One of the most interesting years in mobile phone design, 2004
saw some iconic handsets and also some heroic failures which
might just have changed the mobile world for the better if they
had taken off.
Motorola
Motorola had a promising year in 2004, breaking new ground in
both 3G and fashion phone markets.
The most iconic phone of 2004 (and possibly one of the most iconic
phones of all time) was the
Motorola
RAZR V3, a striking aluminium clad design which was notable
for its very slim form factor, although the user interface was notably
horrible to use. The RAZR turned around Motorola's flagging fortunes,
but a fixation with this type of design almost killed the company.
Motorola was also one of the leaders in the 3G market, the
Motorola
A1000 was a touchscreen smartphone with GPS that came
out three years before Apple entered the arena. But 3G sales didn't
really take off until much later, and Motorola seemed to lose interest
in this market sector. It wasn't helped by the fact that the
biggest 3G network in Europe (Hutchison 3) only allowed access to
a limited number of "walled garden" sites rather than
the whole web.
Back in 2003, Windows Mobile was still thought to be the next
big thing and the
Motorola
MPX220 combined Windows with the then-popular clamshell
form factor to come up with a device that looks very strange these
days. Despite the clever packaging, it failed to sell in any significant
numbers and was plagued with hardware problems.
A rather unusual form factor is present in the
Motorola
V80 with a rotating display that did win quite a few
fans. It certainly stood out against Motorola's usual offerings.
Despite these innovations, most of Motorola's sales during 2004
came from their
V500
and V600 series of clamshell phones which showed some
attractive designs, but they still lacked the ease-of-use of their
main rival, Nokia.
From a 2011 perspective, Motorola have struggled to remain a
player and now currently almost exclusively active in high-end
Android devices.
Nokia
Coming out of a miserable 2003, Nokia
spent
2004 trying to win back market share with a scattergun
approach to models and designs. Nokia broke with tradition in many
respects, something that we are seeing echoed with its struggles
in 2011.
At the top end of the market, the
Nokia
9500 Communicator offered a big screen and QWERTY keyboard,
a new version of Symbian and WiFi but for some reason lacked 3G
support. The brick-like design and weight put all but the most dedicated
of customers off.. and surprisingly it took Nokia three years
to replace it. A much smaller version (initially without WiFi),
the
Nokia 9300 was
launched the same year, and it proved to be a popular device despite
a lack of high-speed data support.
Launched roughly at the same time as the 9500, the
Nokia
7710 touchscreen phone was ahead of its time to the point
that the technology couldn't really deliver what users actually
wanted. A lack of 3G and a frankly pretty awful display killed off
Nokia's touchscreen efforts, and it took four years for them to
revisit the market with the
Nokia
5800.
Handheld gaming consoles are pretty popular these days, but back
in 2004 Nokia were also trying to get into the market. A follow-up
to the original
N-Gage
console, the
Nokia
N-Gage QD was more compact and focussed on games. It's another
one of those frustrating cases where the state of contemporary technology
wasn't really up to it, and Nokia gave up this approach shortly
afterwards.
Despite a lack of 3G in some other high-end devices, Nokia were
certainly pushing ahead here with the chubby
Nokia
6630. Again, 3G customers were few and far between, but
the 6630 was a popular choice for those customers who were using
those fledgling 3G networks.
Sometimes companies like to experiment, and in the case of the
Nokia 7610,
Nokia certainly went to town. Trying to break free of the sort of
boring monoblock design that Nokia were known for (you know, the
sort of phones that people actually
bought), Nokia came up
with the radical sweeping design of the 7610. The really weird keyboard
looked interesting, but the layout was off-putting and was a distraction
from the fact that this was a very capable device for its day. Nokia
later replaced the keyboard with the supposedly more sober
Nokia
6670, which somehow managed to look even uglier.
Also in the weird design club was the
Nokia
2650, a short lived cross between a phone and a sun-lounger.
A simple and quite usable device, the strange design was certainly
eye-catching if nothing else.
Novel materials also found themselves into the design of
the metal-clad
Nokia
6170. Sadly a pretty basic device underneath, the 6170 is
probably one of the best looking Nokia handsets that we can remember.
Another smart design, this time with a smartphone underneath
was the
Nokia 6260.
A Symbian device with a swivelling screen in a clamshell form factor,
the 6260 was certainly interesting to look at. Clamshells were very
popular during 2004, although they are quite rare today.
One of the most radical Nokia designs ever was the
Nokia
7280 "pen phone". Lacking a keyboard, the
7280 was mostly controlled through a "rotator" and had
a small display hidden behind mirrored glass. The pen phone format
died out, and these devices are now quite collectable.. although
perhaps still not very usable.
A sibling to the 7280, the
Nokia
7260 was a device that we hated at the time, but in
these days of black slabby touchscreen phones, the 7260 is at least
interesting to look at. It was an enormously popular phone, although
even at the time it was depressingly basic underneath the radical
exterior.
Another popular phone, the
Nokia
3220 was aimed at the mass-market, but in a funkier
package than its predecessors. A good combination of interesting
design, light weight and low cost led to this being a very strong
seller.
Not every Nokia was a radical design. The
Nokia
6610i managed to combine dull looks with a pretty unrewarding
user experience and a rubbish stills camera tacked onto the back.
However, this unappealing and unloved device still managed to sell
quite well.. usually to corporate and business customers.
Sony Ericsson
Founded in 2001, Sony Ericsson were beginning to get into their
stride by 2004 with some technically advanced and stylish designs.
However, as with Motorola, Sony Ericsson have struggled in recent
years (partly due to losing focus with dozens of "Walkman"
phones) and now focus mainly on high-end Android devices.
Following on from the
P800
and
P900, the
Sony Ericsson
P910 was a UIQ-based Symbian smartphone with a relatively
large touchscreen and a tiny QWERTY keypad. It wasn't much of an
upgrade over its predecessors, and the lack of 3G or WiFi in an
otherwise advanced device spoiled it. Even so, there was very little
to challenge Sony Ericsson at the time, although most phones these
days are now touchscreen devices.
Going to show that Nokia was not the only firm that could come
up attractive mobile phones, the
Sony
Ericsson T630 followed on from the iconic
T610.
Again, a basic phone in a pretty package, the T630 was a popular
device with a memorable semi-translucent case design.
A step up from the T630, the
Sony
Ericsson K700 marked the beginnings of Sony Ericsson's well
regarded K-Series of Camera phones (in Swedish, "Kamera").
A bit smarter and better specified than most rival Nokias, the K700
was one of Sony Ericsson's best-selling phones up to that point.
HTC
Even though HTC didn't sell phones under its own name until 2006,
it was already a significant player in the Windows Mobile market,
with handsets often turning up with carrier branding or under the
i-Mate name.
The
HTC Blue Angel sold under various names, including
the
T-Mobile MDA III and
the
O2 XDA IIs. O2's
original XDA was probably the first widely available touchscreen
Windows smartphone, launched the previous year and then followed
by the XDA II. This device had a 3.5" QVGA touchscreen and
WiFi, but the main addition was the slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
A more traditional design, the
HTC Typhoon sold under
different names including the
Orange
SPV C500 and
T-Mobile
SDA. Despite running Windows, the Typhoon was quite a basic
device.. but at 100 grams in weight, the Typhoon was much lighter
than other Windows smartphones.
Another device on the market was the
HTC Magician, sold
as the
T-Mobile
MDA Compact and under other names. The Magician was a reasonably
successful attempt to get a more pocket sized touchscreen phone,
even though it had to compromise on features.
Sharp
Remember Sharp? 2004 was probably their best year in Europe with
a number of class-leading devices. Despite being ahead of the pack,
Sharp never made the breakthrough it needed in Europe and eventually
it faded from view.
The first phone to break the one megapixel camera barrier, the
Sharp GX30 also
had a 2.2" QVGA display, better than almost all the competition,
plus Bluetooth and a SD card slot. The catch was that you had to
be a Vodafone customer to get one.
Sharp went several better with the
Sharp
902, again exclusive to Vodafone. This was one of the launch
devices for Vodafone's 3G network, and this came with the first
2 megapixel camera and a 2.4" QVGA swivelling display. As with
other Sharp devices, the display technology took advantage of Sharp's
expertise in LCDs. Although the 902 should have been a world-beater,
it was very expensive and interest in 3G networks didn't really
materialise until some time after the 902 was obsolete.
Unlike the 902, the
Sharp
GX25 was very successful. Again, Sharp squeezed in
a QVGA display and Bluetooth in a very compact package weighing
just 90 grams. The GX25 still manages to look quite contemporary
even all these years later.
Siemens
Once a major player in the European market, Siemens has almost
been forgotten now but did manage to come up with some innovative
devices.
There's now a small but significant market segment for tough
phones, and the
Siemens
M65 was one of the earliest examples. With a rubber case
that was water, shock and dust resistant, the M65 was the sort of
thing that could survive a bit of rough treatment.
Something that
never caught on was the design of the
Siemens
SK65. It tried to answer the perennial problem of how to
fit a QWERTY keyboard in an unusual way - the keyboard rotated out
from behind to form a cross shape. Too radical for consumers, the
Siemens brand was never very popular with corporate customers either,
leading to the SK65 being a
very rare device these days.
Other manufacturers
Most large mobile phone companies manage to make the occasional
iconic or stand-out device in design terms.
Samsung is one
of those companies that seems to struggle with this, but perhaps
one of the most fondly remembered is the
Samsung
D500 slider. A cute slider with a decent camera, and one
of the first Samsungs to support Bluetooth, the D500 was a huge
sales success.
Probably the company with the most turbulent history in
this industry that we know of is
Palm, back in 2004 it was
known as PalmOne. PalmOne had badly miscalculated the smartphone
market, and was stuck making standalone PDAs which it was becoming
apparent was a dead-end market. To get round this, it bought a small
manufacturer of PalmOS based smartphones called Handspring, and
with it their Treo line of phones. The
PalmOne
Treo 650 was the first in-house design, and although
it was never a huge sales success it was enough to keep PalmOne
in business and kept Palm fans happy.
Most Japanese phone manufacturers (apart from Sony) no longer
have a significant presence in Europe.. but
Sanyo probably
has one of the shortest histories. An attempt to break into the
new 3G market with the
Sanyo
S750 met with a remarkable lack of success. Although the
hardware specification was competitive with rivals, the build quality
was questionable and the phone looked a complete mess. Sanyo fixed
many of these shortcomings with an
upgraded
version in 2005, but by then it was too late and they pulled
out of the market.
Another Japanese manufacturer that pulled out of Europe,
Panasonic
were getting increasingly uncompetitive by 2004. The
Panasonic
X300 is one good example - the X300 had a basic flip-out
display, just like a modern digital camcorder, and it was indeed
capable of recording video on its basic camera, but there was hardly
any internal storage and getting videos off the phone was very difficult.
Although there were many other equally poor devices on the market,
the flip-out screen raised expectations that the X300 simply could
not match.
French manufacturer
Sagem showed promise in 2004, the
Sagem myC-3b being
the most memorable device in design terms. For many years, Sagem
continued to make cheep and cheerful devices but recently the brand
vanished and what was Sagem Mobile now makes OEM devices for other
companies.
Yet another defunct manufacturer that once showed promise was
UK-based
Sendo. The cheap but highly usable
Sendo
P600 was the sort of thing that should have given them
a boost. Popular at the time (mostly because of the low cost), Sendo
devices like this were often seen but are now mostly forgotten.
Sendo's R&D team were
snapped
up by Motorola, but sadly Motorola closed the division a couple
of years later.
NEC were a pioneer of 3G handsets in Europe, and
the
NEC E228 was
a popular model in that market.. but also one of the last phones
that NEC would make for Europe. An inexpensive device, it still
had video calling and expandable memory, but most Hutchison 3 customers
would never use those features. NEC was another Japanese manufacturer
to
leave
the market, this time in 2006.
A manufacturer that has done rather well since 2004 is
LG.
Most notably, LG made "U-series" 3G devices for 3. Early
3G handsets such as the
LG
U8130 lacked what we would regard as the basics of
Bluetooth and expandable memory, but they could access 3's "walled
garden" and make video calls. Of course, these days users want
unrestricted web access, multimedia on their memory card and don't
care much about video calls.. so perhaps it's not surprising that
few people really wanted to use 3G when it came out!
In context
Quite a lot of companies demonstrated that they had real vision
in 2004, with 3G devices and touchscreen phones pushing technological
boundaries.. although there was no real interest from customers.
Fashion phones did rather better, and many manufacturers pulled
back from their high-tech offerings, which proved to be a mistake
in the long run.
Samsung
Galaxy I7500
There
were also very few applications available for the iPhone. The AppStore
didn't launch until mid-2008, and until then it was difficult and
clunky for users to get hold of those few apps that were available.
Of course, the AppStore changed everything and since its launch
has clocked up an incredible 25 billion downloads.
The
capacitive display also allowed for a completely different type
of user interface. Because they are so sensitive, it is possible
to lightly brush the screen to “flick scroll”, or you can use two
fingers to “pinch zoom” and you can easily drag or move objects.
The iPhone's user interface was designed to support that, rather
than older smartphones that were still trying to be scaled-down
desktop operating systems. For example, before the iPhone you used
to use desktop-style scroll bars if you wanted to move up and down
through a long document.. something that seems quaintly old-fashioned
today.
have
applications loaded with a bit of effort. Despite some fiddliness, the
N95's flexible built-in software combined with the ability to add
a wide range of other applications certainly stirred some real interest.
In
hardware terms, the N95 seemed to have the edge. The iPhone didn't
support 3G, it came with a relatively poor camera with no video
capture, there was no GPS or FM radio. It wasn't until 2008 that
Apple opened their App Store, so most iPhone customers were stuck
with the apps that the iPhone shipped with. Despite these technical
weaknesses, the iPhone had a large touchscreen and a beautifully
polished interface which made Nokia's S60 implementation look very
out-of-date.
were
limited to download speeds of just 48 Kbps, less than the speed
of a dial-up modem. Nokia had introduced their first 3G handset
(the