Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “James Bond’s Last “Gadget” Phone: When Phones Were Fun (2006)”.
That modern smartphone, you love so much turns out it had a license to kill, to which the blood of many an erstwhile everyday accessory can testify. The point-and-shoot digital camera. I took from high school to college dead, the tomtom gps’s, adorning the dashboards of road trip. Minivans for half a decade, terminated geez, even the humble wristwatch has taken a beating under the brutal onslaught of the ubiquitous smartphone. So it’s ironic that the movie that rebooted the james bond franchise with a new double 07, who would carry us through the next 15 years, was also the last film to give bond a mobile phone.
That could still be considered a gadget in the best traditions of the franchise. The year is 2006., the film is casino royale, and that gadget is the sony ericsson k800i. This device comes to me from friend of the channel thomas who wrote in a while back to offer not just the phone but the original promotional packaging. It came in it’s a little worse for wear, as many boxes from this period were the second, you opened them pretty much, but it’s nice to have the original cables, interactive, cd-rom and, more importantly, this special edition bond branded box with daniel craig’s face glowering at a Much higher apparent resolution than the phone’s actual 240×320 display could ever produce now.
The james bond franchise has never been shy about product placement and this one really worked on me. I distinctly recall coming home to my virginia apartment after seeing casino royale in november 2006, immediately hopping online and diving into a buzzing thread on howard forums, all about how the movie was quote. One big sony, ericsson, commercial and my american audience may not be familiar with that particular compound brand name, and you know that’s a shame. For 10 years the combined forces of the japanese electronics giant and the swedish telecom pioneer delivered some of the most remarkable mobile phones. The world had yet seen from the tiny t68, with one of the first color screens on a western mobile phone to the futuristic xperia pureness i covered in a previous episode. Sony ericsson was nothing if not distinctive. In a time before, there was an ipod in every pocket, the company blended, eye-catching design, with nostalgia to sell its walkman branded mp3, focused phones, and, while i was still struggling to convince myself that photos from my 1.3 megapixel fixed focus, nextel were good enough.
Sony’S imaging expertise and ericsson’s software were coming together to create cybershot phones like the k800i even 15 years later, it’s impressive to me that anyone could cram into this tiny chassis, a 3.2 megapixel camera with the accoutrement that up until this point were limited to real digital Cameras like true autofocus, a focus, assist light and a real xenon flash. Instead of an led complementing that hardware were some features. Manufacturers are still trying to pass off as new today, like the intelligent, best shot, burst mode and a macro setting my sister site tech radar. Didn’T like the sliding lens cover at the time, pointing out its flimsy feel and the thickness it added to the design solid points, but i actually think it makes sense. Not only does it call attention to the halo feature and protect the lens which, like all phone cameras of the time, was covered in soft plastic. It serves as a shortcut to activate the camera, which you can do by feel. As you take the phone out of a pocket, that’s a needed time saver, given how sluggish the camera app can be, and it also adds a splash of panache to a phone that, from most angles, kind of came off as a blunt instrument. Now i shot some photo samples in and around my apartment with the k800i, but with the looming specter of winter. On the horizon, i feel the itch to get out on the town more and more these days. While i still have some sun and as luck would have it, there’s a james bond exhibit currently in residence at spyscape the new york spy museum. So i thought what better venue to put this 15 year old photophone in context now, obviously anytime, you take a phone camera from 2006 and put it up against a modern phone. It’S not going to be pretty for the vintage gear, and that holds true here against my samsung galaxy z. Flip 3. The k800i’s photos in the low light of the museum were mostly grainy, washed out and often appearing shaken, but the important thing is how it fared against its contemporaries, like that motorola i870, i bought not too long before the bond phone came out. Take a look at that comparison, and it’s plain as day why sony’s, cybershot phones captured so much attention, basically everything i captured with the k800i blows the i870 out of the water. The only place the bond phone fell down was where every phone of the time did in video and for those who say there’s more to a phone than its camera, even in 2006, not to worry, there’s more to plumb from the past right after this don’t know What you’re doing when it comes to investing? I know the feeling so make my sponsor do it. Instead, this video is sponsored by wealthfront. Personally, i’ve always been a traditional savings account kind of guy, but investing means your money has the potential to grow more quickly than it could in a savings account if there’s a secret to doing that. Well, it’s having a diverse portfolio and, if you’re already scrambling for the fast forward button, because that sounds intimidating, don’t worry, wealthfront makes investing easy. Take a look at this demo wealthfront build to show you what their clients are experiencing.
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So if you’ve wanted to invest for a while, but weren’t sure where to go visit, invest.wealthfront.com mr mobile and thanks to wealthfront for sponsoring this video to finish putting this particular bond phone in context, you have to understand the mobile tech landscape of 2006 in the u.s And to do that, let me introduce you to my college friend rob wilson. Not only did he play the macduff to my macbeth in that season’s production of the same name at old dominion, university rob was almost as preoccupied with pocket tech. As me, his samsung a800 was the first 2 megapixel camera phone in the us and when i wasn’t pushing to talk with my nextel, i was dipping my toe into the smartphone world with the sidekick which i covered in a previous episode of the series, and yet Up on the screen, bonds phone brought features, neither of us had at the time the k800i packed a vga front-facing camera for the video calls that i wouldn’t experience until 2010. It had an ir port, an fm tuner, a pretty sweet, mini golf game and a dedicated shortcut key.
You could program with whatever menu options you wanted and the user interface, while the film’s production probably did super in some screens for clarity, nothing about its fluidity needed faking. Other cutscenes made me thankful for features. I already had i’d been using turn-by-turn navigation on my phone for years, thanks to a service called telenav, the company behind which is still around today. While i couldn’t remote detonate, keychain bombs with my phone, i could use animated wallpapers to at least feel more like a spy.
While i went about my more conventional day and, let’s not forget all the things we should be happy to be free of from this era. Sony’S, proprietary charging and headphone port its proprietary memory, stick format. Speaking of sticks, this joystick wasn’t as comfortable or as durable as a good old, reliable d-pad would have been.
The case is soft plastic. So when you get up close to it, you can see it’s about. As beat to hell as most of bonds, aston martins get by the end of the newer films and in a brutal reminder of how pernicious and petty pre-loaded ip licensing could be in the mid-aughts the moment i switched away from the james bond themes on this phone. It locked me out of them and told me i needed to go online to re-authenticate, i’m afraid not london, barcelona, shanghai, i’m happy to say, they’re, not just destinations and bond films for me anymore.
In the years since rob wilson talked me into seeing casino royale. I’Ve had the privilege of visiting all these places, a byproduct of a career built on traveling the world to show you gadgets like these. Meanwhile, rob’s gone on to a successful tv career with principal roles and shows like fox’s the big leap which you should watch somewhere in the midst of all that sony and erickson parted ways: the former keeping itself busy making movies tvs and the cameras. I shoot every one of these videos on the latter ditching its handset business in favor of the network infrastructure, without which those handsets would be useless, but in 2006 this phone. This film was the moment when the dividing line between gadgets as fantasy and gadgets as everyday reality finally started to blur in a very satisfying way.
Product placement has continued in the bond film since, of course, as nokia re-enters the bond universe that daniel craig is now departing, but nothing in any of those films has captured my imagination quite like the k800i. The bond phone from a time when cybers shot first bonds were blonde and phones were fun. Thanks again to thomas for sending this device over and yes folks, i tried my best to get vesper lynn’s phone from the same film sony, ericsson, m600i, but sadly, those have turned out to be pretty rare. The best i can promise you is i’ll cover a phone vaguely similar to it when i finally get around to producing my blackberry pearl episode. Once i buy one of those please subscribe, so you don’t miss that and as always, no manufacturer or carrier had any editorial input, copy approval rights or early preview of this video until next time. Thanks for watching and stay mobile, my friends, you .