[HN Gopher] There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
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There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
Author : leephillips
Score : 145 points
Date : 2022-11-14 14:29 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| dharbin wrote:
| Actually, I love this. I remember having a teeny tiny phone back
| then (not quite a Zoolander size), and it was a lot of fun. Now
| everything is a boring rectangle of glass. Bring back the fun!
| pavlov wrote:
| I miss the Nokia 7700 which was a high-resolution touchscreen
| phone in 2003 and looked like a prop from "Star Trek: Deep Space
| Nine":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7700
|
| This was the high point of Nokia design's plastic fantastic
| insanity. It had side-talking and everything.
| Markoff wrote:
| Yeah, good times and now we would be happy if they offered at
| least smaller rectangle instead of those huge bricks or remote
| controls.
| woopwoop wrote:
| > They literally designed this entire thing for dads that
| couldn't get the hang of T9
|
| I had a phone like this, although not that model. It was great,
| T9 sucked. In fact, it was much more pleasant to type on than a
| touch screen.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It was actually aimed at the blackberry crowd that valued
| having a full keyboard at the time. I had one for a while in
| Nokia. It was great for things like email. Much lighter than
| the 9500/9300s it replaced. Those were heavy bricks. Different
| times of course but I do miss hardware keyboards.
|
| I think we lost something with all those hardware form-factors
| converging on essentially the same design: a rectangle that
| barely fits in your pocket.
| aivisol wrote:
| The author has no clue what he is talking about. I absolutely
| loved my Nokia 6822 - you could install a third party SSH
| client on it and that's how the remote work era really began
| for me. Next phone for me was obviously Nokia 9300 - also with
| full QWERTY keyboard. What came later was Android/iPhone which
| in a way was step back in terms of productivity due to lack of
| physical keyboard.
| rob74 wrote:
| Yup, I was a big fan of phones with actual keyboards, before
| and after the smartphone era, for exactly that reason.
| Transferring the muscle memory from typing on a PC keyboard to
| these mini-keyboards was surprisingly fast, and after that you
| could simply type without worrying about T9 fucking things up
| (one classic in German was that it turned "Frohe", as in "Happy
| Easter" or "Merry Christmas", into "Droge", as in illegal
| drugs). My collection includes the Nokia 5510 (also memorable
| for being one of the first phones with a built-in music player,
| although the memory was laughably small), the Nokia 6822 (I
| think this was the successor of the phone in the tweet - looks
| like quite a few "dads" must have bought one) and the Motorola
| Droid/Milestone.
| blululu wrote:
| Sure, you can sit around Twitter all day whining about how Apple
| won't make your favorite phone or you can get on AliExpress and
| send $20 USD for a brand new Ferrari Phone:
|
| https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802047473717.html?spm=a2g...
| blululu wrote:
| Also comes in flip phone form factor:
| https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832310833680.html?spm=a2g...
|
| Not into cars. That's fine. How about a phone for people who
| really like soda:
| https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255799830362840.html?spm=a2g...
|
| Once you drop the giant screen requirement that all smart
| phones cater to as their design center you can kind of go nuts
| on the ID. A relatively modest amount of NRE will let you spin
| up your own absurd vision into a feature phone. (Though you may
| end of losing a quarter million dollars just for the pure joy
| of having a rotary dial mobile phone with eInk display).
| tobr wrote:
| > How about a phone for people who really like soda:
|
| Just don't get the Ppesi, everyone knows ColaCaco is the
| original. Heinkene is good too, known for their PRLMIUM
| QUIUITY.
| joemi wrote:
| Interestingly, the main pic shows the correct brand names,
| but the individual pics show the modified ones.
| euroderf wrote:
| I worked at a mobile commerce startup in Helsinki in the late 90s
| and I remember seeing some of these in the hands of business
| acquaintances. It just amazes me that Nokia cranked out so many
| oddball designs and that basically they all disappeared without a
| trace. I wonder if any of them actually were seriously studied by
| academics for their UIs.
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| I've got fond memories of trying to order from the Farnel website
| with a Nokia 6800 back in 2006ish... I think via wifi. The entire
| experience was awful and infuriating on a number of levels, but
| it did actually get on with it. Might have been running Opera as
| a java app. Thanks for the post - I've been trying to remember
| what that was and failing to google for a couple of weeks now.
|
| Some of the ire and sarcasm seems undeserved and seems to miss
| the point of some of the handsets - I wonder if the author is old
| enough to remember them first hand in the wild (eg for the k800
| no one downloaded MP3s through their phone, but having a 2gb SD
| card and a USB connection was extremely handy).
|
| Edit: to clarify what I meant; I didn't meant to disparage
| anyone's age. Merely that I remember some of this tech making
| sense in the context of the time, though looking back from today,
| I can see why it wouldn't.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| I have fond memories of the WAP internet. In 2001 in Canada it
| was really expensive to get any kind of data plan, and you
| might only get 5MB per month. I had a plan with no data at all,
| but you could use the WAP browser to access a handful of things
| for free, on the provider's website. It was things like
| weather, very limited news and movie times. One day I was
| messing around in there, and a 404 page had a link to google. I
| bookmarked the link and from that day had unlimited WAP
| internet access (and google had a built-in gateway to WAPify
| any web page). My next phone was not a flip phone, had a real
| (bad browser), and had a prominent web browser button that
| worked from any other screen. However you could only exit the
| browser by navigating menus. It also had a tendency to reset in
| your pocket, which of course turned off the keylock. So at
| least once a day you'd end up pocket-googling and using up your
| precious megabytes.
| yafbum wrote:
| Missing: the Danger Hiptop aka T-Mobile Sidekick, with its
| swivel-up screen revealing a full keyboard in landscape.
|
| https://amp.www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/09/history-of-t...
|
| This thing's software is maybe more interesting than its form
| factor, due to it being a kind of proto-Android stack (Java VM
| equivalent with some amount of build-time bytecode preprocessing
| to accelerate it on devices)
| consp wrote:
| That thing is from 2002, kind of ancient even by side-swipe-
| keyboard phone standards. Only got my first one when HTC
| started offering them on our market around the 2004/2005 time
| (with windows mobile 5, ymmv).
|
| My personal favourite but with shitty keyboard:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Blue_Angel
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| I had one of these in college, and it was awesome. It had AOL
| Instant Messenger built on, and the L/R shoulder buttons would
| let you slide between your conversations. So quick and
| satisfying.
| codethief wrote:
| Its form factor is also reminiscent of the later T-Mobile G1,
| the first Android phone. :)
| jwilk wrote:
| Non-AMP link:
|
| https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/09/history-of-the-s...
| tonywastaken wrote:
| Danger also had a pretty nice App Store model and a nice
| developer and user community in their phpBB forums. The
| carriers that supported the Hiptop also had a hosted web
| interface where you could manage your email, calendar, notes,
| etc.
| yafbum wrote:
| That hosted web interface even got famously hacked by a
| teenager then posted screenshots of Paris Hilton's info
| https://www.computerworld.com/article/2569592/paris-
| hilton-m...
| latchkey wrote:
| I'm friends with a few of the super early Danger employees.
| My buddy and I were trying to use that opportunity to get our
| app into that store. At the time, you kind of needed to know
| someone on the inside to get listed on stores, especially if
| your app wasn't a game or ringtone.
|
| We built a small and simple bartender app that had a UX
| almost exactly like the hiptop address book. You could easily
| look up recipes for drinks and then we'd let you build a
| shopping list. It was a fun exercise that was about a month
| of development time for the both of us. Mostly, it was just
| cleaning up the recipe data and adding a few drinks on our
| own.
|
| It turns out that T-Mobile wouldn't list the app because they
| didn't have the ability to make sure that everyone using the
| app was 21+. We fought with this for months over it and
| eventually gave up. It was a really frustrating experience.
|
| Apple came along with the iPhone and their own store model
| and while people used to complain heavily about it, I kept
| thinking at least it wasn't T-Mobile.
|
| By the way, the VM was the precursor to Dalvik, which
| eventually turned into what is now Android...
|
| https://medium.com/@chrisdesalvo/the-future-that-everyone-
| fo...
| shubhamjain wrote:
| I did some investigation around this. At their peak, Nokia
| launched 46 models a single year [1]. I believe Apple has
| launched somewhere <35 models of iPhone in the fifteen years of
| its existence. Part of the problem was, companies like Nokia
| couldn't conceive thinking that there could be one model that's
| good for everyone. Like music? You need to get a music phone like
| XpressMusic. Business person? Get N97. Low on budget? Get the
| simple 1108. The proliferation of models just spread expertise,
| and marketing dollars, and ended up diluting both. Instead of
| making one awesome phone, you have tons of mediocre models.
|
| The genius of Steve Jobs was in showing that you can have whole
| company focus on making a brilliant device that works for
| everyone. I still don't get why companies are so much focused on
| launching hundreds of different models instead of one and
| leveraging economies of scale.
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/shubhamjainco/status/1406338323531010050
| unconed wrote:
| The genius of Steve Jobs was simply that he had enough taste,
| vision and authority that the company was actually focused on
| delivering _products_.
|
| The state of the average enterprise, like Microsoft and Google,
| is that various business units and departments have devolved
| into cargo culting process to satisfy the petty career needs of
| their managers and workers.
|
| It's not complicated. The people in charge not only do not
| understand product development, but they fundamentally don't
| care and will get uncomfortable if you try to make them care.
| It is far too tall an order, and too much work.
| Puts wrote:
| It's like when you go to the cheap lunch restaurant that have
| 70 items on their menu vs the fine dining place that has a set
| three course menu for the evening. Quantity signals cheapness.
| mhaberl wrote:
| > The genius of Steve Jobs was in showing that you can have
| whole company focus on making a brilliant device that works for
| everyone
|
| No, it doesn't work for everyone.
|
| He showed that there are enough people who can and are willing
| to pay for a premium device. He choose a niche.
|
| Nokia uses a classic price segmentation strategy.
|
| Read more here:
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Yeah, nah. In their lineup much of the models were exactly
| equivalent, only with a different shell, at best camera or
| display.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly - market segmentation was huge and every phone was
| basically "identical" - storage space, processor speed,
| connection speed, even screen size, these things really
| didn't "matter" much yet.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Gotta find myself a niche like that.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| So I am not the only one who thinks their deluge of models was
| ridiculous. To be fair, most of them - for better or for worse
| - had the same guts (they only used a handful of bseband chips
| most probably from TI internally named UPP8M, UPPWD2, UPP2M);
| from service manuals you can tell the most often varied thing
| was the RF section. But still, NRE, tooling and certification
| would cost millions per model. Injection molds would cost
| serveral hundred grand alone.
| bradknowles wrote:
| Samsung squits out like 50+ phone models a year. That's like
| one every week.
|
| How can any of them be any good? How can any of them ever get
| any useful time in the spotlight?
| pc86 wrote:
| You're right, if they had any business sense they'd be making
| more than a piddling $1B/month -
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/26/22902283/samsung-
| earnings...
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I have a cat s61, which has a tiny bump out at the top of the
| standard cellphone rectangle shape for the IR camera. People
| always ask me what it is, because this minute detail stands out
| so much when everything else looks the same.
| abeppu wrote:
| Is there a more general framework for understanding when a sudden
| amount of variation is expected and perhaps rational? The analogy
| is very loose, but this makes me think a bit of the cambrian
| explosion, or periods when a sudden environmental shift is
| followed by a profusion of new species. When a new 'space' is
| opened, it seems like a range of things can try to fill it, until
| one strategy becomes dominant, at least until conditions change?
| bombcar wrote:
| The end result is often called a "local maximum" and what
| you've pointed out happens time and time again.
|
| Cars underwent something similar very early on, but by the time
| we got to the "Model T" era it was pretty much determined what
| they would look like.
| bitwize wrote:
| After the Model T there was still variety in style and design
| building on the basic formula... up until the present day
| when everybody seems to have settled on the same basic bean-
| shaped blob, specialty vehicles such as sports cars and
| pickups excepted. Bigger or smaller beans account for body
| variations from subcompact to crossover, and the name
| Cadillac, which once conjured images of limo-like luxury,
| today means a fancier bean.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Arguably, the Model A is the first modern car, moreso than
| the Model T, which has a lot of quirks that would be
| unrecognizable to today's drivers. For example, it didn't
| even had a throttle pedal, and choosing the gears is done
| through a bizantine system that includes a "reverse pedal".
| In a Model T you get this distinct impression of riding _on
| top_ of the car instead of inside it, and it has many other
| things like this. By comparison, the Model A is remarkably
| similar to the cars of today, except much more primitive of
| course.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Glad to see this comment - the Cambrian explosion analogy was
| the exact one that came to mind for me, and I actually think,
| as you put it, the same dynamics are in play. Lots of different
| approaches are taken until it is clear that, after time, one is
| dominant and the best. I remember when the iPhone first came
| out the whole "tapping on glass" keyboard was highly
| controversial, but it soon won out (and, IMO, especially
| because it allows swipe typing).
|
| As an aside, this comment from the tweet thread is genius: "I
| call this one the Shyamalan because of the unnecessary twist".
| karamanolev wrote:
| My impression is not that swipe typing is the winner, but
| because of configurability of the keyboard (different
| language layouts) and the option to use the screen estate for
| other purposes (e.g. when watching videos). The latter is
| particularly important, as the screen-to-body ratio is
| critical in those devices.
| rospaya wrote:
| Bananas? I call it interesting, brave and fun times. My two year
| old phone can do practically everything that can be done with
| today's flagship, but back then the difference between a year
| would be GPS, 4x storage, megapixel camers, interesting hardware.
| Changes were massive and manufacturers weren't afraid to
| experiment.
| xbar wrote:
| I'd really like to take on a pi hack project on one of those Sony
| Ericsson Walkman phones.
| turtlebits wrote:
| My favorite phone ever is still the Sony Ericsson P800. It had a
| full touchscreen, jog dial and detachable stylus. The number pad
| was just an overlay on the bottom half of the touch screen and
| could be flipped open or removed.
|
| I got so much flak as it cost as much as an iPhone, but in 2003.
|
| https://www.pocket-lint.com/phones/reviews/sony-mobile/67352...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| I had one and thought it was pretty cool - first phone I owned
| that could run an SSH client. I miss the tactile controls (jog
| dial) that compliment touch screens.
| silexia wrote:
| I would love a phone with pre-built grips on it...
|
| I bought a Pixel 6 Pro earlier in the year and the first one
| cracked then turned into a brick, while using the Google case for
| it. My second one cracked in my pocket while using the top Amazon
| case.
|
| I would like a rugged and sturdy phone that won't crack sitting
| in your pocket and is not slick as snot.
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I miss the Nokia N900 form factor (although, larger would have
| been nicer).
|
| It combined touch-screen AND a full keyboard.
| thriftwy wrote:
| It also had stylus and a kickstand! It could broadcast in FM!
| themenomen wrote:
| Some of these in action from Michael Fisher's "When Phones Were
| Fun" playlist:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZi-7V11k8&list=PLwd8abTO4v...
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| I had the Motorola V70 (the one that "PIVOTED") and I loved it!
| https://twitter.com/GerryMcBride/status/1591909798488178688
|
| It was my 2nd to last pre-smartphone era phone, the last being
| the RAZR.
|
| I get that the swiveling piece was unique but I wouldn't put it
| in the same "bananas" categories as some of the other ones
| Izkata wrote:
| > "OK... what if instead of it flipping, it PIVOTED"
|
| Kinda like the LG Wing: https://www.lg.com/global/lgwing
| Findecanor wrote:
| The LG Wing feels like the spiritual successor to the Sharp
| Aquos 912SH, where you flipped and _then_ rotated the top half.
| (mentioned elsewhere while I was trying to remember its name)
| wildzzz wrote:
| The original sidekick is the earliest pivot phone I can think
| of. The Samsung Juke came out several years later but I don't
| think it sold that well because of how tiny it was. I don't
| expect any pivot phones to sell that well. For that LG phone,
| what are you supposed to do with the bottom screen? It's wasted
| on media controls, how often do you need a fully unobstructed
| view of a video while you are pausing or fast forwarding? Games
| make sense, the DS took advantage of a second screen but this
| requires games to develop just for this second screen. Video
| editing makes the most sense as long as there's a video editor
| out there that can take advantage of the second screen but also
| document editing too (but who really wants to do this on a
| phone?).
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| You could stick a keyboard down there, if you're... I dunno,
| running a really wide text processor?
| xnx wrote:
| The Motorola ROKR phone had iTunes:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_ROKR
| Sharlin wrote:
| The Nokia 8110 [1] was literally nicknamed "banana", at least in
| Finland, due to its shape and its being available in yellow.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_8110
| moron4hire wrote:
| Cellular, modular, interactivodular.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I almost bought one of those "lipstick" phones. I figured, if all
| I'm doing is making calls, why _not_ have the smallest phone
| possible? The only thing that really stopped me is that I never
| figured out if it would work on American cell networks.
| https://twitter.com/GerryMcBride/status/1591908903964622848
| awkward wrote:
| Late Nokia phones had this feature where you could enter numbers
| and the phone would autocomplete based on the numeric character
| codes. So 4 [GHI] 3 [DEF] 5 [JKL] would give "Hello" as the first
| option, and so on. It's still the best typing experience I've had
| on a phone.
| [deleted]
| atestu wrote:
| Do you mean T9?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_(predictive_text)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| There are T9 phone keyboards on the Play Store and almost all
| phones (with Apple being the notable exception) also
| incorporate T9 into their dialers.
|
| T9 worked great for words in the dictionary. When your word
| wasn't in the (often limited) dictionary, though...
| aimor wrote:
| This was the one I picked:
| https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/nokia-7705-twist-verizon
|
| Small, had a keyboard, and cost less than $100. Also, the back of
| the top-half was a mirror. Oh, but most important: it felt GOOD
| to swivel out and snap shut.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Nothing beats the Wasp T12 Speechtool!
| arcade79 wrote:
| I just wish we could get some smaller smartphones again. I
| absolutely loved the Nexus One (HTC Passion). Just the right
| size.
| nix0n wrote:
| If you want an absolutely minuscule phone, there's Unihertz:
| https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-pro
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That's my daily-driver phone. I love everything about it
| except the camera.
| smallerfish wrote:
| I don't recommend Unihertz. My Atom XL is riddled with bugs,
| and tech support are useless.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Remember sidetalking? (a Nokia N-Gage meme)
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sidetalking-n-gage
|
| https://www.globalnerdy.com/2022/07/09/sidetalking-makes-a-s...
| evv wrote:
| Even if this thread is fake, for me this is the most memorable
| thing about that phone
|
| https://twitter.com/cooperlund/status/1185243122210656261
| JofArnold wrote:
| And then there's the Nokia Goatse phone
| https://twitter.com/cooperlund/status/1185243122210656261
| agentwiggles wrote:
| I had a Samsung Alias for a while, which was a genuinely cool
| phone. It could flip open either vertically (in the normal RAZR
| style) or it could be flipped open horizontally.
|
| The keypad had e-ink displays in each key, and if you had it open
| vertically, it would display a number pad for dialing. If it was
| open horizontally, you got a full keyboard instead.
|
| I could text faster than all my friends.
|
| I also had a Motorola Hint, which was a neat little device -
| smaller than your average phone at the time, and almost square.
| You could slide out a little keyboard.
|
| Keyboard phones were neat. Bring em back I say!
| RajT88 wrote:
| I miss the days when you had bonkers phones like this. I agree
| with most people that life is a little dull with our iPhone
| clones. It's nice for watching videos (which I don't do too
| much), and less nice for typing (which I do rather more). The E90
| form factor is still my dream phone.
|
| If you think the Nokia phones were nuts, you should dig up stuff
| coming out of Japan 2000-2010, like the Hitachi WOO Ketai H001
| (yes, that's a real name). All kinds of flip/fold/swivel/etc.
| with TV tuners and DVR functionality, digital cameras, music
| players, etc. Sharp Aquos 912SH is another one which comes to
| mind.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think it's kind of sad that we went from "let's see if we can
| add a phone to this" in the 90s/2000s to "lets see if we can
| add this to a phone" in the post-iPhone era.
|
| Given the scarcity of phone connections I suppose it was
| inevitable, but man was it fun for awhile.
| wirthjason wrote:
| Japanese phones get left out of the conversation because these
| topics spin into nostalgia and the Western audience doesn't
| have any experience with them. Likewise the JP discussion
| wouldn't fondly remember all the Nokia variants.
|
| On a side note I have a pet theory that Japanese cell phones
| helped push display technology forward. The English alphabet
| can be displayed very easily with limited pixels but kana and
| kanji cannot so there's less pressure for Western manufacturers
| to innovate displays. For a phone to first be successful in
| Japan it needs a very high resolution display.
| bitwize wrote:
| The same was true of computers. Japanese PCs had high-
| resolution graphics way before American PCs because of the
| need to draw kanji with enough detail. This led to a parallel
| universe of not quite PC compatible standards like the NEC
| PC88 and PC98 lines.
| zumu wrote:
| >Hitachi WOO Ketai H001
|
| I remember that one! The aughts were a truly a golden era in
| Japanese phone design. The technology was also waaay ahead of
| the west. We're just now starting to actually use the QR code
| thing, which was everywhere in like 2005. And 1seg? That was
| really fun tech. TV on my morning commute was truly like living
| in the future.
|
| For iconic phones, though, I was always a big fan of the au
| Design phones like the infobar (2003) and Design Skin. The
| color schemes are legendary.
| raynr wrote:
| I thought the list was missing Japanese phones too! I went on
| holiday to Japan in the early 00s, and I remember thinking how
| all of the phones were way ahead of their time. Phones with
| flip-and-swivel screens, phones that looked sleek, metallic,
| sexy and modern, phones with full colour displays that were not
| some Palm monstrosity, phones that didn't look like phones and
| instead looked like some leather-and-metal accessory (only took
| calls), so many cool phones! I wanted them so bad.
|
| I wonder why they never became popular overseas. The iPhone,
| sure, but there was a whole period before the iPhone where
| Japanese phones were way ahead of their time.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| No interest in marketing them overseas.
|
| There was also the not insignificant cost of completely re-
| engineering the RF frontend and radios. As back then (an
| partly still) Japan used cellular bands and technologies that
| ware completely different from other countries.
|
| It kept the competition out, but also made it hard for them
| to compete abroad. And then iPhone happened and many of those
| manufacturers are no longer in the biz.
| babypuncher wrote:
| We all like crazy designs like these because they are a
| breeding ground for innovation. However they tend to flop
| unless one of their innovations proves truly revolutionary.
|
| Early personal computers and even laptops had interesting and
| varied designs before everyone coalesced around the optimal
| desktop, tower, and notebook designs.
|
| A big part of the problem is software. If a phone maker puts
| out a truly unique form factor today, they are stuck in a
| situation where most existing software was built assuming the
| user is on a giant rectangle.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| I actually had the Nokia 7600 pictured at the top of the thread.
| It's often ridiculed, but I don't know anyone else who had one
| who can fairly pass judgement. It had genuinely good ergonomics -
| not disimilar to the fancy split keyboard philosophy. Each thumb
| had clear acces to specific buttons and the distance between them
| was maximised, easing strain on the wrists. In the era of T9, it
| was great. It was also hand friendly for phonecalls - remember
| them?
|
| In response to sibling comment, comparing it to the iPhone is
| silly. The iPhone OS 1 was half a decade away when th 7600 was
| launched and started at $499. This was a cheap, fun phone using
| well trodden software on a budget. Nokia dominated the market and
| market segmentation is a natural strategy in that situation -
| especially before touchscreens allowed
| customisation/personalisation in software.
| pavlov wrote:
| I had the 7600 too, and enjoyed the "lemon" form factor!
|
| But it certainly wasn't a cheap phone when it launched. The
| typical Nokia cost around $150. This was the high-end model of
| Nokia's feature phone range, and they highlighted it in ads
| with fashion brands. (The fashion touch was a leather strap you
| could attach to the lemon phone's corner.)
|
| The 7600 did include technical innovation: it was the first
| Nokia model ever to include 3G, and IIRC it was also the first
| European phone to shoot video (stamp-sized 144p clips).
| alex_c wrote:
| Somewhat related - I feel like we're in the middle of a general
| trend of boring, monochrome design.
|
| Car colors come to mind:
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/news/37001/this-graph-shows-how-car...
|
| Winter is coming - that means a sea of black, dark blue, or dark
| brown winter coats everywhere.
|
| Or the trends towards same-looking logos that have been discussed
| here before:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32040506
|
| I guess all trends are cyclical, so looking forward to an
| explosion in colour in another 5-10 years!
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| I sort of miss when tiny phones were a thing. I had (and still
| have somewhere) a Nokia 8260, and that thing was absolutely
| minuscule.
|
| https://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=65
| webdoodle wrote:
| I had the first edition Compaq Ipaq pocket pc phone, running on
| windows. It had a dedicated keyboard and built in 28.8k modem. It
| was the first 'smart' phone, in that I could somewhat browse the
| web, but it was mostly useful for email.
|
| The modem also functioned as a fax, so I could send and receive
| faxes, though not all that practical. It didn't have a camera,
| and was nearly as big as a brick, but it was the first portable,
| internet connected device that was small enough to carry. Came
| with a stylus thing to function like a mouse, sort of. It only
| got about a days use before needed a recharge.
|
| Google didn't exist at the time, but Lycos did. I smuggled my
| brand new phone into a local pub triva night, and with all my new
| tech powers, ensured our team won that night. $20 of beer was our
| prize, and the concept of smartphone was firmly embedded in
| culture.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I had a coworker that had one of those, while I had only an
| IPaq PDA. They were roughly the same size, with the phone being
| slightly thicker and also an antenna nub on the top.
|
| I found my IPaq while moving a month ago. The footprint is
| significantly smaller than my Google Pixel 6. Though the Pixel
| is significantly thinner, I find that also makes it more
| uncomfortable to hold. Like, imagine taking it to an extreme
| and the phone becomes as thin as a piece of glass. Even without
| sharp edges, it'd still be very uncomfortable to wrap your hand
| around such a thing.
|
| I don't understand the obsession with thinner and thinner
| phones. Thickness is not universally bad. It would at least
| give us more room for battery.
|
| There aren't any other, similarly-sized objects that I wrap my
| hand around completely. Small books, digital cameras, handheld
| game consoles, I hold gripping the edge of the device. But you
| can't do that with a smartphone because one of the two largest
| faces of the rectangular solid is reactive to any part of your
| skin.
|
| My laptop touchpad can tell when I wrest my wrist on it while
| typing on the keyboard versus just touching it with my
| fingertips. Why can't smartphones reject grabbing the side of
| the screen and only react to fingertip touches?
| theriddlr wrote:
| This! Candybar phones have more secure grip and room for
| battery. The iPhone 4 while heavier is more comfortable to
| hold than the iPhone 6 / SE3 which I now use.
| agilob wrote:
| An alternative is that every single phone looks the same. Black
| or grey square case with a touch screen. There's literally
| nothing to design or make interesting, just every second model
| change rounded corners to sharp corners and call it "new design".
| theriddlr wrote:
| Second-hand phone shops now show the back of the phone in the
| display case because they all look the same from the front.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Well when companies try do something different - like a notch -
| they get shit on these days
| Antrikshy wrote:
| Hardware may be less interesting, but the software is way more
| dynamic than ever.
| agilob wrote:
| Yes, when opening Google Play I'm presented with Games, Apps
| and Books. Games are designed by psychologists to keep us
| engaged with unnatural colours, actions and injecting
| ourselves with dopamine every 30 seconds, and apps? Apps also
| contains games, but also sponsored content, like I don't
| remember for how long Disney+ ad was there... since April at
| least. Very interesting. The other software? All my installed
| apps have updates about at least twice per month, but I never
| notice anything changing. Bugs aren't fixed, performance
| isn't improved, but now my banking app can access my
| location. Old phones had no "dynamic software" updates,
| everything worked and never needed updates or upgrades,
| unless.
|
| We have throwaway hardware that looks the same, made with
| throwaway software where updates make no difference. We have
| fewer choices now. It's just Android vs iPhone, both look the
| same and copy each other design and functionality, both in
| hardware and software. We had games that were hard and
| required some planning on paper and hardware that was
| interesting and unique.
| yafbum wrote:
| Missing: the luxury-focused Vertu line, like:
|
| https://luxatic.com/boucheron-helped-create-the-360k-vertu-s...
| pwinnski wrote:
| @dang can we update the link to
| https://twitter.com/GerryMcBride/status/1591907714208518145
| please?
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| causality0 wrote:
| I wish phone makers weren't all designing down to the lowest
| common denominator. You can spend a thousand dollars on a "gaming
| phone" but you haven't been able to buy a phone with actual
| buttons for playing games in eleven damn years because god forbid
| anybody diverge from the "glass monolith" design.
| Izkata wrote:
| > because god forbid anybody diverge from the "glass monolith"
| design.
|
| A few years ago my building's elevators were breaking down and
| had to be completely replaced. The new ones have a touchscreen
| that only ever displays the floor numbers, and real buttons
| that only go up to 9 (in a grid like a phone) where you have to
| hit two of them to go to floors 10+.
| bombcar wrote:
| I feel for you - those buttons will stop working very well
| quite soon and trying to enter "12" will get you 1, 2, and
| finally 12.
|
| Check every elevator carefully, ADA regulations sometimes
| require at least ONE elevator in the building to have real
| buttons (for the blind, for example).
| SnooSux wrote:
| Sounds like the buttons are all real, there are just only
| 10 of them.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| This was the same setup in a condo tower I used to live
| in. Touchscreen grid of floor numbers and a keypad (with
| Braille) at ADA wheelchair height.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, which could be really annoying for someone who has
| a challenge pressing two buttons fast enough to trigger.
|
| A hotel I stayed at had touchscreen "requests" for
| elevators (you put in your floor and it would call a
| elevator for you) and it was super annoying (trying to
| get floor 12 would doublebounce on 1 and 2 so you'd often
| get 11 and 22 before getting 12) until I found a pedestal
| out of the way that had real buttons for all floors.
|
| The "hold your keycard up against the thing" is also
| really annoying when it is 5 feet off the ground; imaging
| having to wait for an elevator until someone comes along
| who can hold your card up there for you.
| 10000truths wrote:
| > Yeah, which could be really annoying for someone who
| has a challenge pressing two buttons fast enough to
| trigger.
|
| Sounds like that can easily be fixed with enter and
| backspace buttons.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| It can be fixed even more easily by using normal elevator
| buttons.
| bombcar wrote:
| Now you get to buy weird "gaming cases" and who knows how bulky
| those are, and if they even work (random obvious SEO link
| thing: https://www.imore.com/best-gaming-cases-iphone-13-pro )
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The physical buttons get in the way of day-to-day use. That's
| why brands like Asus and Razer design phones that are shipped
| with special cases containing things like joysticks, trigger,
| and other physical buttons (using USB-C ports or Bluetooth for
| transmissing buttons). Others still experiment. The ROG Phone 2
| came with distance sensors on the side to function as analogue
| triggers.
|
| Phones with buttons have been tried and failed. Same with using
| your phone's processor for a desktop environment by simply
| plugging it into a dock; Samsung's DeX comes closest, but very
| few people seem to use it.
|
| In practice, the easiest way to combine phones and games is to
| either stick with the touch screen interaction all games are
| designed for, or to grab a Bluetooth controller. Works across
| many games, almost all phones, and you have a pick in the hand
| feel or button quality rather than being limited by the design
| choices of the phone designer.
|
| If you're into playing games on the go, tools like the Steam
| Deck or one of the more recent cloud streaming handhelds are
| probably better.
| leereeves wrote:
| Perhaps Valve could add a phone to the Steam Deck.
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