In hardware circles, a certain kind of nostalgia that only makes sense from a distance frequently manifests itself fifteen years after the event. By any realistic modern standards, the E-TEN Glofiish M800, a hefty plastic Windows Mobile device with a sliding keyboard, a 2.8-inch VGA screen, an integrated GPS chip, and a telescoping pen hidden into its side, was not a gorgeous phone. It feels almost hilariously ambitious to hold one now, if you can locate one. Additionally, it seems like something very fascinating to some kind of gadget addict.
During the brief period when Windows Mobile pocket PCs masqueraded as cellphones, E-TEN, a Taiwanese business that most Americans had never heard of, operated in the shadow of HTC. The company, which was founded in Taipei in 1985, began with Chinese-language input systems for DOS workstations before switching to handheld devices and ultimately entering the congested Pocket PC phone market prior to the iPhone. Its most ambitious run was the Glofiish range, which debuted in 2006. These gadgets packed Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, FM radio, and later HSDPA cellular data into chassis that resembled something from an industrial supply catalog rather than consumer electronics.
People find it difficult to explain the resistive screens on these devices to someone who grew up with capacitive glass. In order for a resistive panel to function, two conducting layers had to come into contact with physical pressure. A fingertip scarcely made a difference. A fingernail was more effective. The greatest of all was the supplied stylus, a thin plastic rod that was kept in a silo on the edge of the device and allowed for pixel-perfect taps on icons that were purposefully made small.
When using the X800’s GPS navigation in a car, menu items were generated for a 640-by-480-pixel display packed into less than three inches of glass by jabbing the screen with the stylus. It was delicate in ways that are difficult to romanticize. However, it was also more accurate than capacitive panels, with their tap radius adjustment and fat-finger approximations.
For the most of the last fifteen years, Silicon Valley design culture has moved away from everything those gadgets stood for. Smoother glass, fewer buttons, less hardware, and undetectable interfaces. Steve Jobs stated on stage that the iPhone rendered the stylus blatantly uncool, and the industry paid attention. However, there is currently a countercurrent among designers and engineers who find themselves viewing Windows Mobile devices from the mid-2000s in the same way that architects occasionally view brutalist structures: strange, impractical for certain uses, but philosophically and esthetically true to what they were attempting to achieve.
The first dual-SIM Windows Mobile phone to support both HSDPA and EDGE was the Glofiish DX900, which received the Computex Best Choice Award in 2008. At the time, this feature read like a checklist for a serious business traveler’s ideal phone. Russia proved to be E-TEN’s strongest market, which makes some geographical sense: a nation where carrying a gadget that resembled a piece of equipment wasn’t seen as a disadvantage and where technical features were valued more than esthetic minimalism. Shortly after the iPhone changed everyone’s perception of what a phone should be and the Glofiish brand vanished along with the rest of the Windows Mobile ecosystem, Acer purchased the company in 2008.
What remains is a type of retrotech that occupies an intriguing place between design reference and museum item. Looking through collector forums where people exchange functional Glofiish units and debate the relative advantages of various stylus weights gives me the impression that nostalgia isn’t the main topic of discussion. It’s about a design philosophy that was eschewed rather than replaced, one that never cared about being approachable, rewarded attention with control, and trusted users to learn precision. It’s still unclear if any of that converts to something new. However, it’s important to note that those who are most interested in it are typically the ones developing the next generation of wearables and stylus-enabled gadgets, searching for what was lost when swipes became the norm.
