The advancement in technology over the past 20 years has made cell phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops, and personal computers an integral part of our lives. It’s hard to imagine even a single day (or even an hour!) without interacting with your phone or browsing the internet!
Breakthrough in communication tech has made it possible to connect the entire world in just a few clicks, making it easier than ever to communicate with friends and family half the world away or make new friends on the internet.
Competition between tech giants drives innovation so we can hear and read about new phones, notebooks, as well as useful gadgets on an almost daily basis! Many of these inventions end up being absolute hits and become a part of our daily lives. However, some of these tech innovations are so quirky and even downright useless they turn out to be a total disappointment.
We bring you 33 tech inventions that are totally useless today.
1. See-through electronics
Something about this reminds us of aquarium art but with electronics instead of fish and coral. I think we all have to admit this was not really the cleverest idea unless you want to see how tech works. Thank God the Clear craze now belongs in the ancient past, right?
2. This Motorola Razr still makes many folks nostalgic
Ah, who can forget the good old flip phone times! It felt so cool to flip open your phone then flip it shut like a pro. It was like Will Smith using one of those retro-futuristic gadgets in the classic movie ‘Men in Black.’
3. Batteries with an energy display bar
We got to admit that it’s pretty cool to be able to check how much energy was left in a battery but we wouldn’t exactly call it useful. This was not one of those inventions that changed the world, for sure.
4. TVs With A VHS Player Built Into Them
If you were born after 1990 you probably consider those old CRT TVs to be the relicts of a bygone era. And what about VHS players and cassettes? The 80s all over again!
5. ‘The GE Alarm Clock That Everyone Seemed To Have’
Here’s another reminder of how it was in the good old days. Everyone used to have GE alarm clocks on their nightstand and they are so sturdy they seem to last forever. If you stumble across an old GE alarm clock while cleaning your attic, we recommend you give it a try.
6. ‘Cassette Tape That Let You Connect Your iPod To Your Car Stereo’
Too bad pretty much everyone born after 1990 stopped using cassettes ages ago but if you an older car that has a cassette deck, there’s no reason not to use this. They still sell these!
7. ‘Digital Mp3 Players With These Songs’
Who doesn’t want to be reminded of the smooth early 00s pop! Believe it or not, MP3 players were the real deal back then and they’re still alive and well in 2021. Might not be fancy new tech but still does the trick!
8. ‘Portable DVD Players’
Even though we get the idea behind these we can’t help but question how profitable was to make portable DVD players at a time when modern cell phones and tablets began to dominate the market. If anything, they look nice and can come in handy if you don’t have anything else at hand.
9. ‘Remember When Laptops Used To Have That Little Rubber Cl!t For A Mouse?’
That’s one laptop mouse design bound to raise a few eyebrows, to put it mildly. It sure won’t win any product design awards anytime soon!
10. ‘Watches That Lit Up Blue’
While these might look weird, they’re quite useful to check the time at night without running the risk of damaging your retina. Certainly preferrable to those horrible watches with luminescent numbers that made you cringe!
11. ‘Netflix’s DVD Service’
Who would’ve thought things would change so quickly in a little less than a decade! Tech improvement rendered DVD service pretty much useless, prompting Netflix to change with the times. The rest is history.
12. ‘Movies On An iPod With A 2-Inch Screen’
Back when this was a thing, being able to watch movies on a mobile device was pretty rare, which made this iPod a piece of hi-tech. Seems incredible today when we’re surrounded by those pencil-thin big flat screen tv’s and phones!
13. ‘Those Backwards Seats In Station Wagons’
Imagine spending a long trip stuck in a backward-facing seat! People will travel sickness might get nauseous just looking at those seats! Good thing cars rarely have them these days.
14. ‘That Singing Fish’
If fish could talk, would it also mean they could sing? What would be their favorite song? Are we overthinking this? Yeah, probably. Who even comes up with these quirky ideas?
15. ‘CD Players With 45-Second Skip Protection’
You must not get away with skipping songs! Who does that? Jokes aside, CD players were so sensitive they’d skip at the slightest motion you made.
16. ‘Cd Players That Held Multiple Cds At Once’
Devices that use disks have become more or less obsolete today but they were the golden standard back in the day and pretty reliable as well. Having said that, a fact remains that people still buy and listen to CDs in the age of streaming and high-resolution audio.
17. ‘Old School PC Microphones’
Old but gold. Even though they may be a bit robust for the taste of modern generations they still sound quite good and tend to have longer lifespans than more modern mic models. They also give you the impression you’re an old-school singing star!
18. ‘Pagers Are Now Collecting Dust’
Pagers were developed back in the 1950s and 1960s but gained popularity a couple of decades later, in the 1980s when they were mostly used by doctors. other medical and emergency workers. Just think of how many lives these antiquated devices had saved!
19. Robot dogs
Kids used to be crazy about robot toys and if you had one, you were probably envied. You also might remember Furby toys that actually were banned from entering NSA property due to security concerns!
20. ‘Thick Big Screen TVs Only Rich Kids Had’
Not only were they on the pricey side, but they also weighed a ton which made moving them quite difficult. The evolution of display technology rendered these big-screen TVs useless, and we can only be thankful for that!
21. Car phones
Folks today would be surprised to find out that car phones used to be a status symbol a couple of decades ago. People would even buy fake antennas and mount them on their cars to show they were rich enough to afford a car phone. Weird, right?
22. ‘Speakers That Attached To The Monitor’
These just look ugly! What on earth could compel people to buy a monitor that had speakers attached to it? We might never know the answer.
23. ‘A DVD Or VHS Player In A Car’
Not a bad idea if you wanted to watch a movie when on a trip before modern mobile devices became a thing. They still have these so if you ever grow tired of your phone or tablet they can be a perfect alternative!
24. ‘Digital Cable And Being Able To Watch A Ton Of Useless Channels’
How many channels can one actually watch? We guess a typical cable subscriber rarely watches more than twenty.
25. ‘These iPhone Apps Where You Drank Fake Beer’
This is one of those things that seemed so cool at the time when they were popular but often make us cringe in hindsight. Digital beer, someone?
26. ‘Can I Interest You In A Sidekick II With Aol Messenger?’
The Danger Hiptop was initially released in 2002 and became an instant hit in the US. Fans of mobile games loved these despite the (now) incredible fact they had 128 MB of memory. How times change!
27. ‘Phones With Internet On Them In The First Place’
A typical gen z used to smartphones and tablets who often find it easier to find and connect to the closest wifi hotspot than open a print book will have a hard time grasping how hard it was to use the internet on mobile devices back in 2006. It was hard to navigate, expensive, and frustrating all at the same time!
28. ‘Hit Clips’
These are as useless as they look. People actually used to spend money on devices that played snippets of full songs which sounds completely absurd today.
29. ‘A TV With A DVD Player In It’
The era of DVDs definitively came to an end in the late 2010s. DVDs were a huge improvement on cassette tapes that dominated the 80s and much of the 90s. DVD sales have declined more than 86 percent since 2008 which makes them another piece of tech history.
30. ‘Fake Lighter Phone Apps’
Why use a flashlight app when you can opt for the old-fashioned digital lighter? The app could come in handy if you’re scared of getting burned.
31. ‘Paper Toss iPhone Game’
Real paper is so 1990! It’s high time to abandon traditional paper toss in favor of an iPhone game. Seriously, who thinks of games like these?
32. ‘Having The Option And The Ability To Update Your Facebook From A Text Message’
It took a while to type and send a text on those old phones. Imagine having to type a long text message to update your Facebook profile in 2021! Sounds like a punishment.
33. ‘The Original Ipod And The Million Buttons It Had’
The thing with buttons is that they can malfunction and stop responding altogether in which case your device was as good as useless. They were once a necessity; nowadays little more than a memory!
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