This is the greatest phone of all time

Posted by glypo on November 23, 2011 05:05 pm 139

One of the very first posts on these forums was about readers phone history. This got me thinking about my first ever phone, an Ericsson - as a young technology obsessed teenager I was so overjoyed after my Mum bought this for me. By current standards it was very basic; it had voice commands, WAP (which was horrible on the screen ratio) and little else. 

This isn't a specifications war

The greatest phone isn't about specification, the latest phones will always win this. Fast forward a decade from my Ericsson and I purchased a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. I was replacing my T-Mobile/HTC G1 and I was underwhelmed with hardware.

In a specification war the Xperia X10 would destroy my old Ericsson. My wonderful old Ericsson didn't have a colour screen, a camera, couldn't play music, the games were basic and the application of the cloud was just a technophiles wet dream. However, the months of excitement, enjoyment and amazement with my Ericsson wasn't there with my smartphone. It's about that moment in time, how the device compares to its contemporaries and most importantly how it makes you feel.

I have never had an overjoyed feeling with a smartphone, that's sad considering I have gone through a few. In fact, I got fed up with changing and stuck to a Nexus S, boring but functional. The software seems the plaything right now, not the hardware. I think this explains why I think this is the greatest phone of all time: 

This is of course a Ericsson T28. Even looking at it now gets me excited. Everything about the design is pleasing to my eye. The concave around the screen, the wonderful elongated 'fat' oval antenna, the shape of the option buttons. It was incredibly thin - 15mm was wafer thin in the late 1990's, and this was years before the Motorola Razr. I yearn for a smartphone to get me excited about hardware again.

So let's hear your greatest phones, fellow Vergeoisie...