To be honest I can’t believe it’s been ten whole years. In November 2002 I had a Nokia 6210 and wanted something with a colour screen. Yes, a colour screen.
I paid a visit to the Orange store in Merry Hill where the Orange SPV had only just arrived. The handset was built by some random company called “High Tech Computer Corporation” (HTC) but no-one even knew that – it was an Orange branded device powered by an OS called Microsoft Smartphone 2002.
It wasn’t on display but a kind member of staff opened up the box even though they knew nothing about it. The SPV was so far ahead of anything else. SPV stood for “Sound, Pictures and Video” – this was a phone that had a Media Player, an Internet Browser and Outlook. The SPV was also known as the “HTC Canary” and, by the standards of today, it had pretty rubbish specs. The Texus Instruments CPU was 132MHz – yes, MHz. Today the Raspberry Pi has a 700MHz processor.
The SPV had a 176×220 pixel screen, but you’d still enjoy watching this Chemical Brothers video which came installed on the SD card that slotted in the side.
But there were problems. Dust collected behind the screen on the SPV (anyone remember that?) and it wouldn’t actually connect to the internet unless you corrected a few settinggs first. But hey, it was still good and you can tell how much I loved it in this post. I liked the phone and I liked fixing the issues, converting videos and creating backdrops.
I started throwing a few pages up on the back of a family website with tips, tricks and downloads. There was app unlocking, ringtones and more. I called the pages “Orange SPV Extreme Stuffage” (yeah, I know) and it was designed in Microsoft Frontpage (I still have the nightmares) 🙂
The response those few pages was amazing, and a couple of weeks after (on December 11th to be precise I purchased a domain name called “bornsloppy.co.uk” and moved everything to that. This particular archive capture was taken shortky after, on January 28th 2003. I chose that particular name purely because this Channel 4 show had just gone to air and was receiving huge amounts of pubicity. The domain was available, so I nabbed it.
The site then grew still further, but I quickly became known as “that Born Sloppy guy” and it didn’t really look good for the SPV or the up-coming SPV E100, so I bought a domain on February 14th 2003 called Coolsmartphone.com. This is how things looked back then. Notice how we started adding news on the right side…
Shortly after this things started to go pretty crazy, and I just couldn’t use Frontpage any more. We switched to a Content Management System and then the site started looking like this…
This is how many of you may remember the site. It went a little more ” lightweight” here and then switched (after about three months of migration) to the site you see today.
There’s some bits I’ve not mentioned of course. Initially we covered just Microsoft Smartphone, then we added Pocket PC, which all merged into Windows Mobile. From there we started covering Android and iPhone.
So, those dates again…
– The first pages were added to the web in November 2002.
– BornSloppy.co.uk hit the web on December 11th 2002
– Coolsmartphone went live on February 14th 2003
It was only fairly recently, at the beginning of 2011, that we really started adding more talented writers, bloggers and tech fans to the site. It’s their continued and unrelenting dedication to hunting down the latest gossip, reviewing the latest kit and news that keeps this place growing.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be celebrating in style. More on that shortly, but until then, here’s my little video review of the handsets from the early days of coolsmartphone.com 🙂
Heartfelt congratulations Leigh Geary, CoolSmartPhone.com has been in me news feeds for years and I’ve been a steady visitor for nearly all those ten years.
It should be said that your work has been invaluable for the smartphone cause.
Your commitment to document and report about smartphones has helped push the advancement of Smartphones.
Your work and dedication should not be underestimated.
Congrats.
hi leigh congrats on the site , i bought the first spv with addon camera because of the excitmentu generated on the very early site
I just wanted to say well done for the last ten years Leigh. I was messing around with PDAs and Windows phones back in the day and have always found your site a good source of information, with well written articles that are easy for the layman to understand.
All the best mate
Ditto what everyone else says – I bought ny SPV (which I still have) because of you and this site – remember burping on the podcasts?
Happy Birthday Coolsmartphone, well done Leigh. The site has been (and still is) essential for keeping upto date with the latest new/tips/tricks.
I remember feeling ten years ago as though the SPV was my little secret and how powerful a device it felt!
It makes me giggle inside to know that I was streaming my webcam to my SPV over gprs and how impressive I felt to see my Dog in various positions on my sofa when i was out and about. Orange sent me a massive bill that month… dunno why 🙂
Shame folk nowadays think the iPhone was the first smartphone, some of us know better.
Congratulations Leigh! and Happy Birthday Coolsmartphone! Ditto everyone else’s comments. Think I’ve been with you pretty much all the way since my SPV.
Keep it up , and have a few beers tonight! 😀
Agree with all the comments here. I have visited this site since the beginning and the rants of gears were excellent reading and I always agreed with them! Excellent stuff!! Really miss the spv. What a great device! Keep up the good work.