Hold the front page: color has finally arrived on the mobile phone, and it’s brought to you by the Germans. The Siemens S10, launched in 1997, is technically a landmark achievement as the world’s first mobile with a color display. Now, before you start imagining high-definition photos, let’s manage expectations: it can display exactly four colors, red, green, blue, and white. It’s like looking at a very high-end digital watch from the future. While it’s not exactly a Technicolor dreamcoat, using red for missed calls and green for the menu makes the whole experience feel significantly more modern than the pea-soup monochrome we’ve all grown used to.
Technically, the S10 is a beast of a business phone. It’s got a built-in dictaphone for recording up to 20 seconds of voice memos, perfect for capturing those “million-pound ideas” that usually turn out to be “buy more milk”. It’s a high-end GSM device with excellent signal reception thanks to its retractable antenna. The build quality is quintessentially Siemens, solid, slightly industrial, and built to survive a nuclear winter. There’s even an “Active” version for the outdoorsy types that is shock, moisture, and dust resistant.
However, being a pioneer comes with baggage, literally. The S10 is a bit of a brick, weighing in at a substantial 185g. While the color screen is the headline, the actual resolution is quite low, and the menu system isn’t quite as slick as Nokia’s Series 20. But you can’t argue with the innovation. Siemens have effectively fired the first shot in the “screen wars,” and while the 6110 might be more popular in the UK right now, the S10 is the one that people will remember as the phone that finally stopped the world from being black and white.