If there one major problem with the mobile phone industry, it's how myopic we, the buyer's of phones, have become. Pre-iPhone there was no harm or shame in having a different phone to everyone else. You might have a Nokia 3310, while your friend had a Sony Ericsson K610i, and you could could love them equally. These days, we all gravitate to the same big-name models at the expense of some really great phones.
Below are a list of awesome smartphones that have come and gone without making much of an impact -- despite having great features and performance for their time.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
As the clock counted down towards the end of this partnership, Sony Ericsson took a big gamble with the Xperia Play and lost. Half smartphone, half handheld game console, the Xperia Play was a good mix and well-designed; though a bit thick for a smartphone.
There was one key element missing though, games to play on the phone. Sony Ericsson worked hard to entice developers to add code to their games to make them compatible with the Play, but it never really took off. Hopefully this isn't the last time we see a phone with gaming controls. *fingers crossed*
LG Optimus G
Optimus G, we barely knew you. A phone that left as quickly and quietly as it arrived, the Optimus G may just be the year's best phone that no one bought. It hammered through our benchmarking tests, and still performs really well next to the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4.
LG, and it's phones, are the victim of marketing budgets as much as anything. We don't see huge billboards or expensive TV ads for LG phones and the result is that may of us forget about them by the time we wander into our local phone shop.
Nokia N9
Nokia has never been a company afraid of a little experimentation, and the N9 is still one of our favourite phone concepts. Running on Nokia's own MeeGo platform, it was the company's best shot at matching the features and performance introduced to us by the iPhone.
The N9 had a lot going for it. Slick, seamless performance, a new take on smartphone multitasking, and a great UI aesthetic. But it had lots missing too, plenty of seemingly basic smartphone tools that Nokia just didn't have time to build. Plus, it was comparatively expensive -- not a winning combination.
HTC Legend
Do you have a big brother or sister who can't put a foot wrong? Sporty, academic, funny and good-looking. The HTC Legend had exactly this problem when it was released in the same year as the HTC Desire, which was a run-away success.
The Legend struggled next to its shining sibling, despite its unique and attractive metal design. It lacked the power of the competition though, and this really punished it in our esteem.
BlackBerry Storm
Many disagree, but the BlackBerry Storm, with its click-able screen, was a great idea - especially at a time when touch screens were made from a couple of different technologies.
BlackBerry called this screen SureType, meaning that you felt more sure of what you were typing when you used it. For us, this was true. Typing was a two-step process (touch then press) and you could easily see whether you were making a mistake before you actually made it.
Of course, now we are all so used to typing with touch screens that it seems like overkill, but at the time it was a nice technology to bridge the game between keyboards and screens.
Motorola Razr M
If we're honest, we don't know exactly how many units of the Razr M Motorola ended up selling, but next to the tens of millions of iPhones and Galaxy S phones that have been sold, we are comfortable in saying that it wasn't nearly enough.
What we liked so much about the Razr M was how Motorola approached the idea of a smaller phone. Often phones are bigger and faster for the sake of being both of these things, and Motorola knew well enough that some people don't want the latest phone just because it towers over previous generations.
The Razr M was a compact version of the Razr HD, but it wasn't any less powerful or lacking in any key features. It was the same, just easier to hold in the hand.
LG Optimus 7
This choice may raise some eyebrows, but it was our opinion that the LG Optimus 7 was the best of the launch handsets on the Windows Phone 7 platform, but it must be have the least successful. To be fair, none of the launch line-up for Windows Phone enjoyed enormous success, but if any deserved it, it was this LG.
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