Personally I think the ZenPhone 9 series looked very sleek and cool - especially the in red colour choice.
Sony Ericsson J300i
My sister also had a Siemens M55, pretty fun phone at the time.
Dual slide helio ocean, t9 and hardware keyboard on different slide outs
The Samsung U600 was stylish as hell.
I loved my Nokia 7380 art deco phone. It had a screen hidden behind a mirror surface, a rotary dial instead of buttons and even a little fabric flap like a pair of jeans or something. It was so widely different to anything else out there. I wish it still worked on contemporary wireless services, but alas. It was a pain to text on but with voice messages becoming a thing, it didn’t matter too, too much. I would probably go back if I could.
The Nokia “fashion” line had some interesting designs
I absolutely loved the look and feel of the essential ph-1. The ceramic back felt great in the hand (the few times I dared carrying it without a case). The size was perfect for me, and I personally found the notch less distracting than the hole punch camera.
The duck phone. The quack when you got a call was annoying, though.
This was my favorite phone I’ve ever had. All metal case, big front facing speakers, slim form factor. Apparently according to this article the processor was bad and the camera wasn’t great but I didn’t notice or care. I never bothered with Bluetooth speakers with this thing because it sounded great and it was waterproof. It also had a radio tuner built in that you could use with wired headphones acting as the antenna which I used a surprising amount when waiting in places with poor cell service and at least once trying to get weather updates during a bad storm. I wish more phones went with just weird features like this.
LG Chocolate! I had the white one. It did everything I needed, supported custom ringtones, had paid ring back tones (remember those?), played music, etc. The best thing was being able to text with one hand while not having to look at what you’re typing. Hopefully it’s not nostalgia affecting me with this phone, but it ran flawlessly for years before I eventually upgraded to a Motorola Droid back in the day.
I miss fun phones. I can either have a folding slab, a black slab, or a different slab that comes in other colours. 🥲
Nokia Lumia series. It is a shame that they did not sell
Ah the soap boxes
Loved my Lumia 920 back in the day. A phenomenal phone featuring a fun user experience with the Live Tiles. It was a great phone if you didn’t like apps.
Microsoft gave up too soon. Android was also shit at the start, it only became good around 4.0
The original HTC Incredible. Comparatively speaking, it was a very modern looking phone. The back was the thing that people noticed. It had a weirdly shaped battery cover back. The physical interface was pretty great and it included an optical cursor or whatever you want to call it.
modern phone gripe
It could be operated with one hand whether you’ve got big hands or small hands. I hate the fact that everything now is available only in phablet and bigger phablet.
And without user swappable batteries. Ugh.
iPhone 5
Adding to this again.
Ericsson T28/T39.
Pixel with GrapheneOS, for me, it’s beautiful. No bloat, no Google.
HTC One M8, hands down no questions. Curved aluminium back, front facing stereo speakers. Fits the hand like a well tailored glove.
There may be fancier looking phones out there, but nothing I’ve ever seen looked cooler.
Banana phone.
