Nokia
7700

When Nokia announced the 7700 in October 2003 it debuted as the company's "first media category device". At the time, the 65,000-colour touch screen was one of the largest displays ever featured on a mobile phone. The 640 x 320 resolution made it ideal for web browsing and email, with Nokia describing the 7700 as being “optimized for viewing full Internet content”. The 7700 was powered by the Symbian operating system and was notable for being the first phone to support the Series 90 user interface. It was also Nokia’s first pen-based smartphone. Series 90 was developed as 'Project Hildon'. This project has a long and complicated story which is told in this excellent piece published by The Register written by Andrew Orlowski. Its striking “taco” design, was available in white and black, both with a yellow/gold coloured base. The phone shared the same widely ridiculed “side-talking” approach as the Nokia N-Gage. The 7700 only had seven hardware buttons and a rocker dial button (see below). Text input on the 7700 was via an on-screen QWERTY keyboard using the stylus. There was no support for handwriting recognition. Another important part of the 7700 story was its support of DVB-H technology that allowed it to deliver “mobile television” when used with the Nokia Streamer SU-6 accessory which clipped onto the back of the device. The 7700 was widely used in early trials of DVB-H by companies such as Turner Broadcasting. Nokia marketing material showing the Streamer SU-6 on the 7700. It was also the first phone to support Nokia’s Visual Radio service, which synced the analog FM radio signal with a mixture of streamed graphics and text. The use of multiple coloured plastics on the design was considered "cool", particularly as “shark-suits” with white stripes were popular in the swimming world at the time. These inspired the white stripes near the grip on the black variant of the 7700 (these stripes are black on the white variant). The use of stripes was subsequently 'banned' as part of Nokia's design guidelines.  After eight months, Nokia cancelled the 7700 in June 2004. Numerous reasons have been cited as to why this happened including the slow progress with software development, broader challenges in Nokia’s mobile phone business, the 7700’s use of “side-talking”, its unattractive design (nicknamed the 'elephant ear'), and its anticipated high price estimated to be €800 (equivalent to $1,152 in 2021). As a result, this is a very rare device and an important phone in the Mobile Phone Museum collection. Despite never coming to market, the 7700 laid the groundwork for the arrival of the Nokia 7710, which went on to be the only commercially available device to ship with the Series 90 platform.