History of mobile phones: 2003 - Sony Ericsson T68i

Launched in time for the 2001 Christmas season, the candy bar-style Ericsson T68m was the first mobile phone made by Ericsson to have a color screen, a passive LCD-STN with a resolution of 101×80 and 256 colors. Despite its diminute size, it was one of the most feature-rich mobile phones at the time, with Bluetooth, IrDA port, GPRS 3+1, tri-band compatibility, SMS with T9 , EMS, WAP, and customizable monophonic ring tones. In 2002, after a slight cosmetic redesign and a software upgrade, the T68m was re-released as the Sony Ericsson T68i, as by then Ericsson had joined forces with Sony Corporation to produce mobile phones as Sony Ericsson. The upgrade, also available to owners of the T68, provided a built-in e-mail client, and, for the first time ever, two-way MMS. The T68i is known for being a highly effective example of stealth marketing. Before being released Sony Ericsson paid actors to pretend to be tourists and asked people to take pictures of them with the T68i.