Style in the standard mobile phone industry means everything. If a phone is ugly, it will not sell and that is a fact that has only been disproven a couple of times. The T-Mobile G1 is pretty ugly, but it is selling well and some would argue that the Sony Ericsson K800i was a ugly beast, but it still sold in huge numbers.
The smartphone market was different a couple of years ago and style was not high on the agenda of any manufacturer. As smartphones became more commonplace so did the need to smarten them up a bit and we now see very few smartphones which have no significant input from design teams. From the Xperia X1 to the Curve 8900, style is becoming more and more important as time passes and so here is my top 5 ugly and beautiful phones-
The ugly crowd-
1/ i-mate Ultimate 8502
2/ i-mate Ultimate 8150
3/ iCEPhone
4/ HTC Touch Cruise
5/ Nokia E90
The beautiful set-
1/ BlackBerry Curve 8900
2/ Nokia E71
3/ Toshiba TG01
4/ Xperia X1
5/ Psion Revo Plus
Somehow I suspect a few of you will disagree with the above lists…
I agree with most of what you say here, although I wouldn’t personally say that aesthetics plays a big factor in my buying decision. But the Psion Revo listed as beautiful whilst the E90 is ugly? You really should have gone to specsavers…
I agree elbowz, nothing wrong with the e90 in my opinion. Not sure about the e71 being beautiful either, functional perhaps, and the bulging bit at the bottom is not attractive.
Those are all ugly.
Form and function
Take your choice. The X1, for example, looks lovely but in day-to-day use is a poor performer compared to the E90. The Palm Pre looks like a good middle ground from what I can see without trying one myself.