A decade of PDAs and smartphones: 2006-2008

2006

2006 is the first year that we can look back to and consider some of the smartphones released to be usable today. There were a huge number of releases and some of the major players today finally found their mojo in 2006.

Palm followed the success of the Treo 650 with the Windows Mobile powered Treo 700w. It was close to being a near perfect device, but suffered from a lack of memory and a clunky look that did not appeal to new users. The rest of the Windows Mobile devices released were so huge in number that almost every conceivable design and use were covered by the likes of i-mate, Mio, Orange, HP, Samsung and so the list goes on. The HTC name was still not used despite the number of devices the company produced, but this would change in 2007. From a personal point of view, a look back at the Windows Mobile devices from 2006 doesn’t bring up one which stood out above the rest.

Palm also replaced the Treo 650 with the updated 680 featuring no antenna and a sleeker form factor. Sadly someone forgot to include a battery which would get it through more than a day and to this point it garners little affection in comparison to the 650.

Nokia finally decided to enter the smartphone race seriously and produced a raft of smart devices that would appeal to the masses as well as the business crowd. Notable releases were the Nokia E50, the ahead of its time E61, the gullwing E70 and the N91 snuck in at the end of the year. The sheer volume of Symbian S60 3rd edition powered devices was overwhelming, but none of them took hold of the market like Nokia would have hoped.

RIM’s highlights were the 8703 and the Pearl 8100 which were still not clever enough to make BlackBerry a force to be reckoned with in the wider market, but both Nokia and RIM had something special planned for 2007. The trouble is that others did too…

Most significant device of 2006: Nokia E61

2007

2007 can easily be considered a golden year for smartphones and it seems that everyone jumped up a level and produced smartphones which would define the industry up until today.

Nokia released the N95 in March and everyone sat up and wondered how this was possible. GPS, top quality gaming, movies, music and so much more in a form factor that somehow wowed the world despite its chunky feel. A huge number of other Nokia branded phones followed such as the 5700 XpressMusic, the N81 and to top it all an 8GB version of the N95 which was cleverly called the N95 8GB. Nokia never did go for alluring names for its phones, and still doesn’t.

RIM came up with the Curve 83xx series which to this day remains one of the biggest selling smartphones of all time. In fact it almost certainly is and this particular form factor propelled the BlackBerry ethos into the mainstream in one fell swoop. It was a near perfect mix of screen and keyboard with an operating system that suited the hardware perfectly and to this day almost all of the front keyboarded BlackBerry’s owe their design to the original Curve.

The number of Windows Mobile devices released continued to expand and HTC started to use its own name for the branding of phones when selling direct. Devices like the S620, P3000 and the S730 became popular for their clever designs and use of Windows Mobile 6, but the HTC Touch was without doubt the most original release from this giant. Well, it would have been original had something else not been announced earlier in the year. I remember sitting at the launch event in London for the Touch and not believing for one minute that the Touch had been worked on for a long time before its release. The words did not fit with what we all knew and to this day I am certain that it was influenced by what happened in the next paragraph.

On 9th January 2007 Steve Jobs announced the iPhone at Macworld and everything changed. The next day at work everyone was talking about it and it was truly the first time that a mobile phone had entered the conscious of many as a desirable object rather than a mere necessity. The way it worked and the small features made up a device the like of which no one had previously imagined and from this point on everything changed. Sadly not everything changed for the better and lack of network choice was one issue that surfaced following the iPhone release. This problem was there to a certain extent before the iPhone in the US, but it without doubt brought exclusivity to the European market which has continued to this day.

Most significant device of 2007: Apple iPhone

2008

Manufacturers scrambled to cling on to the coattails of Apple and started to develop large touch screen devices that were supposed to challenge the iPhones supremacy, but ultimately all they did was highlight the original more.

Nokia produced a bizarre mix of smartphones which failed to capture the imagination in the same way the original N95 did. It was almost as though its design team resigned and left the company with only the ability to build on what was already there. The N96 was a classic example of a slightly upgraded phone which was never going to touch the more well known phones. As I look through the list of Nokia phones released in 2008, not one of them strikes me as being memorable.

Palm was seemingly on its last legs with the Centro bidding a fond farewell to Palm OS. It was a consumer orientated device which carried all of the faults of previous devices and only sold well amongst true Palm fans. The Treo 500 was a better effort, but the Windows Mobile Standard OS was out of place in a smartphone market that was now in the mainstream and it quickly disappeared after numerous price reductions. At this point Palm looked doomed.

RIM continued to show promise and the Bold 9000 showed that there was consumer appeal in the brand. The large screen and big keyboard married with 3G connectivity brought the BlackBerry experience to thousands of new people and RIM was without doubt on the upward curve. The BlackBerry Storm was RIMs answer to the iPhone and the general view is that it was awful.

HTC started pushing its own brand more and more and a succession of devices culminated in the excellent Touch HD which was the first smartphone to offer an alternative to the iPhone. The Windows Mobile OS was starting to look dated though and concern was growing for Microsoft’s involvement in an industry that it looked close to dominated only a few years before. Touch screen devices were being released all over the place, but few managed to capture any headlines and even fewer sales came of them.

Apple upgraded the iPhone to a 3G version and brought in GPS alongside a new design. It was a case of an update which squared the circle and which also left some disappointed. Apple was now the victim of its own marketing machine and people expected too much, but it was proving hardy in the toughest of markets.

Most significant device of 2008: Apple iPhone 3G / BlackBerry Bold 9000

Related articles: A decade of PDAs and smartphones: 2000-2002 / A decade of PDAs and smartphones: 2003-2005