Last updated on March 9, 2021
It probably wasn’t meant to be: Ten years ago Sony had a mobile phone in its portfolio that might have revolutionized the mobile market. But the innovative slider smartphone never appeared. Pictures now show for the first time what the world has missed.
To create a real box-office hit, the timing has to be right. Anyone who is late can only grab the crumbs from the cake. But you can’t be too early either, otherwise you’ll be stuck in a niche. Maybe it was these thoughts that caused Sony 2010 to pull the plug on the Vaio smartphone.
Sonys Vaio smartphone: A Silder with keyboard
With its slider mechanism and the keypad underneath, the phone would have been an oddity in a world dominated by the iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy S and HTC Desire at that time. Nevertheless, the question arises whether Sony – or more precisely: Sony Ericsson – shouldn’t have shown courage and brought the Vaio smartphone onto the market. Eccentrics also have unique selling points and a compact Android smartphone with hardware keyboard would certainly have found its buyers, especially among business people. After all, virtual keyboards weren’t nearly as mature as they are today at that time and
<Already in front of the pictures of the destroyed Vaio cell phone a few weeks ago a prototype of a PlayStation smartphone appeared that wasn’t allowed to see the light of day either. At the beginning of the last decade Sony seemed to be very keen to experiment, at least in the lab.
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Glossy times from Sony are long gone
Sony is far from such experiments – just as it is far from success. While the Japanese were still a force to be reckoned with in the smartphone market at the time, they could hardly compete with Samsung, Apple or up-and-coming Chinese manufacturers such as Xiaomi, especially in recent years. The traditional manufacturer is not thinking of giving up, however, and has recently announced that it will improve its own update policy and deliver three major Android updates for its smartphones in the future.
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