The world of smartphones looked very different in late 2006 than it does now. Flip phones were still on display in stores next to bulky “PDA phones.” Styluses were widely used. Additionally, if people had navigation apps at all, they were typically housed inside clumsy GPS devices that were mounted on car dashboards. In light of this, the E-TEN Glofiish X500 was released, a gadget that subtly implied smartphones were capable of much more than just making calls. The X500’s size was the first thing that many reviewers noticed. It was advertised as one of the thinnest Pocket PC phones…
Author: Taylor Lowery
Taylor Lowery
Taylor Lowery is a senior editor at glofiish.com, a technology writer, and a true circuit enthusiast. She works in the tech sector, so she does more than just cover it. Taylor works for a smartphone company during the day, which gives her a firsthand look at how gadgets are designed, manufactured, promoted, and ultimately placed in people's hands.Her writing is unique because of this insider viewpoint. Taylor makes the technical connections that other writers overlook, whether she's dissecting the silicon architecture of a new flagship chipset, analyzing the implications of a significant Android update for actual users, or tracking the effects of a new AI model announcement across the mobile industry.Her editorial focus covers every aspect of the current tech stack, including smartphone software and hardware, artificial intelligence (from large language models and generative tools to on-device inference), and the broader innovation trends influencing the direction of the consumer technology sector. She is especially passionate about the nexus of AI and mobile computing, which she feels is still in its most exciting early stages.
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For a short while in 2008, the smartphone market still felt more like a workshop than a completed showroom. Businesses were experimenting, occasionally in a brilliant way and other times in an awkward way. The E-TEN Glofiish DX900, a phone that attempted to do something surprisingly useful—run two SIM cards simultaneously—appeared somewhere in that disorganized workbench of ideas. Now, that notion seems commonplace. Dual-SIM phones are commonplace in today’s phone markets. However, the idea was practically unheard of at the time, particularly on a smartphone running Windows Mobile. The DX900 was more than just a curious technical device. It was…
You may have noticed something a little out of the ordinary in the glass display cases if you were strolling through a Taipei electronics market in the mid-2000s. Among the well-known brands were Glofiish-branded satellite devices from HTC, Nokia, and Motorola. The name had an odd, almost playful appearance. There were two “i” letters in the middle, like an unrepentant typo. However, a company was secretly experimenting with what smartphones could become behind that strange branding. Long before the term “smartphone” became widely used, in 1985, E-TEN Information Systems was established. Early on, the company developed software and computing tools…
Holding the E-TEN Glofiish X650 makes it immediately apparent that it is a product of an odd era in smartphone history. It seems like a gadget attempting to forecast the future while still carrying the weight of the past, which is both ambitious and a little awkward. Smartphones were still experimenting with identity at the beginning of 2008. Indeed, the iPhone had made its debut, but Windows Mobile devices, such as this one, were still cramming as many features as possible into a small computer. At first look, the X650 appears to be a modest device. A straightforward rectangular slab…