Siemens DECT phone with video support in 1998

While searching for another thing, I encountered the annual report of Siemens AG from 1998:

On page 18, a pretty interesting devices is shown I hadn’t heard of as of today:
A DECT-based video telephone.
Sadly, no product name is mentioned, it is just called “Videohandy”.
Here is the image:


The device seems to have a mirror mechanism for the camera

There also seems to be a patent:

Does anyone have additional information/details on this device?

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I never heard of it. My completely unfounded suspicion would be that they maybe did a prototype but would assume it neve went into production. Given how much of a commercial failure wired video phones were [given their price]…

I’ve asked a friend formerly working in that field (even at Siemens).

The interesting thing is that this is a part of the annual report, so I would assume that a company would only report about products which are ready to be able to contribute to the company’s value creation :slight_smile:
I agree with you that it may just be a prototype. Given what DECT and cellular phones of Siemens looked like in 1998, the design of the “Videohandy” is unusually angular.

My anonymous contact states:

It looks like a development sample which possibly made it in the annual report as nothing else positive was to report from that division of the business?

Furthermore, he says

Siemens was very active in DECT standardization at the time, particularly for “wideband” DECT/ISDN interworking. Given that Siemens had developed the T-View 100 for Deutsche Telekom, I suspect much of that circuitry was re-used, together with a lab setup for DECT-ISDN-Interworking, which has been standardized at ETSI around that time.

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