Chinavasion | China Gadgets BlogWholesale Electronics and the Gadget Business

Pretty much everyone has a cell phone these days. From the busy executive to the construction worker almost everybody has something to keep them connected to their friends and family.

According to Xinhua there were 530 million cell phone owners in China in 2007 alone. In 2006 the association of GSM providers and manufacturers predicted that 90% of the world’s population would have access to the mobile network by 2010.

But that doesn’t mean that everybody’s phone looks the same. For such an ubiquitous device there are all sorts of shapes and sizes with everybody preferring something different.

So here are the cell phone shapes that you are probably most familiar with:

Bar Phone

Often called the ‘classic’ cell phone, or candy bar phone, or block phone it is the standard design which evolved from the first ‘real’ cell phone the Motorola DynaTAC 800x, which was affectionately called the ‘brick’ due to its dimensions and relative indestructibility.

Slide And Twist Cell Phones Relative newcomers to the cell phone family the slide and twist cell phones tend to match the presentation of a big screen with the functionality of a keypad.

PDA Phones And Touchscreen Cell Phones

These usually represent the higher end of the market with the most well known touchscreen version being the Apple iPhone with the RIM Blackberry also being very popular.

While touchscreen functionality is slipping more frequently onto candy bar phones cell phones that have a touchscreen-only interface are still incredibly popular.

Watch Phones While watch phones are very new on the scene (They first started showing up in earnest in late 2007) they have been part of the collective consciousness ever since the Dick Tracy radio serials of the 1940’s.

They are catching on with the mainstream though with LG, Tag Heur and other watch and phone makers starting to make their own models.

So, which is your favorite type of phone. Take part in the poll below and tell us which phones we should stock more of in the comments section.

Tell us how long you keep your cell phone for. Just click on your picture to take part in another cell phone poll