The Cell Phones Everyone Wanted Before the iPhone

Choosing a cell phone in the early 2000s meant choosing between visibly different ideas about what a phone should do. A tiny Nokia made its case through size. A Sidekick put a keyboard beneath a swiveling screen. Motorola’s Razr could tempt you before you had even looked through its menus. Email, music, photographs, and appearance competed for attention, and the handset you wanted depended on which mattered most.

There were compromises, too. A keyboard took up space. A camera did not necessarily take a picture worth keeping. Having work email in your pocket sounded convenient until you were expected to answer it. Those differences gave people reasons to want a particular model, beyond simply replacing the phone they already owned.

These nine phones capture some of that variety, from the Nokia 5110 in 1998 to the LG Chocolate in 2006. They were desirable for different reasons, and looking back at them is more interesting when we let them be something other than stepping-stones to the iPhone.

1998 — Nokia 5110

The Nokia 5110 gave owners a simple way to make a mass-produced phone feel like their own: take off the front cover and put on another one. Nokia called the interchangeable shells Xpress-on covers. Changing colors required an actual piece of plastic, rather than a visit to a settings menu.

It was still a chunky handset, with a small monochrome screen, a numeric keypad, and an antenna sticking out of the top. That straightforward design is part of its appeal in hindsight. The phone had an obvious job, and there was little doubt about which button you needed to press.

Then there was Snake. Steering an ever-lengthening line around a tiny screen was an unexpectedly good reason to keep holding a device after a call had finished. The 5110’s charm came from those modest extras: a different-colored cover, a familiar game, a little room for personal taste.

1999 — Nokia 8210

Put the Nokia 8210 beside the 5110 and the change in priorities becomes obvious. The 8210 weighed just 79 grams, with an internal antenna and a body small enough to make the earlier Nokia look cumbersome. Smallness itself was the attraction. Today, a larger display can help sell a phone; the 8210 offered the pleasure of carrying less. Its interchangeable covers kept some of the personalization of the 5110, but the compact shape did most of the work.

Of course, the screen and keys had to fit inside that little body. This was a phone for calling and texting, with Snake available when you had time to spare. Its appeal makes more sense if you picture it slipping into a pocket than if you try to judge it by how much information its screen could show.

2002 — T-Mobile Sidekick

The Sidekick’s swivel screen was a good demonstration in a phone store. Swing it out of the way and a full physical keyboard appeared underneath. For someone who spent more time writing messages than making calls, those little keys were a compelling reason to choose it.

Instant messaging, email, and web browsing gave the keyboard something to do, especially for people accustomed to AOL Instant Messenger on a computer. A numeric keypad could handle a short text, but a longer conversation made the Sidekick’s layout easier to appreciate. Holding it sideways also made it look like a device built around writing, rather than a telephone with messaging added.

Its association with celebrities helped make that unusual shape recognizable. Still, the practical attraction was easy to understand without a celebrity endorsement: you could carry your conversations away from the computer. The swivel made people look; the keyboard gave a frequent messenger a reason to stay interested.

2003 — BlackBerry 7230

The BlackBerry 7230 offered a different reason to want a keyboard. Its color screen and rows of small keys put a working inbox in a device you could carry between meetings, on a journey, or away from your desk.

For someone whose job involved a steady stream of email, being able to read and answer a message without opening a computer was a substantial convenience. The keyboard gave the phone a clear purpose even before you switched it on. This was a device for people with things to answer.

That usefulness came with an awkward question: if you could answer anywhere, when were you allowed to stop? The “CrackBerry” nickname captured the habit of repeatedly checking the device. A BlackBerry could save you a trip back to your desk while also making it harder to feel that you had left work behind.

2003 — Palm Treo 600

If you already kept appointments and contacts on a Palm organizer, the Treo 600 had a persuasive selling point. You could bring those functions into the same device you used for calls, instead of carrying both an organizer and a phone.

The Treo combined a physical keyboard with a touchscreen, email, web access, and a camera. Its Palm OS 5 software also supported applications, giving it a role beyond whatever features were installed when you bought it. The attraction was the ability to keep useful tools together, especially if an electronic calendar was already part of your routine.

There was a cost in size. Compared with the tiny Nokia 8210, this was a substantial object to carry. For an organizer enthusiast, that could be a reasonable exchange: a bulkier phone, but one fewer device to remember when leaving the house.

2003 — Sony Ericsson T610

The Sony Ericsson T610 looked carefully designed, with a compact body, a color screen, and a distinctive contrast between its dark upper section and metallic finish. Bluetooth and an integrated camera gave it plenty to demonstrate, but the appearance helped make it desirable before any demonstration began.

The camera deserves some perspective. Its pictures were small and limited in detail; this was not a convincing replacement for a camera you had brought along to record a holiday. It was useful for the less planned moments, when the alternative was taking no photograph at all.

That distinction explains much of the early camera phone’s appeal. The T610 could be in your pocket when a separate camera was at home. A rough picture of something amusing or unexpected could still be worth having, even if you would never choose to enlarge it and hang it on a wall.

2004 — Motorola Razr V3

The Motorola Razr V3 made a strong argument through the way it felt in your hand. Open it and the thin metal body, broad screen, and flat etched keypad looked markedly different from an ordinary plastic flip phone. Closed, it had a slim profile that made the name seem appropriate.

It was a design you could appreciate through an everyday action. Making a call meant opening it; finishing meant folding it shut. The hinge and keypad were part of the experience each time, rather than details you noticed once and then covered with a case.

The Razr’s desirability was not a matter of having the most ambitious email software or the biggest keyboard. Its appearance could be the deciding factor. That is why it belongs so prominently in a list of phones people wanted: Motorola made the ordinary business of carrying and using a phone feel stylish.

2006 — BlackBerry Pearl 8100

The BlackBerry Pearl brought email and messaging into a narrower handset, with a small illuminated trackball beneath the screen. It looked less like a miniature work terminal than the broad BlackBerrys with full keyboards.

The narrower body required a different approach to typing. Its SureType keyboard put two letters on many of the keys and used predictive software to work out the word. BlackBerry’s own getting-started guide explained how to choose a suggestion or build an unfamiliar word letter by letter. Buyers were choosing a smaller phone along with a particular typing system, not simply a full keyboard shrunk to fit.

A camera and music features broadened its usefulness beyond the inbox. The Pearl made sense for someone who wanted BlackBerry messaging without dedicating quite so much pocket space to it, and who was willing to learn the keyboard in exchange.

2006 — LG Chocolate

The LG Chocolate looked at home beside a portable music player. Its glossy finish and illuminated touch-sensitive controls gave the front a clean appearance, while the sliding mechanism kept a numeric keypad out of sight until it was needed.

In the United States, Verizon’s VX8500 version put music at the center of its pitch. LG still identifies it in its product archive as a phone with a music and video player. That was an appealing combination for anyone already carrying a separate player alongside a handset.

The controls also reveal a design compromise of the period. A touch-sensitive surface could look sleek, but it did not give your thumb the same physical feedback as a button. The Chocolate combined that smooth front with a conventional keypad underneath, preserving two different ways to operate one device.

2007 — The iPhone Changes the Formula

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone on January 9, 2007, mobile email, cameras, music playback, and web access were already familiar selling points. The iPhone earned its place among the biggest tech launches of the 2000s through the way it brought those functions together.

Apple gave those functions a shared surface. A large touchscreen could display a keyboard when you needed to write, then devote that space to a photograph or a web page. Scrolling with a finger and zooming into a page made the interface itself a substantial part of the attraction.

The original iPhone also had limitations. It used EDGE cellular data rather than 3G, although it could connect over Wi-Fi. The App Store arrived in 2008, after the first model. The familiar smartphone experience developed through later hardware and software; it was not delivered complete at that first unveiling.

Nor did every existing phone become obsolete that afternoon. Physical keyboards still offered a reason to choose a BlackBerry, and a compact handset could still suit someone who mainly wanted calls. The iPhone changed expectations, but buyers had their own priorities to consider.

When Every Phone Looked Different

Looking back, the variety is what holds the attention. You could recognize a Sidekick or a Razr by its outline, and operating one meant learning its particular combination of keys, hinges, or controls. Choosing between them involved visible, physical differences.

These phones were sometimes awkward, and nostalgia can make their shortcomings easier to forgive. But each had something you could point to and say you wanted: the little Nokia, the swivel screen, the metal flip phone, the keyboard. That specificity is what makes them worth remembering.