In the 2000s, the mobile phone market was basically the Wild West.
Companies were throwing all sorts of designs at the wall just to see what would stick. On the one hand, it’s easy to feel nostalgic for the era of physical keyboards and sliding, swiveling, and flipping hinges. But on the other hand, it’s also nice to be able to watch Netflix on the bus if you so desire.
Maybe someday people in the future will look back on our current era of smartphones with as much befuddlement as these old phones induce in us.
1
Virgin Mobile Lobster (2006)
The Lobster supported Digital Audio Broadcast technology, allowing users to listen to the radio and watch TV on the phone.
2
Samsung Galaxy Beam (2012)
This variant of the Samsung Galaxy featured a miniature projector built into the bottom of the phone that could project images and videos up to 50 inches in size at a distance of six feet.
3
Siemens Xelibri 6 (2003)
This bizarre clamshell-shaped phone featured a hinge in the middle and two mirrors on the inside. It’s barely recognizable as a phone.
4
Siemens SX 45 (2001)
One of the first ‘smartphones’. It was mainly a PDA, so to make phone calls you’d have to connect a headset to it; it had no speaker feature.
5
Samsung Serene (2005)
This phone had a motorized hinge in the middle. It may have looked sleek and intriguing, but it lacked many features that were standard at the time.
6
Nokia 7705 Twist (2009)
As the name implies, this phone was able to swivel open to reveal its keypad. It also featured a hole in the corner, so you could clip it onto your keychain.
7
Haier P7 (2004)
The Haier P7 was also known as the pen phone, and you can probably tell why. It could last up to six days on a single charge, but was not very popular, likely due to its odd shape.
8
BlackBerry Passport (2014)
BlackBerry’s take on a smartphone in a time when iPhones were becoming popular. The cramped keyboard and large size of the phone made it a less than successful competitor.
9
Amazon Fire Phone (2014)
The Fire Phone was Amazon’s attempt to enter the cell phone market. It featured six cameras, with only two being able to be used to take pictures. The other four were used for gesture recognition and tracking users’ head movements.
10
Toshiba G450 (2008)
Easily one of the strangest-looking phones ever made. Straight out of a sci-fi movie, it made the questionable decision of splitting the keypad into numbers 1-6 and 7-9, making it cumbersome to use.
11
LG Wing (2020)
The LG Wing was a swiveling smartphone that had dual screens that could be rotated into a hammer-shaped configuration. It was one of the last phones to be released by LG before they shut down due to declining sales.
12
Huawei Mate XT (2025)
The world’s first tri-folding phone. It features three screens that fold closed into each on two hinges like a brochure.
13
LG KG920 (2006)
The LG KG920 featured a lower half that could swivel all the way around and become a camera.
14
Nokia N93 (2006)
This phone came out when camera phones were becoming popular. Instead of simply having a camera on it, the entire phone could swivel into a clunky camcorder configuration.
15
Nokia 7600 (2003)
The unconventional teardrop-shaped design of this phone made it extremely frustrating to use for texting or calling. You know, the main two things a cell phone is supposed to do.
16
Nokia 5510 (2001)
One of the first horizontally oriented phones.
17
Nokia 2300 (2004)
This phone featured a square-wave synthesizer to produce its own ringtones in real-time.
18
Nokia 7280 (2004)
The Nokia 7280 was designed to look like a lipstick case, and featured a screen that also functioned as a mirror.
19
Motorola Aura (2008)
Though this luxury flip phone is cool-looking, it’s pretty easy to understand why it never took off: it had a price tag of $2000, smack dab in the middle of the housing crisis.
20
Motorola MPx (2004)
The Motorola MPx was ahead of its time, able to open either horizontally or vertically, running Windows Mobile Edition, and coming with a built-in stylus. It was unsuccessful, probably because it was too complicated.
21
NEC N-01A (2008)
This Japanese phone featured a hammer-shaped design over a decade before the LG Wing. It featured an antenna for portable digital TV.
