There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
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Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#2I'd really like to take on a pi hack project on one of those Sony Ericsson Walkman phones.
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#3> "OK... what if instead of it flipping, it PIVOTED"
Kinda like the LG Wing: https://www.lg.com/global/lgwing
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#4An 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".
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#5I 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.
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#6Actually, 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!
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#7I did some investigation around this. At their peak, Nokia launched 46 models a single year [1]. I believe Apple has launched somewhere 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
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#8I miss the Nokia N900 form factor (although, larger would have been nicer).
It combined touch-screen AND a full keyboard.
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#9I 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.
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#10I did some investigation around this. At their peak, Nokia launched 46 models a single year [1]. I believe Apple has launched somewhere 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]: htt…
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?