👨🏾‍🍳 🙁 🤳🏾 Phones that created the design story 🔡 ⚓️ 😄

Over its 150 years of history (if you are a fan of Meucci, not Graham Bell, you will call a different number), the phone has lived a huge number of lives. Its extremely long evolution and history are characterized by many technological revolutions. In fact, the telephone has become the carrier of the “virus” of globalization, modern communications are based on the concept of a “phone call,” and the idea of the possibility of instant communication with almost any person in the world demonstrates our understanding of the parallel existence of each individual. There has always been and is something incredibly new and magical in the ability to hear a distant voice, to conduct a conversation between London and New York, to have access to any information from another part of the world.

Over the course of all these years, the phone itself as an object has undergone many transformations, it is one of those contemporary objects that we like to rethink, analyze and modify to artists and designers who try to interpret the spirit of the times and sometimes even predict it. We will try to track its development from the Meucci telephone to the iPhone, presenting the design of the most outstanding phones and telling the story of the object that made such a significant contribution to the formation of our own history.

1. Telescope, 1871

Who was the true inventor of the phone? If you ask the Americans, they will answer that Alexander Graham Bell. However, according to the Italians, he was an Italian immigrant Antonio Meucci, who founded the Telettrofono Company in 1871 and created a prototype of what can be called the first device for voice communication - a telephone. However, we all know what happened: Meucci was unable to properly patent his device, losing the opportunity to become the inventor of the phone. A few years later, the invention was patented by Alexander Graham Bell, and we know the further development of events.

2. Graham Bell's Telephone, 1876

In the summer of 1876, Alexander Graham Bell impressed visitors to an international exhibition in Philadelphia with "his" invention, patented in March last year: a telegraph for "voice transmission", thanks to electromagnetic technology that allowed for long-distance conversations.

3. "Pot-bellied candlestick" by Strowger, 1905

The next 20 years witnessed the emergence of telephony and the growth of its importance. A new great invention appeared at the end of the 19th century, when a way was invented to automatically select the telephone number of the called device. Its inventor was the owner of the funeral home in Kansas City, Elmon Strowger. Thus, he managed to solve a serious problem: the lady who worked as a telephone operator redirected calls of his clients to the company of her husband, who was Strowger's main competitor. The first automatic switch telephone, Candlestick Potbelly, appeared in 1905, but Strowger also invented his “vertical” design: phones with a separate microphone from the receiver were extremely popular until the 1930s.

4. Ericsson 1001, 1931

The first phone with a modern design appeared only in 1931, when the engineer Johan Christian Björknes, together with the artist and designer Jean Geberg, created Ericsson 1001. Their product was the result of a joint project by Elektrisk Bureau (Oslo), Televerket (Sweden) and Lars Magnus Ericsson. Ericsson 1001 became the first Bakelite telephone with a handset lever, a finger-type dialer and a call to notify you of incoming calls. The design of the phone was considered extremely innovative for its time, and later spread throughout Europe and inspired Henry Dreyfus to create the famous 500 Western Electric.

5. Ericofon, 1949

After the Second World War, Swedish Ericsson designers again began to rethink the design of the phone. Ericofon was the first phone to combine a dialer and a handset in one unit. Today it is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art of New York and is known by the nickname "telephone cobra" because it resembles a coiled snake, whose head is raised and ready ... to answer the call.

6. Princess, 1959

During the years of economic prosperity, phone designs continued to evolve, but only in the 1950s did designers begin to truly experiment with shapes and colors, anticipating op art and the modernist style of the 1960s. The Princess phone designed by Henry Dreyfus became the symbol of design at that time. This compact phone has been designed to perfectly fit the “women's bedside table” as an improved and sleeker alternative to the cumbersome and heavy Model 500.

7. Bigrigio, 1962

The Italian analogue of the American Model 500 of Western Electric and the Scandinavian Ericsson 1001 is Siemens S62 - a phone with a rotary dialer, greatly loved by three generations of Italians. The phone project for Siemens was created by Lino Saltini. However, in subsequent years, various Bigrigio models also began to produce FATME, Italtel and Face Standard. The phone was jokingly called "bigrigio" ("two gray colors") due to the varying shades of gray plastic tube and apparatus.

8. Grillo, 1966

In the same decade, when Sit Siemens launched the famous Bigrigio, the company asked Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper to create a phone with a revolutionary design: Grillo ("cricket"). It was an innovative device that rejected the most typical characteristics of the phone: because of its folding design, it did not resemble a phone in anything but a wire. In 1967, Grillo deservedly received the Golden Compass Design Award (Compasso d'Oro).

9. Motorola DynaTac 8000X, 1983-1989

Although some of the landline phones listed above served as indicators of social status (not everyone could put Grillo on their desk), the phone actually turned into a status symbol only with the advent of mobile devices. The idea that, regardless of time and place, you can make and receive phone calls at any time, is absolutely consistent with the style of the yuppies of the 80s, along with cocaine and stock market speculation. The huge DynaTac mobile phone used by Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film “Wall Street” became the perfect symbol of the time. Despite its sky-high price (at the time sales began in 1983, it cost $ 4,000), it was a complete success. Over the next few years, more than 300 thousand Americans decided to buy a cell phone, and the only possible choice was the "brick" Motorola.

10. Pulsar, 1985

The Italian youth of the 80s learned to make their first phone calls on two different phones: Bigrigio, who was in her grandmother's house, and on the more modern-looking Pulsar of their parents. The design of this phone reminded everyone of the cars of the 80s, especially the bright burgundy version, which could not be fit into any interior. However, the reason he was considered better than Bigrigio was the numeric keypad, much more convenient and faster than the S62 dial pad.

11. Autotelefono SIP, 1989

Bigger than wearables and DynaTac, a true Italian indicator of late 80s status was a car phone. The “mobile radio transmitter for communication”, later called “autotelefono”, perfectly corresponded to the aesthetics of the whole Italy, which was beloved all over Italy, “before the Clean Hands operation” : the image of a manager riding Lancia Thelma and wearing Armani. Models of the late 80s and early 90s were the protagonists of several advertisements that can be found on YouTube today. The most advanced car phones worked thanks to the Radio Telephone Mobile System, which was based on a microwave radio and cells, which made it possible to continue a telephone conversation even while transferring a call from one channel to another.

12. Sirio, 1987 (began to be issued since 1990)

Just a couple of years after Pulsar, another space-inspired Sirio phone was invented. This is probably one of the most famous designs among telephones sold by SIP ("Italian Society of Telephone Operations"). This phone is quite common today (albeit in more modern versions) in many Italian homes. Sirio's lines became smoother, they predicted a style that people would like in the 90s, and anticipated major changes in Italian telephone technology over the course of this decade: DTMF tone system, direct distance dialing and, most importantly, the first experiments with opinion polls used in show business - televoting.

13. Motorola StarTAC, 1996

In the 90s, the miniaturization of mobile phones was steadily increasing. The flagship of this trend was another Motorola phone, which also soon turned into an expensive status symbol - StarTAC. Released in January 1996, it became the first clamshell mobile phone. He personified a hitherto unprecedented revolution in the design and design of mobile phones. StarTAC is a descendant of MicroTAC, a partially-folding mobile phone released in 1989. The device became one of the most successful phones of that period and sold over a circulation of 60 million models.

14. Nokia 8110, 1996

While Motorola was on the wave of success, creating many new cell phones, Finnish company Nokia was preparing to become incredibly successful. In 1996, Nokia launched the 8110, nicknamed the “bananophone” for its bizarre form. Similarly to the situation with Wall Street and DynaTAC, cinema contributed to the transformation of this model into a style icon: in the famous scene from the movie The Matrix, Morpheus calls Neo at 8110. A few seconds later, the camera demonstrates how the same mobile phone falls from a skyscraper - no product placement on Netflix can be compared to this scene. In 2018, Nokia introduced a more modern version of the model with a color screen and 4G support.

15. B&O BeoCom 6000, 1999

In the late 90s, mobile phones revolutionized communication, but home stationary devices still maintained their position, and their users flaunted the most sophisticated design examples. However, the subject of universal desire was a cordless phone - in fact, a mobile phone that is in the house. One of the most interesting wireless devices of the time was the Bang & Olufsen BeoCom 6000. It was the first to fully implement DECT, a standard that is commonly used (even today) to create cordless telephone systems. Loved by many, the design looked a bit outdated: the lines and style were typical of the late 90s. It could easily be combined with the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh - one of the few devices designed by Jonathan Ive that did not leave a significant mark in the history of design.

16. Nokia 3310, 2000

With the approach of the new millennium and the collapse of the dotcoms, mobile phone production experienced exponential growth. The two thousandth was the most important year when the Nokia 3310 was released. Of course, there are many iconic cell phones, but it was 3310 that became a symbol of the democratization of the mobile phone. Despite its relatively low cost, Nokia 3310 possessed high technical quality and gained a reputation as an unkillable one. Usually, when it fell to the ground, it “fell apart” into three parts: the phone itself, the back cover and the battery. It was enough to put the parts together, and the phone began to work again, as if nothing had happened.

17. RIM 957, the first Blackberry, 2000

In 2000, the first Blackberry was launched on the market. The Blackberry phone, which had the same name as the Canadian company that invented it and released it (RIM), became a worldwide success and paved the way for PDA (personal digital assistants). It was the first mobile phone designed for use as a computer - one of its main tasks was sending and receiving e-mail. Blackberry was also the first mobile phone to spark controversy over the addiction to modern communications devices: in America, it was nicknamed CrackBerry. This nickname is associated with the popular street drug crack, because the ability to do work tasks anywhere allowed a typical American workaholic to get rid of a healthy balance of work and life once and for all. Unfortunately,Blackberry mobile phones were soon replaced by smartphones and iPhones. This was caused by a strategic mistake by RIM, which relied on the use of physical keyboards.

18. Nokia 9210 Communicator, 2000

In 2000, Nokia launched its first PDA with a design as absurd as it was exemplary. It perfectly matched the innovative inventions of the Finnish company of that period. When closed, the 9210 Communicator looked like a regular phone. But when rotated 90 degrees, it opened like a miniature laptop with a keyboard and display, allowing you to comfortably check and send e-mail. The cinematic product placement also played an important role for this phone: 9210 became James Bond's special cell phone in “Tomorrow Never Dies” [approx. transl .: in fact it was a Ericsson phone model, released specifically for the film and not having its own name].

19. Motorola Razr, 2004

The last real “cell phone” with an image design before the smartphone revolution was Motorola Razr, released by this American company in 2004. Slim and stylish, starting with the “sharpness” of the model name (razor - “razor”), Razr positioned itself as a fashion phone intended for the wealthy elite (it was extremely expensive - $ 500). However, on subsequent models Motorola lowered prices. By July 2016, the company managed to sell more than 50 million cell phones. In 2019, Motorola Razr returned in the form of a folding version of the smartphone , it became a nostalgic and at the same time innovative move.

20. iPhone, 2007

The presentation of the iPhone in January 2007 and its release in June of that year made the first half of 2007 one of the most important moments in the history of mobile phones. You can write hundreds of pages about the iPhone, its design, and the technological, cultural, and social revolution that it brought. It is impossible to summarize the ten years of technological innovation in a short article. Therefore, we will only quote what Steve Jobs said at the iPhone presentation in 2007: “Today we are announcing three revolutionary products. The first is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a brand new device for Internet communications. So, three devices - a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone and a brand new device for Internet communications.iPod, telephone and Internet communicator. iPod, phone ... Do you already understand what I'm getting at? These are not three separate devices, but one, and we named it iPhone. TodayApple will reinvent the phone. And here he is. ”

21. HTC Dream, 2008

As for Android, we could list a thousand products, but we decided to talk only about HTC Dream - the first smartphone that used this Google operating system. After the release of the first iPhone, Android developers quickly changed their approach and started using touch screens. Even though the first model still looks like a mobile phone of the pre-smartphone era with a physical keyboard, it has become a historically important smartphone with a cult design that anticipated some elements (for example, navigation keys) that further characterized the “language” of communication with the user Android HTC Dream is very important, especially with its demonstration that, unlike many companies like RIM and Microsoft, Google instantly realized the immense importance and timeliness of the iPhone.It is thanks to this that the true protagonists of the mobile phone market remain iOS and Android.

Phones that created the design story