Uniquely designed past phones with features that are nowhere to be found today

Nokia N93/N93i

It is highly probably that when it designed the N93 swivel/flip phone, Nokia first engineered its camera and snapped a Symbian smartphone around it after that. Jokes aside, the N93 was endowed with a 3.2MP camera with Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar optics that allowed photography aficionados to make use of 3x optical zoom. The successor of the Nokia N93, the N93i, came with the same peculiar design language, but exhibited improved camera software.

Samsung Serenata

Okay, the limited-edition Samsung Serenata looks nothing like a regular phone. It's the result of a collaboration between Samsung and Bang & Olufsen, and its main purpose was to provide its owner with the ultimate audio experience thanks to its large speaker. Another quirky feature of the Serenata was that its "keyboard" was, in fact, a wheel, situated above the display. Talk about bizarre.



Nokia 6260

Nokia really had a thing for transforming devices and wasn't afraid to experiment with design. A bit tamer in comparison with some of the more exciting devices in Nokia's portfolio of old, the Nokia 6260 still passes as a rather eccentric phone with a unique twisty design that allowed the display portion to rotate at 90 and nearly 145 degrees. You could either close the phone with the main screen being at the top of the phone or neatly tugged at the bottom like your regular clamshell phones. Nokia was very keen on providing its numerous consumers with lots of options.

Nokia N-Gage/N-Gage QD

The original N-Gage did not become the hit Nokia desired it would be, but this 2003's phone deserves a notable place in history. Its unique design resembles the layout of a handheld gaming console, but this was a full-blown Symbian smartphone, we kid you not! Nokia did it again a year later, in 2004, when the N-Gage QD came out. Despite its improved hardware internals, the device remained a curious, but rather unsuccessful experiment.

Sony Ericsson R306

One may argue that the R306 clamshell looks like a $10 pocket radio and this would be spot-on correct! When folded, it can be easily mistaken for an actual radio thanks to the several small buttons and the predominant stereo speakers on its front. The only thing that was missing was a protruding, dedicated radio antenna, which would have probably deceived even more people that the R306 is actually a radio. We guess Sony Ericsson did not want to push things so much back in the day.

Nokia 5700 XpressMusic

The Nokia 5700 XpressMusic was so music-centric that it had a rather unique twisting keyboard - on one of the sides, you could find the once-common keypad, whereas the other side of the keyboard came with a specialized set of buttons that controlled the music player. The phone came with superb (for its time) sound quality, but the swiveling keypad is its highlight, indeed. We don't get to see these around anymore, do we?

Sony Ericsson K850

Ah, the good ol' Sony Ericsson K850 cameraphone! It was among the first phones that employed a Xenon flash. The device even made use of three LED lights that aided it in its auto-focusing endeavors. Another noteworthy feature of the K850 was its set of navigation buttons, which intersected with the keypad. It was also devoid of the almost compulsory joystick that almost any Sony Ericsson device was endowed with before. What a classic!