Ericsson Pamela

Year: 2000
Prototype level: Cancelled
Codename: Pamela

Overview

Pamela was one of Ericsson’s early attempts to rethink the mobile phone as a much more capable personal device. Developed around the Quartz platform, it combined GSM telephony with a large colour touchscreen and an interface designed for handling information as well as communication. In appearance, Pamela was closer to a small handheld computer than the phones Ericsson was selling at the time, reflecting how different the company’s ideas about future mobile devices could be around the turn of the millennium.

Pamela was shown to developers in February 2000 and the concept was subsequently presented publicly as part of Ericsson’s Communicator Platform at CeBIT in Hannover. Ericsson described the CeBIT prototype as a working demonstration of a platform from which future commercial devices could be developed. Pamela itself never reached the market. The project was eventually abandoned as Ericsson’s communicator work moved towards later generations of the Quartz platform and, ultimately, the Symbian/UIQ devices that would lead to the P800. Pamela therefore captures a very early stage of the path towards Ericsson’s touchscreen smartphones, before the shape and technology of those products had been settled.