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There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

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Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#71

Post by raynr »

RajT88 wrote: post #9

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,…

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.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#73

Post by bitwize »

wirthjason wrote: post #34
RajT88 wrote: post #9

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,…

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…

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.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#74

Post by bitwize »

bombcar wrote: post #35
abeppu wrote: post #23

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…

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.

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.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#75

Post by moron4hire »

webdoodle wrote: post #66

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 po…

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?

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#76

Post by zumu »

RajT88 wrote: post #9

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,…

>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.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#78

Post by Antrikshy »

agilob wrote: post #4

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".

Hardware may be less interesting, but the software is way more dynamic than ever.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#79

Post by tobr »

blululu wrote: post #59
blululu wrote: post #55

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...

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…

> 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.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#80

Post by RF_Savage »

raynr wrote: post #71
RajT88 wrote: post #9

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,…

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 acce…

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.

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