Sony Ericsson Justine

Year: 2007
Prototype level: Cancelled
Codename: Justine

Overview

The Sony Ericsson Justine was an unreleased slider phone from the company’s late-2000s development programme. Interestingly, the project existed in more than one form, with both conventional T9 keypad prototypes and versions fitted with a full QWERTY keyboard being produced. The different hardware configurations make Justine an interesting example of Sony Ericsson experimenting with alternative ways of interacting with its slider-phone designs.

The specimen in this collection is the QWERTY version. It has an especially unusual piece of prototype hardware on the rear: an additional external PCB mounted over the upper part of the back of the phone. This board appears to function as an extension of the main hardware and carries dedicated Web, Media and Power buttons. The exposed, add-on nature of the board is a good illustration of how prototype hardware could be modified during development without integrating every component into the final enclosure.

Very little information about Justine appears to have survived, and the project never reached commercial release. The surviving prototypes therefore provide most of the evidence of its existence, with the different T9 and QWERTY versions showing that Sony Ericsson explored more than one configuration before the project disappeared.