Sony Ericsson Z700

Year: 2002
Prototype level: Cancelled
Codename: N/A

Overview

The Sony Ericsson Z700 was an early phone developed around the creation of the Sony Ericsson joint venture and was intended as an entertainment- and gaming-focused handset. It combined a colour display with GPRS, Bluetooth, Java, WAP and HTML support, positioning it as a more capable successor to Sony’s earlier Z-series phones. Ericsson’s own 2002 material presented the Z700 as a phone aimed at younger, computer- and media-oriented users, with downloadable Java games and applications forming an important part of the concept. 

Despite being announced and documented by Sony Ericsson, the Z700 never reached commercial production. The project appears to have been overtaken by the company’s decision to concentrate its early product strategy around other handsets, most notably the T68/T68i. Surviving Z700 prototypes show a design strongly related to Sony’s earlier CMD-Z7, but with a colour display and the new Sony Ericsson identity, making the phone an interesting physical link between Sony’s previous GSM products and the company’s first generation of joint-venture devices. 

The Z700 is particularly interesting as a cancelled product because it was not simply an obscure engineering experiment: it was publicly presented as part of Sony Ericsson’s early product plans and appears to have progressed to working prototypes before being abandoned. Only a small number of these prototypes seem to have survived, making the Z700 one of the more tangible examples of the alternative directions Sony Ericsson considered at the very beginning of its history.