Sony has seen dramatic ups and downs in the technology market since its inception. The Japanese tech powerhouse, which once ruled the consumer market with the Walkman, View laptops and the Tradition TV and even made big bets on Hollywood by acquiring Columbia Pictures, still exists, but its priorities are now different. It continues to thrive in the high-end consumer electronics space with the PlayStation brand, Bra via TVs and mirrorless cameras, despite increasing pressure from its American and Korean rivals.
Many people owned Sony products in their childhood, and they invoke great memories even if you haven’t used them in years. Sony is a hot brand in the collector's community – and people are ready to pay a huge sum for rare devices. Today we’re going to take a look at just some of the weirdest and out-of-the-world products that have come out of Sony’s lab through the years. These devices may not be as successful as Sony’s other products, but they did showcase how this company was once willing to take risks and had no inhibitions to roll out crazy products in the market.
An MP3 player, a built-in speaker and an autonomous robot in the shape of an egg. Launched in 2007 for $400, the Rolls is till date Sony’s most weird device. It never took the tech world by storm, but it showed that the designers and engineers at Sony had full liberty to think of something as wild and bizarre as the Rolls and bring it to the market. When the egg-shaped music player plays music, it flaps its side flippers, flashes lights and jiggles like a robot.
The Rolls were unique enough to be easily differentiated from the iPod, the dominant music player of its time, but Sony’s digital-audio player didn’t do well commercially. The Rolls had two speakers, but it lacked a built-in headphone jack. Consumers at a time wanted an MP3 player that they could carry in their pockets, but Sony was looking to tap in a new demographic with a device that offers a unique experience to people.
Long before the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Surface Duo, Sony experimented with a device that was meant to excel in multitasking. The Tablet P wasn’t anything like the iPad, which was crushing Android-based tablets in 2011. With two displays and a hinge, Sony tried to make a dual-screen tablet, but it never received commercial success. The idea wasn’t half-baked, but the Tablet P was too ambitious for its time. It boasted two 5.5-inch displays, although it weighed a hefty 372 grams, the tablet could easily be slipped in a back pocket.
Not that the hardware of the tablet was not top-notch; it had a 1GHz Nvidia Tetra 2 processor and 4G, but the software was a big let-down. The tablet lacked built-in multitasking features; plus, third-party apps weren’t dual-screen friendly. Sony’s own apps were optimized for the Tablet P, but these were mixed-bags. Since the launch of the Tablet P, many companies have experimented with dual-screen and foldable devices, but we are yet to see a device that convinces users to ditch their existing phones for something like the Galaxy Z Fold or Surface Duo.
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