Siemens
S10

The Siemens S10 was the world’s first mobile phone with a colour display, albeit a very rudimentary one. The display comprised three colours: red, green and blue, as well as white which provided the background colour on the screen. It was able to display up to six lines of text, however, it was possible to make the font bigger to improve readability albeit reducing the number of lines of text that could be shown. In reality, the 97 x 54 pixel colour screen was little more than a gimmick and it made it quite difficult to read the display at certain angles and in bright light. However, it was a very effective feature from a marketing perspective and allowed Siemens the kudos of claiming a world first. In the end, it was quickly overshadowed by the vibrant colour display on rival products such as Ericsson T68m. One other notable feature was a memo function that could record up to 20 seconds of speech by pressing a button on the side of the device. Siemens also manufactured a variant of this device for Sony which was branded as the Sony CMD-X2000.