never sold in great numbers and is quite rare today.

T-Mobile MDA IV

Motorola announced several devices this month, but not all of them came to market. The Motorola SLVR L7 was an attempt to bring RAZR-type design to a monoblock phone. Although we noted at the time that the SLVR had a ramshackle launch, it went on to sell quite well. Alongside it was the Motorola PEBL which tool the same basic package and put it into a pebble-like clamshell, although what eventually got to market was not as interesting as the device that was originally shown.

Motorola SLVR

Motorola PEBL

The Motorola E1120 was one of a series of phones that were announced and eventually cancelled. This device had 3G, a QVGA display, expandable memory and a 3 megapixel camera with a photo light, and it ever it had come to market it would have easily out-specified most of the competition. Announced alongside it was the Motorola E1060 which was basically a cheaper but still useful 3G phone, but this was also cancelled. The promising-looking Motorola A1010 smartphone would also have been highly competitive, but this too was canned. Instead, Motorola concentrated on underpowered feature phones such as the RAZR, SLVR and PEBL which eventually led to catastrophe.

Motorola E1120

Motorola E1060

Motorola A1010

Nokia were beginning to develop some very competitive 3G devices, and the Nokia 6680 ran Symbian (which made it a smartphone, even if it didn't have a touchscreen), supported video calling and also had expandable memory. At this moment in time, Nokia had the edge in usability and the 6680 (and the 2G 6681 and 6682) sold rather well.

Nokia 6680, 6681 and 6682

Symbian again featured in the British Sendo X2, a device that would have competed well with everything in its class, except that Sendo went bust and many of their technologies ended up with Motorola instead.

Sendo X2

Also at MWC we saw the Sony Ericsson K600, a 3G phone in a rather elegant package, the almost impossibly compact 3G Samsung Z500 and the almost impossibly rugged Siemens M75.

Sony Ericsson K600

Samsung Z500

Siemens M75

February 2010 The HTC Desire was a highly successful Android smartphone with a 3.7" OLED WVGA screen, 1GHz processor and it was very elegantly designed. The Desire was one of the first Android 2.1 phones on the market, so it shipped with a much more polished and stable OS than earlier Android devices. The cheaper HTC Legend was launched alongside it, featuring a more elegant metal design but the modest specifications meant that it never really became a legend at all. HTC Desire HTC Legend Featuring an absurdly long pair of names, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini and the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Mini Pro were two very tiny Android devices, each featuring a 2.55" QVGA screen and a full Android feature set. The Pro version came with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and the standard version weighed just 88 grams. Although they were quite popular, the tiny screen also rendered them fairly useless except for really basic tasks which a feature phone might have done better, and they were quite unlike the superlative full-sized XPERIA X10 in every way. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro Following on from the Vivaz launched in January, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro added a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and looked promising on paper, but the cheap touchscreen and general consumer indifference towards its Symbian operating system meant that it was something of a failure, and this was Sony Ericsson's final Symbian device. Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro Where the Vivaz marked something of the end of an era for Sony Ericsson, the Sagem Puma phone was the end of an era for this particular niche French manufacturer. The final Sagem handset to market, this touchscreen feature phone was made in conjunction with sportswear company Puma. Despite some interesting features (such a solar panel), it was not exactly a game changer. Sagem Puma Phone Five years ago manufacturers were still trying to sell touchscreen feature phones, with the very elegant and compact LG GD880 featured alongside the LG Cookie Plus, a replacement for the popular Cookie. In the end, smartphones simply got cheaper and wiped this sort of device out. LG GD880 LG Cookie Plus A detour into kitschiness, the Samsung Diva was an attempt to make a "girly" compact touchscreen phone, with a quilted back and a jewel-shaped navigation key on the front. But the feature set was very disappointing, and frankly the whole thing was rather patronising. Samsung Diva Toshiba are well-known for their Windows laptops, but they had struggled to make an impact in the smartphone market. The Windows-based Toshiba TG02 and K01 attempted to build on the slightly successful TG01. Although the package had some powerful features, it came at a time when Windows sales were tanking, and the tiny 1000 mAh battery meant that it would run out of juice quite quickly. Toshiba K01 Toshiba TG02 Like the Siemens M75 from five years before, the Sonim XP2 Spirit was designed to be very tough, but Sonim took toughness to an entirely new level. Housed in a tough, waterproof chassis the XP2 Spirit could probably survive just about any environment that you would want to use a phone in. Sonim XP2 Spirit The competition from Android meant that sales of Windows phones had almost collapsed, but Microsoft was not prepared to give up. Instead, they went away and completely rethought how a smartphone should work and they came up with the radical Windows Phone 7 instead. In particular, the user interface was very different from rivals and it felt much more modern, and it was very usable on a small device. However, when Microsoft attempted to add this modern UI to their desktop operating systems then things started to go wrong. Windows Phone 7 The Maemo-based Nokia N900 had been announced the previous year, and many people were expecting Nokia to announce a follow-up device at MWC. What happened instead was that Nokia announced that they would merge their Maemo OS with Intel's Moblin OS and come up with a new platform called MeeGo. This was a catastrophic decision as it meant that there was no follow-up to the N900 at a crucial time, and Nokia didn't manage to ship a MeeGo phone until late in 2011. This disruptive merger is probably a major reason why Nokia no longer exists as an independent mobile phone manufacturer today, however MeeGo still lives on, having been absorbed into the Tizen and Jolla operating systems. MeeGo

Retro 5|10: January 2005 and 2010

The beginning of the year traditionally kicks off with the CES show in Las Vegas, which often leads to a lot of US-centric handsets being launched this month.

January 2005

The problem of how to type text on a phone has always been a thorny one, Nokia's idea was to use a sort of "butterfly" keyboard. The Nokia 6822 was another attempt to popularise this type of design, but it didn't really catch on.

Nokia 6822

Samsung were masters of the clamshell phone, and the Samsung E720 was an understated but quite powerful example, featuring an MP3 player with built-in media controls on the outside and it also marked a change of direction for Samsung who finally included Bluetooth.

Samsung E720

Motorola always used to be have a strong presence at CES, and this was certainly the case this year. The two most interesting devices they launched were the attractive Motorola V635 clamshell phone, and the Motorola C698p which featured walkie-talkie style Push-To-Talk (PTT) which was another technology that never really caught on.

Motorola V635

Motorola v698p

January 2010

Five years ago the Android market was beginning to grow rapidly, but all manufacturers were trying to make it their own with different skins and software add-ons. The Google Nexus One was Google's attempt to give consumers a handset that was free of all these additions and to create something that gave a pure Android experience. Nexus owners would also get earlier software updates, and get them for longer. The Nexus was quite successful and its successors are still around today.

Google Nexus One

Smartphone design can be quite dull, with a tendency to produce black or white slabs with no character. The Android-based LG Optimus GT540 was certainly a much more interesting design and was a good attempt to differentiate a product which was a bit dull underneath. Despite the looks, it seemed that consumers were quite happy with their slabs after all.

LG Optimus GT540

Another Android phone - and another phone trying to include a QWERTY keyboard in the design - the Motorola BACKFLIP had a clever hinge arrangement that flipped it between a device with a keyboard and a more conventional tablet. You can gauge the success of this idea by the fact that physical keyboards are essentially extinct today.

Motorola BACKFLIP

Not every smartphone launched this month was an Android phone. The Sony Ericsson Vivaz ran Symbian, but despite an attractive design this was almost Sony Ericsson's last Symbian device. And underwhelming specification and an unappealing cheap touchscreen didn't help.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz

Just in case you thought that HTC only made Android and Windows smartphones, here is something rather different. Running its own "HTC Sense" platform based on Qualcomm's BREW environment, the HTC Smart attempted to bring smartphone-style features to consumers on a budget. It was not a success.

HTC Smart

The LG GW990 was announced five years ago this month. Running the Intel-backed Moblin operating system, the GW990 also packed an Intel CPU inside and it was envisaged that there would be an LTE variant. Moblin was a version of Linux, functionally similar to Android or iOS, but the GW990 never came to market and Moblin eventually merged with Maemo to become the ill-fated MeeGo operating system.

LG GW990