Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “When Phones Were Fun: The QWERTY Phones (2001-2008)”.
The year is 2008. I’ve just graduated from college in Virginia. And before I ship off to Boston. The bar I’ve hung out at for seven years gives me this bowling shirt as a graduation, gift. Still fits.. More importantly, Reuters reports that same year that Americans have just crossed a milestone. For the first time, they’re sending more text messages than phone calls.. Some are still laboriously tapping them out on numeric keypads., The others are texting more easily, but more expensively on blackberries and Palm trios, and right in between manufacturers see an opportunity. What if they could cram a full keyboard into a phone without packing in all the complexity And cost of making a smart phone, I’m Michael Fisher. Join me for a look back at a category.
That’S a lot more fun than it sounds., Let’s revisit the messaging phones. ( upbeat music ), As my European friends are no doubt already saying in the comments yes.. We Americans were very late to the texting boom.
As far back as 2001 Nokia had figured out how to cram a full keyboard into a dumb phone at the low low cost of well being the subject of a Bubba Sparxx video. Yeah, the 5510 isn’t like the Phalanx of finished phones, I featured in my last Nokia video., Most of which looked like the product of a weekend, eating fun fun guy.. While this general design would eventually evolve into useful and even beloved weirdos like the 3300 and the N.GAGE.
At this stage, it was just a bunch of tiny keys dumped onto either side of a monochrome LCD lifted right from the Nokia 3310., But the durability that made that phone legendary isn’t anywhere to be found. Here.. The creeks of this casing are just as loud as the clacks from the deeply unsatisfying keys. ( phone clacking ) And according to reviews, at the time the backplate was notoriously easy to crack.. Also, the phone wasn’t just focused on messaging. Check out the hard key shortcuts to the FM radio and MP3 player down here.
And you’ll see. It was also one of the first music phones. Interactive CD ROM, With 64 megabytes of onboard storage for your MP3s..
Given those features, maybe this price tag of 500 Euro or nearly $ 800 adjusted for inflation makes sense.. I know my Samsung 3500 didn’t have these features in 2001, still coyote ugly man., Let’s move on.. Now this is the kind of communicator that gets you a commendation for original thinking. JerryRigEverything called 2002’s Nokia, 6800, the coolest phone he ever owned. And it’s easy to see. Why.
Cell phone in the streets text her in the sheets. By 2004. The concept had matured into this Nokia 6820, an absolutely tiny phone compared to its predecessor, but just like that forerunner, it crammed a full Qwerty keyboard into that compact casing by hiding it with a hinge..
Now these keys are still kind of cramped by today’s standards, with poor travel and only moderate feedback, but they were a huge improvement over the original. Also, while the 6800’s design made me feel pretty smart because I could see the gold contacts that would tell the software When the keyboard was stowed or deployed., The 6820’s approach of building that switch into the hinge itself is much cleaner. Sure the display was a postage stamp and the camera wasn’t great, given the kind of phones that would hit the scene just a year later, but with A concept this innovative and execution this tight – I can’t help but adore the 6820..
Don’T agree: Hey ya! It’S my life.! You can leave or get out. That enough period song references for ya, (, hip hop, beat ), Okay, then., Let’s slide on over, to the form factor that would come to define messaging phones, at least in the US., So the LG Rumor is probably the least interesting Phone in this article., I probably wouldn’t – have even included it if it weren’t for the fact that I owned it. And it’s the reason I made a Facebook account.. So thanks for that, I guess.
See in 2007, even though Facebook was the new social spot. My stubborn self was still clinging to the carcass of Myspace talking to Tom. Until I bought this phone and discovered that one of the preloaded Java apps was Facebook. So I joined, and you know until everyone’s racist old relatives showed up.
It was a pretty cool place to be., But anyway it wasn’t the apps that kept me on the LG Rumor. Nor was it the durability coz. I broke it very easily.. It was how competently it executed its core function of making messaging easier.
The numerics click, the slider snaps, the QWERTY clacks.. I’Ve never used a dumb phone before or since with a keyboard. This satisfying.
That’s a sentiment apparently shared by the former owner of this phone Megan, who loves Harry Potter.. Also. I hope you got that social studies homework done Emily..
Mr. Feeney is a tough one. Yeah. I had to get this fun from eBay in this US cellular trend, because my Sprint model is long gone., But thanks to its micro, SD slot, the photos from my old Rumor remain in my archive., As you can see by 2007 standards. This was a pretty okay. 1.3 megapixel camera and it made up for its lack of flash with color filters of dubious usefulness..
It was never my first choice of shooter at the time, but I’m glad I had it with me to snap this shot of my director Conrad grinding this sword. For a production of Rashomon. Actual real talk, we lost Conrad earlier this year., So I’m happy. I was able to snap these at the time..
The best camera is the one you’ve got on you after all. Now. Slider is all well and good, but when you think about it, wouldn’t two sliders be better Enter the matrix.. No, not that one.! No, not that one either.. This matrix is from Pantech.. Oh and this particular phone is on loan from Avi Greengart president and lead analyst at Techspotential.
Who’S also been kind enough to lend me a lot of other artifacts for this series. Seriously stay tuned anyway, Anyway, just like the company’s Helio Ocean and Pantech Duo, the Matrix stacks two sliders, one atop, the other., So your numeric keypad pops out in portrait and the Qwerty slides out in landscape. Now this does make it a big ice cream sandwich of a phone., While the Matrix was faster than the Rumor. Thanks to its 3G connection, the rumor was easier to use one handed because the num pad was just always exposed., But the real bummer on the Matrix was the lack of space for the keys to depress., Plus there’s no room above the top key rows.
Here. Thumbs were always bumping up against the bottom of the screen., And the whole thing suffers from a combo common to the era.. A glossy gel coat surface without hollow plastic void, beneath., Not exactly a pocket full of sunshine.. All right, I admit.. I rushed through that one, so we could get to our final device., My personal favorite, certainly but also one of the best sequels in mobile phone history. Samsung’s, Alias phones, were kind of like the clam shell version of the Pantech Matrix.
Open the hinge one way, and It’S a phone open, it the other way and it’s a texting machine.. Now this is the Alias 2 of 2008. Yeah. It brought some speck bumps and it potted over some features from the first one..
Alright, let’s stop and talk about this.. If you remember Microsoft, Bob this is very similar where the idea is to make software less intimidating if it’s presented in the context of something familiar.. So you get this dorm room home screen with all your menu items laid out in a kind of skew amorphism writ large.. It’S not something I could live with today, but back in 2008.
If I were a Verizon customer, I’d have a lapped up whatever dumb UI. They were dishing out in exchange for this ultimate gadget of a keyboard., See instead of just painting a bunch of numbers and letters on the keys like the first Alias the Alias 2 made each of these rubber buttons transparent, and it’s stuck a tiny yank screen under Each one. That meant they wouldn’t just change function when you switched, which mode you were using they’d, also change appearance., So in messaging mode, you’d get a full QWERTY keyboard, complete with arrow keys and in phone mode. You had way more buttons than you needed.. So, in addition to the usual numerics and t-pads, Samsung gave you shortcuts to messaging camera Bluetooth. The alarm clock tons of stuff. E-Ink is the same display tech that makes things like the Amazon Kindle possible..
It only uses power when it changes state.. So it’s just perfect for this application.. Now the downside is it’s tricky to use, because all the keys have to be the same size and there’s no way to feel out a difference between them.. But the combination of the comfy gummy finish reminiscent of the Palm Centro and the sheer geeky gadgety goodness makes it impossible for me to really criticize.. In fact, I coveted this phone so much that back in the days when Blackberry press events were still a thing.
I used to hound Blackberry executives to build a key three with an Alias style keypad with Owlette instead of E-Ink, you know, so they could change function or language on the fly or even do some rainbow back lighting like laser keyboards. That never happened of course. And The Alias 2 fell victim to the same market forces that ultimately killed every other interesting dumb phone. The rise of the unremarkable slab smartphone..
So, even though the products featured in this episode of when phones were fun had more than their share of shortfalls, and we wouldn’t really want to own any of them today, we can at least take a page from Fallout Boy and say thanks for the memories, even Though they weren’t so great., Thanks again to my friend, Avi Greengart, who’s been covering tech, even before phones were fun. Check out his free research reports on the mobile landscape at Techsponential in the description., Thanks also to friend of the channel Martin for providing the Nokia devices. Seen in this article and my when Nokia went crazy, episode. And if you’re wondering where the Motorola flip out and LG Voyager and other messaging phones, I teased in the last episode are well be sure to subscribe to the MrMobile on YouTube.
Because this is not the last messaging phones episode, I will produce. Until next time, thanks for watching. And if you can’t stay home, then at least stay safe and wear a mask. While you stay mobile, my friends .