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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

#111

Post by eternityforest »

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".

As well they should, because making them look more interesting would be a waste of effort, and in some cases a waste of money like glass backs.

What matters is the rugged case selection, but unfortunately they don't seem to focus on that as much as they could.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#112

Post by goosedragons »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #106
unconed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

The genius of Steve Jobs/Apple was recognizing that phones should become computers. And that people would be willing to sacrifice battery life for that to happen. It’s really that simple. People keep forgetting but the iPhone wasn’t the first Apple designed phone. The Motorola Rokr was. And it was a failure because it was an Apple designed Phone. The iPhone, OTOH, was a computer in your pocket, of which one function…

I don't think Apple really designed the Rokr. It was a Motorola E398 with a terrible version of "iTunes" and a horrible 100 song limit as to not cut into the sales of the iPod.

Phones as computers was already out there as an idea and Handspring and others had been trying to make it work.

The iPhone was more limited as a computer than a competing Palm OS or Windows Mobile device but it was more slick and in some ways polished (although lacking in others). And of course they still had the bulk of then DRM locked digital music/video sales they could leverage to make it appeal to consumers.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#114

Post by pipeline_peak »

I miss when phones were ambitiously diverse. It never felt like all the flipping, flopping, and twisting ever solved anything, but it was exciting.

In 2007, Apple perfected the smartphone, thus killing off anything with a pen or a handle bar.

I can’t say I miss 1000 different incompatible Java powered tamagotchi looking things having their own calculator, calendar, browser etc. But in solving that, resulting in these 5 inch black slabs, there’s really nothing to talk about these days in the phone world.

Oh wow faster, bigger storage, sharper camera woop de do!

That just means we need to put that creativity somewhere else.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#115

Post by fomine3 »

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,…

More crazier models: F-04B, F-07C

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#116

Post by matthewdgreen »

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…

Because the user interface was a godawful nightmare. Looked like a fish, built like a fish, usability of a pig.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#117

Post by philwelch »

Sharlin wrote: post #47

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

It was used in The Matrix with a spring-load mechanism because, IIRC, the Wachowskis thought it would be cool if the phone worked like the slide release on a handgun. For the sequels, they managed to convince Samsung to design a phone with a similar spring-loaded mechanism that you could actually buy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SPH-N270

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#118

Post by tomcam »

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…

You nailed it. This had to happen. As phones got smarter, no one knew how to optimize the UI for so many new features. Everyone knew that a certain form factor would win out eventually, but no one knew what it was. Everyone knew that whoever got it right first might dominate the market. The only logical thing was to iterate constantly, and blindly. Much the same thing happened with the personal computer market from the late 70s until the mid 90s or so.

Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

#119

Post by Hamuko »

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...

Officially licensed, I presume?
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