When silver tech was popular in the 2000s – and how black killed it

 

Remember some time back in the 2000s, when so many tech products were coloured silver? At one point it was almost dominant, yet it was also killed off spectacularly quickly later that decade. In this article I’ll be taking a close look at the silver trend in tech.

Silver coloured tech had been around long before. If you look at some products from the late 70s and early 80s you can see it had been used in some things. Later in the 80s however, black became dominant and it continued to be well into the 90s. Except for desktop computers of course, which were mostly beige.

The silver coloured tech trend started in the late 90s, about 1997 or so. I’m not sure who the trendsetter was but I keep thinking of Japanese camera makers, who were making more silver point-and-shoot cameras starting in about 1995. Sony released its first WEGA flat TVs in 1998, and these were coloured silver. After this point it started becoming increasingly used in place of black.

At the same time, another development was occuring in personal computers: Apple’s popular iMac, with its translucent and colourful shells instead of the boring beige. Both these trends showed that consumers around the millenium were now looking at different, more stylish design choices. And certainly, black’s dominance in consumer technology came under threat.

In the space of just a few years, most home applicances switched from black to silver, whereas the PC industry moved from beige to alternatives (albeit a bit more gradual)

 

Soon, silver was becoming the standard and by 2002 it was pretty much dominant all-over. Silver was cool, black was old. And in PCs, beige also went out of fashion, replaced by more grey and blue-hue colours. There were some companies that stayed out of this trend, however. Most notably Apple, who’s popular iPod was primarily white, and had a secondary black colour option. And non-silver colours were still around in other tech, most notably Sony’s PSP, which was well ahead of its time with its shiny black colour.

In mobile phones, which were and remain the most ubiqitous piece of consumer technology, it had also killed out the more colours that were so present in phones of the early 2000s.

Silver mobile phones from the 2002 to 2005 period

 As quickly as silver became so popular, it lost its crown very quickly too. Its quick death started in 2006: in the early part of the year, LG introduced the Chocolate mobile phone. With its sleek black look, and touch-sensitive buttons with red backlights, the Chocolate became a runaway hit worldwide. Suddenly, black was cool – more specifically, a glossy sort of black that screamed out “fashionable”, thus different from the black we had in the 90s. LG played a big part in setting this trend.

And it wasn’t just LG in the mobile space: Samsung pretty much switched over from silver to black in most of its 2006 mobile phones. I can tell that both these companies felt the winds of change sometime before the year started. Then in May 2006 was a big one: Sony (infamously) revealed its final details of its PlayStation 3 launch. What was notable here is that the final PS3 product was revealed to be black – this was switched from silver, which was the colour of the PS3 prototype shown a year prior. (though it was also shown in silver in the public booth, it was eventually not released at all).

Was this to do with “luxury”? After all, the LG Chocolate was marketed to be a sleek, sexy and fashionable product, while the PS3 was built to be the ultimate entertainment computer, Ken Kutaragi’s “final” gift before he retired. Maybe the switch to Piano Black was to further show that PS3 was supposed to be the high-end, luxurious product of its category, in many ways similar to how Chocolate was the sleek and fashionable phone. In any case, what we didn’t know at the time was that we were watching the death of silver.

Top: the PS3 prototype from 2005 and the final version in black in 2006. Bottom: the first Nintendo DS, and the DS Lite in white and black. Bottom right: the LG Chocolate.

 

Long before these even, Nintendo introduced the DS Lite at the start of the year, a revision of its DS system. Unlike the DS, which came in silver as its main colour, the new DS Lite came in white and black, clearly inspired by the iPod. Later Nintendo released the Wii and this was released in white, not silver. Interestingly enough, the Wii prototype (Revolution) in 2005 was black, and that may also suggest that there were signs of upcoming change behind the scenes throughout various industries already in 2005.

TV makers were following the trend, and by 2007 pretty much all new TV sets had switched to black. I have a theory that the emergence of Plasma displays also played a part: plasmas were known for having very deep blacks, and what better way to showcase such technology? Of course, on a black set, where it melds in with the physical bits around the TV screen.

It's funny how an easy google images search reveals the change

Nokia, the then largest mobile phone maker, was still living in silver for a while, but even here there was a change. Improved editions of some of its smartphones, that were originally released in silver, would instead be black: see the N80 Internet Edition, the 8GB version of N91, and the N73 Music Edition from 2007. What this suggests is that, like Sony and LG, Nokia chose black to represent the higher end, “premium” product. Its famous N95 model which was the most advanced piece of pocket tech at the time, was released in silver only, but again its update with 8GB internal memory, was released in black instead. Most Nokias in 2007 were now coloured black in place of silver.

LG followed the Chocolate by more black phones, signifying its status as a more “luxurious” colour – this was best seen in the Prada touch phone, created together with the Italian fashion brand. Its sleek and glossy black look once again demonstrated how black was now seen. With its black minimalist design, and shortly before the iPhone was a thing, LG was certainly influential in this modern type of black in technology. But I think Sony was also very influential, thanks to the PSP, which was released in 2004-2005 in Piano Black.

Microsoft had introduced the Xbox 360 Elite in October 2007, which was the most expensive and top retail configuration – and of course, it came in black, mirroring what the others had been doing as well. The phase two Xbox 360 revision in 2010 (the S) was released with its main colour being black, unlike the original 360 from 2005 which came in white initially.

In such a short space of time, silver went out, replaced by black (as well as white). If you look at a catalogue of tech products in 2007, you’d be hard pressed to find silver here – apart from maybe compact cameras, most have all gone. By 2008, silver was dead and buried, other than the occasional camera. Sure, there were non-black colours around but these would either be white or grey (titanium-like), certainly not the silver that dominated from 2000 to 2006.

In retrospect

I am writing this in 2023, so it’s been over 15 years now since silver died off. Black remains the most common colour, although we could also argue that the relevance of white has also taken a hit – although the PlayStation 5 is here to prove us wrong. We have however seen an increase in popularity in grey, a specific dark shade of grey that was certainly also around in the late 2000s, although never as popular as black. As for smartphones, nowadays most don’t even have bezels and have a screen occupying the whole front – and that would always remain black.

Technically, silver was still around for a few more years after 2007 however: in cars. Many cars from that period of time were still sold in silver, but that also started to die in the early 2010s, overtaken by both white and titanium grey.

After 2008, silver continued to be popular in cars, but that too started to fade during the 2010s

Would silver ever make a come back? I’m not so sure, it is very symbolic of a bygone era, similarly to wooden coloured tech from the mid-century. Black and white are here to stay. Long live silver.