Ericsson R320 GPRS

Year: 2000
Prototype level: Platform
Codename: Röda Mona

Overview

The Ericsson R320 GPRS prototype, was created at a time when packet-switched mobile data was moving from laboratory demonstrations towards something that could eventually be used by ordinary mobile subscribers. Rather than designing a completely new handset for the purpose, Ericsson used the recently introduced R320 as the starting point and adapted it to work with both GSM and GPRS. The result looked much like the commercial R320 on the outside, but represented a very different piece of hardware internally.

The phone was publicly demonstrated by Ericsson in 2000, including at the GSM World Congress in Cannes and at CeBIT, where it was connected to a live GPRS network and used to demonstrate services such as web browsing, email and chat. Ericsson described it as the industry’s first fully working prototype to demonstrate an end-to-end GPRS connection. The company expected commercial GPRS phones to follow, but also made clear that those products would have a different design and incorporate further development. Gars therefore captures a particularly interesting moment in mobile-phone history: the point where GPRS was being proven on real handset hardware, before the technology became a standard feature of commercial phones.