Colour screens on mobile started becoming a thing in the early years of the 00's. I think my first colour phone was in 2002, a tiny resolution, and it was rather bougie tbh compared to the phones my classmates had.
And this in Finland, so we were a bit ahead when it came to getting mobiles.
Yeah, it was right when it hit the market. We weren't rich, so having one bougie item others were jealous of was kinda fun for a change.
It was the improved model of a Nokia 3510, 3510i. This is a rare thing, but you'll have to translate the article as Wikipedia didn't have an English article on that. Oh it was marketed as the Nokia 3595 in the States, announced in 2003.
So yeah, this post is one of those "ohgodimold" feels because the current generations views on how old things from my childhood look like are coming out.
Hell, one day someone guessed my age. They guessed "a bit shy of 40?" and at first I was offended but then I remembered they are technically correct and it was rather depressing of a feeling. "No, haha of course I'm not... wait... yeah, actually.... that is correct (screaming internally)."
The first color phones were also small and didn't have a screen that looked more like a black and green computer monitor from the 1970's. This things design looks closer to a calculator watch from the 1980's than it does from a phone today.
I'm old enough that I had one of the wristwatch calculators back in the 80's. We'd put stuff on layaway at Kmart and if you owned a cell phone it's because you were like a lawyer or something and it had to be carried in a bag, so most of us had pagers, or nothing.
Yes. I remember the stuff in your links. Notice the colors are more than green and black. Also, those weren't popular devices, either. It was all about the Motorola razr back in 2004. It stayed that way, or you had a blackberry until android and iphones started to come out around 2008, for the most part. It was fun watching phones get smaller and smaller and smaller, and then bigger and bigger and bigger.
The first color phones were also small and didn't have a screen that looked more like a black and green computer monitor from the 1970's.
Communicators aren't small, and the "black and green screen" is the non-colour version.
These look remarkably similar to the wrist device, and definitely aren't small.
Yeah, they were for pretentious businessmen. But also, I am from Finland, and they were much more popular here in Europe whereas they were a niche item in the US markets.
I kind clearly said I'm from Finland and we were a bit ahead in these things, what with Nokia and all.
HTC Dream came out in 2008 and looks like this
Also rather similar to the image in the original post.
Except the keyboard stayed hidden away until you flipped it out. That was the first android phone. My first smartphone came out the following year and flipped out the other direction. The Samsung Moment. Also, both were much smaller than the wrist monstrosity that warehouse workers used.
The Dream was also codeveloped by one of the people behind the Danger Hiptop (T-Mobile Sidekick in the US). Which is why the Dream resembles the Hiptop line.