Behold This Miserable List of Cellphone Failures

I'm baffled. How a phone that is both a writing utensil and a device for making calls to other humans—humans who might also be writing with their pen phones when I call upon them—could fail is beyond me.

And yet, dear readers, this is exactly what happened to the efficiently named Siemens PenPhone, along with four other fallen angels of the mobile space. A quick moment of silence, if you please, for these five defunct pieces of communications technology, all of which were taken, mercifully, before their time:

Siemens PenPhone

The aforementioned PenPhone was just that: A phone that could recognize handwriting and turn that into an SMS. It never made it our of the concept phase, which allows me to hold out hope it may one day see the light of day and my hand.

Nokia 7700

Canceled in 2004, this was Nokia's first attempt at a touchscreen phone. There was also Bluetooth, an expansion slot and it kind of looked like an N-Gage! No wonder it failed.

Samsung F520

The first of three Samsungs on the list, the Ford-sounding F520 was a split personality slider. It was one of the company's first touchscreen devices but never saw the success of Samsung's later handsets.

Samsung Watchphone

Ah, the watchphone. Since the days of Dick Tracy we've been waiting for this type of communications device. Sadly, this $900 was too expensive and too limited for the mainstream, and we'll be waiting a while longer.

Samsung T700

Yuck. Designed to look like a makeup case, this phone was targeted at women and missed mightily.