[raynr]

I thought the list was missing Japanese phones too! I went on holiday to Japan in the early 00s, and I remember thinking how all of the phones were way ahead of their time. Phones with flip-and-swivel screens, phones that looked sleek, metallic, sexy and modern, phones with full colour displays that were not some Palm monstrosity, phones that didn't look like phones and instead looked like some leather-and-metal accessory (only took calls), so many cool phones! I wanted them so bad.

I wonder why they never became popular overseas. The iPhone, sure, but there was a whole period before the iPhone where Japanese phones were way ahead of their time.

[RF_Savage]

No interest in marketing them overseas.

There was also the not insignificant cost of completely re-engineering the RF frontend and radios. As back then (an partly still) Japan used cellular bands and technologies that ware completely different from other countries.

It kept the competition out, but also made it hard for them to compete abroad. And then iPhone happened and many of those manufacturers are no longer in the biz.

[matthewdgreen]

Because the user interface was a godawful nightmare. Looked like a fish, built like a fish, usability of a pig.