The Cellphones Which Are Most Ugliest

The Cell Phones We Love to Hate:

Some cell phones really look great, but are impossible to use. Other cell phones have cool features, but are ugly ducklings. Then there are those rare mobile monstrosities that fail at both looks and usability. Some have pricing issues as well.

Now to be fair, many cell phone makers fail when they are too ambitious, adding cutting-edge features way before their time or taking a design risk. Without these noble failures, perhaps no iPhone would ever have been possible.

The phones in our dirty dozen list all suffer from either design flaws or functionality failures, or both. While we hope you never get stuck with one of these stinkers, we also hope these phones have contributed to the greater good of the mobile world by letting handset makers learn from their mistakes.

How Ugliest Those Are!

The Siemens Xelibri Line:

The Xelibri phones from Siemens were all so odd and ugly that we decided to include the entire lineup here. Launched in 2003, the first wave of Xelibri phones was envisioned to be a consumer must-have. Sadly for Siemens, they proved be successful as a spectacle, but were criticized for not coming close to being fully functioning mobile phones.

The brand lasted only about 18 months, after which the Xelibri designs went off store shelves.

Toshiba G450:

In the category of “What on Earth is that?” is the Toshiba G450. This strange device is a combination USB broadband modem, cell phone and mobile storage unit. Talk about your digital split personalities!

Basically, this is one of those all-in-one gadgets of 2008 that proves less is more. With only 160MB of internal storage, the G450 was a tad on the skimpy side for a decent storage device. The small screen and the odd split-in-two keypad made it very hard to have any sort of decent use as a mobile phone.

Left only with its metallic color (the phones came in black, silver and pink), the Toshiba G450 proved to be used best as a wireless broadband modem, supporting 3G, HSDPA, EDGE and GPRS connections.

Hopefully, Toshiba learned that three bad implementations of otherwise useful tools into one device doesn’t always work.

Virgin Mobile Lobster 700TV:

Who needs to kill time playing games on your cell when you have Virgin Mobile's Lobster 700 TV Phone? The name is inspired by its lobster-claw-like shape, but if you ask us, the Virgin phone -- with its dreary gray-and-silver color scheme -- is no catch.

Virgin does deserve some credit when it comes to features. With the unit's unlimited mobile TV, the company made the Lobster the first phone to offer mobile TV without added data costs. The only problem: Who wants a phone that resembles a crustacean?

The Lobster was first released on the Virgin Mobile network in October 2006. The phone is no longer available, and the mobile TV service was discontinued in January 2008.

Compulab Exeda:

For a phone that runs both Windows and Android, you’d think Compulab’s Exeda would look a little more modern. The boxy handset resembles a squashed Palm Treo, and its multiple navigation buttons seem downright confusing. The phone will support both GSM and CDMA when released; it will also have a touch-screen and a QWERTY keypad with a mini-trackpad. Also featured on the phone are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, an Ethernet port, a 2-megapixel camera and a MicroSD card slot.

You may have to wait a little bit to get your hands on this ugly duckling -- though the company's Web site says the Exeda will be available for purchase starting this month, there is no word on price or whether a wireless carrier will have the guts to offer it to its customers at a subsidized cost.


Vertu Bucheron Cobra:

The undisputable king of ugliness is the Vertu Bucheron Cobra -- with its sole standout feature being the ridiculous price tag of $310,000. Covered by a gold cobra with 439 rubies and crusted with one pear-cut diamond, one round diamond and two emerald eyes, this phone from Nokia’s deluxe division is not for mere mortals.

Only eight of these tacky monsters were ever produced, but you could get one of the 26 “more affordable” units, which were “only” $115,000, with a python instead of a cobra. If you actually shelled out the money for this grotesque piece of technology, you wouldn’t get any of the high-end specs one would expect for a (2006) phone: no camera, no Bluetooth -- just gems!

However, for the hefty price tag you do get a 24-hour remote concierge (no joke) accessible from a dedicated side-button, who will give you local insight into where to go out, eat and drink, anywhere in the world. We mortals could get this feature from our much cheaper and more-advanced mobile phones, thanks to Google Maps.