Sierra Wireless
Voq

The VOQ (pronounced voke), was Sierra Wireless’s first and last smartphone. It cost $400 when it was launched. It came at a time when Sierra Wireless, which was well-known for selling cellular data modules and PC cards, was looking to diversify. Sadly, the result was this Frankenstein design, which astonishingly went on to win the British Columbia Technology Industries Association (BC TIA) "Excellence in Product Innovation Award" in 2004. People who worked on this project blamed the awkward design on a case of “too many chefs in the kitchen resulting in a bad way to solve the problem we were trying to solve.” They also described the whole project as being “horribly underfunded for what Sierra Wireless was trying to do.” One specific area where the team suffered was a lack of personnel with detailed experience in making a mobile handset. The VOQ phone came at a time when BlackBerry devices, with their hardware qwerty keyboards, were amongst the most popular smartphones on the market. The VOQ’s fold-out keyboard was a novel design that attempted to deliver the best of both a traditional mobile phone and a BlackBerry device. One unfortunate issue that emerged when you flipped open the keyboard and adjusted your hands to start typing, was that the device was very top-heavy and would feel as though it was tipping out of your hands. Ergonomically, this was a disaster. When a user flipped out the qwerty keyboard the MyVoq application automatically started allowing users to access their contacts, notes, a calculator, and a list of their favourite Web sites, together with a history of previous actions. This was a powerful feature that was well-liked at the time. The phone was powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 2003 and was the first time a keyboard was married with the Microsoft Smartphone variant of Windows Mobile. Previously, to support a keyboard, the phone maker had to use Microsoft’s Pocket PC. This caused a lot of software issues with the device because Microsoft’s Smartphone development team was primarily focused on the one-handed operation of the device with the main intention being that the device would be a phone first. The performance of the device deteriorated even further when the software was upgraded from Windows Mobile 2003 to Windows Mobile 2003 SE with certain functions ceasing to work. The under-resourced team working on the device also found it very challenging to work with Microsoft, Intel and Qualcomm, who all supplied elements used in the device, which was built around a Siemens GSM module. Despite these issues, the early corporate trials with the VOQ smartphone solicited positive feedback, but this was primarily with regard to the software rather than the hardware, which most people said needed dramatically improving. In some ways, the VOQ had some ground-breaking features, in particular its use of Sierra Wireless’s server-less corporate email and search software. However, this came at a time when the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) was widely deployed, and network operators were being heavily incentivised to sell it to businesses. One famous story underlining how robust the VOQ device was, tells of a frustrated user throwing it at a lamp post after the buggy software rejected a call instead of accepting it as intended. While the phone remained intact it left a dent in the lamp post! It is estimated that the company made approximately 10,000 units of the VOQ phone. The foray into being a smartphone maker ended for Sierra Wireless on 7 July 2005 when the company announced it would be exiting the "VOQ Professional Phone initiative".