The UK Mobile Phone Blog

007 Gets a Titanium Sony Ericsson C902

August 5, 2008 at 12:54 pm by Jay | In Mobile News

If there is one thing we can be sure about James Bond, it’s that the man likes his gadgets. It is a bit of a surprise to learn, therefore, that 007 has only been using a mobile phone in films since 1997, when he used the Ericsson JB988 in Tomorrow Never Dies.

The JB988 was a concept design by Ericsson, (Ericsson didn’t become Sony Ericsson until 2001) and a phone of that style was never actually released to the public. Clearly Ericsson had dropped the ball, the ‘James Bond’ phone became the most requested handset in mobile retail, product placement for a product that doesn’t exist was a bit of a blunder! In 2000 Ericsson released a handset called the r380, which many assumed to be the JB988, although there are significant design differences.

The JB988 was a very advanced handset for its time. Features of the phone included a stun gun, a fingerprint reader, a removable antenna (mobile phones still had external antenna in those days) which doubled as a lock pick, and an option to remotely control Bond’s BMW. The Ericsson JB988 played a prominent role in the first part of Tomorrow Never Dies, helping Bond to escape from Dr Kaufman using the stun gun setting, open a secure safe using the fingerprint scanner and of course, the famous car chase where Bond controlled his BMW, driving via remote control from the back seat.

For his next outing The World is Not Enough, Bond had apparently run out of inclusive minutes as there weren’t any notable appearances from Sony Ericsson to speak of. But by Die Another Day, it appears Sony Ericsson (as they were now known) had learnt from their mistake of not using an actual phone available to purchase in Tomorrow Never Dies, and used the Sony Ericsson T68i and Sony Ericsson P800 in the film. At the beginning of the film a P800 is used to take a picture of Bond whilst he is undercover posing as a diamond dealer. Information is sent back to the handset revealing his true identity. Later in the film a T68i is used by agent Giacinta ‘Jinx’ Johnson as a countdown timer and detonator to blow up the gene therapy clinic. Finally a phone for all us budding 007’s!

Most recently in the latest Bond film, Casino Royale, 007 is seen using a Sony Ericsson K800i. In the film he uses a silver K800i which was released exclusively in the UK on the O2 network. The handset in the film was shown to support GPS, although in real life the K800i did not have this feature. But did Bond use Facewarp between missions? We’ll never know! There were also other Sony Ericsson mobile phones in the film, as text messaging played a significant part of the early plot, with the word ELLIPSIS being sent via text. ELLIPSIS turned out to be the password for entering the secure area at Miami airport, typed into an alpha-numeric keypad, corresponding to the numbers 35541141. Later on in the movie treasury official Vesper Lynd is seen sending and receiving email on a Sony Ericsson M600. A message is left on the M600 for Bond, giving the name of Mr White, and his mobile number.

And for his latest adventure, entitled The Quantum of Solace, once again 007 will be equipped with a Sony Ericsson mobile phone, a limited edition titanium silver Sony Ericsson C902, which we got the scoop on back in March. The C902 is one of the most feature packed handsets released from Sony Ericsson to date, including a superb 5.0 megapixel camera, large internal memory capacity and high speed mobile broadband connectivity. There is no word yet on any enhancements Q will add to the phone!

The limited edition C902 will be available to purchase exclusively on the O2 network, and is expected to be released in October, before the film release which is on the 31st October.

Bookmark at:
StumbleUpon | Digg | Del.icio.us | Dzone | Newsvine | Spurl | Simpy | Furl | Reddit | Yahoo! MyWeb