Cellphones and Smartphones That No Longer Exist

Released exclusively through Sprint, the HTC Evo 4G was considered one of the best Android devices when it was released and was the first smartphone in the U.S. to use the faster 4G cellular network. But the Evo was limited by Sprint’s network and, to make matters worse, Sprint charged users a $10 a month fee for access to the network even if users lived outside of 4G markets. The Evo offered a mobile hotspot for up to 80 devices and an eight-megapixel camera, but its battery drained quickly and the smartphone didn’t support voice-activated dialing.

Released two years after the T-Mobile G1, the first-ever Android phone, the HTC Google Nexus One was a better advocate for Google’s now-popular operating system. It was praised for its fast Snapdragon processor, bright display and responsive voice command features. Critics derided the music player and limited app storage capability. The first of Google’s Nexus smartphones showed that Android could go head-to-head with Apple’s iOS.

Praised for its high quality photo and video, the Nokia N8 was a solid entrant into the smartphone market when it was released. It was criticized for its high price and sluggish Symbian operating system, but received high marks for other features, including an intuitive interface, bright display, solid construction, and improved multimedia capabilities compared to previous Nokia smartphones.

Not to be outdone by the rise of touchscreens and digital media playing ability, Motorola released the first Droid in 2009 helping to popularize the use of the Android operating system. The slider style phone had a QWERTY keyboard nestled behind the touch screen when not in use. It was praised for multimedia capabilities and high call quality. But amid the rise in high-concept design spurred by Apple, the design of the original Droid lacked inspiration.

Like the original Apple iPhone, Samsung’s first Galaxy received tepid reviews that suggest both Apple and Samsung may have released smartphones that weren’t quite ready for prime time. Subsequent models of both would later become the world’s most popular smartphones, leading to a sometimes-caustic smartphone arms race between Samsung and Apple. The i7500 was praised for its OLED screen and lambasted for its low battery life.

Nokia came late to the party of touchscreens and digital music players, but when it arrived it didn’t disappoint. The 5800 may not have been a bestseller, but it received high marks from reviewers for its highly responsive touchscreen and intuitive operating system. The smartphone came with an 8 gigabytes microSD card, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a microUSB slot.

If you include the variants, Apple has released 21 versions of the iPhone over the past 12 years. Considering these rapid-fire releases it can be easy to forget that children born the year the original iPhone was released aren’t yet old enough to be in high school. It’s also easy to forget the original iPhone, though heralded for its groundbreaking design and interface, lacked many features that were already available in comparable cell phones at the time. Its memory storage was stingy, too, and critics derided the call quality. The iPhone has come a long way since then.

The N95 came out the same year as the first generation Apple iPhone and in many ways it was a superior device, selling 7 million units in the first year alone and lasting until 2010. It was praised for its leading edge functionality, 5-megapixel camera with built-in flash, photo-editing capabilities and video-recording. It was also one of the first phones to offer GPS and came with an ample 8 gigabytes of memory storage. In terms of technical specs and features, the N95 blew away the first iPhone.

The K800i was praised for the quality of its 3.2-megapixel camera (this is Sony, after all) with a built-in flash and its bright multi-color display screen. The K800i added 3G connectivity that was absent in preceding models. Though bulky, feeling more like a small digital camera than a mobile phone, it had a solid feel and sophisticated user-friendly design, including a tiny joystick that gave it Blackberry-like navigation.

Research in Motion’s BlackBerry shifted into the “candy bar style” devices with the Pearl 8100. Unlike other BlackBerry models, the Pearl 8100 (and some subsequent models) had a more compact QWERTY keyboard and was the smallest BlackBerry device at the time. The device derives its name from the pearl-shaped trackball that replaced the less precise track wheel found on previous BlackBerrys.

When it debuted, the original Razr (the V3) became an immediate hit with the thinnest profile of any foldable phone. Like the Motorola StarTAC, the Razr’s unique design made it a fashionable must-have digital accessory. Motorola would go on to make many versions of the Razr, such as the V9 of 2007 with music player functionality built into the external screen. Motorola is working on an updated version of the original Razr featuring a foldable screen and a hefty $1,500 price tag.

The Palm Treo 600 was large by mobile phone standards but was considered the smallest personal digital assistant at the time to include a camera, a QWERTY keyboard, and cell phone and email/texting capabilities. In hand, the Treo 600 felt more like a mobile phone than previous Palm devices. The Treo 600 included an expanded memory slot of up to 2 gigabytes to add to the internal 32 megabytes.

The early 2000s marked the era of the clamshell phone, and the Samsung SGH-E700 is a good example of a no-frills foldable phone. The SGH-E700 was Samsung’s first phone that didn’t need an external antenna poking out from the top of the device. The E700 had an external low-resolution OLED screen and could take snapshots at 640×480 pixels, a standard size at the time. Though there was nothing spectacular about the E700, its low price and good-enough features led to sales of more than 10 million units.

Research in Motion’s BlackBerry 6710 wasn’t the first of the series of mobile devices with integrated QWERTY keyboards that became popular with business executives and politicians due to their emphasis on secure communications. The 6710 is slimmer and sleeker than the 5810, the business-oriented version that required a headset to make calls, and it became the blueprint for later, more powerful versions.

The Sanyo SCP-5300 was the first mobile phone to appear in the U.S. market with a built-in camera, which took small 0.3 megapixel images at 640×480 pixels. By today’s standards, the photos were low quality, but at the time it was revolutionary to be able to take and send snapshots. The camera, which came with simple digital editing features and a small flash, worked when the chunky clamshell phone was open or closed, allowing users to take selfies before “selfie” became a popular term.

Billed as the BlackBerry for the masses (and popular with teenagers), the T-Mobile Sidekick is the branded version of a device made by Danger Research Inc., a Silicon Valley company founded by three former Apple employees who wanted to build an affordable pocket computer. The flip-style gadget with a QWERTY keyboard was marketed as a mobile internet device that just happened to also make phone calls. The device was so popular that T-Mobile reintroduced an updated Sidekick last year.

The durable Motorola V60 was for a brief time a must-have clamshell mobile device that, like its popular StarTAC, emphasized globetrotting compatibility and wireless internet access. The phone had a stylish aluminum exterior and an external LCD screen that displayed caller ID and text messages. The phone offered voice-command shortcuts and allowed owners to download its contacts calendar to a Windows PC.

The Nokia 5110 of the late 90s was the first of a series of popular Nokia “candy bar style” mobile phones praised for their ruggedness and simplicity. Unlike the understated 2110, the low cost, no-frills phone 5110 was designed as a fashion accessory. It was the first phone to use interchangeable plastic fascia with different colors and graphics. The 5110 could store up to 250 contacts and could display the 10 most recent missed or received calls.

The North American version of the 2110i (the improved, expanded-memory version of the 2110) was released three years after its European counterpart. Unpretentious and simple to use, Nokia’s flagship business phone was the first designed from the ground up for the GSM digital network. It was considered by many to be a game changer, featuring 14 hours of standby time, email, and eight different ring tones.

Motorola emerged as a leader in portable phones in the 1980s and continued its innovativeness with the StarTAC, the first clamshell style mobile phone. TAC, or Total Area Coverage, was an acronym Motorola tagged onto its early phones to indicate they would work across different networks. Small and lightweight, and resembling the communication devices from the “Star Trek” sci-fi franchise, Motorola’s “wearable cellular telephone” remained extremely popular well into the 2000s.