Throwback Thursday: AT&T VideoPhone 2500

By on Dec 30, 2010 at 4:21 PM
General December 30, 2010

To celebrate the arrival of Skype’s mobile video chat on the iPhone 4, today’s Throwback Thursday looks back fondly on another ultimately fruitless attempt to popularize video calling: the AT&T VideoPhone 2500. AT&T had swung and missed with video calling before, but the introduction of the VideoPhone 2500 in 1992 would be the home run the company had been waiting for. Costing just $1,599.99 per phone or $1,449.99 each if you bought two or more, this puppy was going to bring video calling to the eager masses. Grandparents would be able to see their precious little grandchildren from across the country, workaholic dads would be able to video-call their kids before bedtime, tweens would be able to take sexting to the next uncomfortable level… wait, we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little. But alas, no one wanted to pay an arm and a leg for a video phone, no one wanted to cough up between $30 and $90 each month for video calling, and in the end, no one was really interested in the service at all once the novelty wore off — just like we’re seeing today with mobile video chat.

BGR’s Throwback Thursday is a weekly series covering our (and your) favorite gadgets, games, and software of yesterday and yesteryear.

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  • Anonymous

    Wasn’t the video actually in black and white not in color?

    • Anonymous

      It looks like color to me in that picture above.

      • Anonymous

        Right, but that’s a stock image, not one of the actual video in play.

      • Anonymous

        Do you really think they would use a COLOR stock image (or not), if the product only displays black and white?

      • Wombat

        All the advertisements and even the box packaging showed high quality color on the display. The reality of it was grainy greyscale at very low resolution. There was a complete and total disconnect between the product they wanted to sell you and the product they were selling you. But that’s all the technology at the time could allow, really. It was just one of those too good to be true products that never should have been made.

  • Max

    I was just a kid during the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. Sensing this would be one of the last events of its kind, my dad enouraged me to go often. At the AT&T pavilion, they had a “picturephone” set up for display. Basically it utilized two television style cameras, one for each person, to demonstrate the picture transmission- so I was called up by the host to try it out. This was supposed to be in common usage by 1970. It’s the FUTURE, folks!!!

  • Tech_User

    that picture in the screen is photoshopped, no way that it was in color in 1992 not even laptops in that time had color screens, and no way could it have looked that clear, not even my skype videochats look as clear as that.

    • Anonymous

      It is color. It’s a color LCD display. 1992 is less than twenty years ago. You know they even had cars back then.

      • Tech_User

        i find it hard to believe that they had color displays when nothing portable such a PDA was in color yet

      • Anonymous

        This has nothing to do with ‘belief’. I don’t give a **** what you believe.

        Look at the picture.

        I guess Santa Claus still comes to your house.

      • Hate, Y U No Love?

        I find it hard to believe that you (and a few others) can’t do a web search for “At&t Videophone 2500″ but can leave dumb comments on BGR.

      • Tech_User

        no dumba** im on crappy AT&T DSL

      • Anonymous

        So I’m the dumba** even though you are the one on crappy AT&T DSL.

    • Myc

      it was one of the first color plasma screens

      • Anonymous

        There is no way that is Plasma. It is LCD.

      • Tech_User

        wheres the source?

  • KMont1234

    I can’t even get that HD quality of video with FaceTime on iPhone.

  • No Thanks

    That family gives me the willies.

  • Carl

    Google is your friend… it was indeed a color screen.

  • Hate, Y U No Love?

    ” and in the end, no one was really interested in the service at all once the novelty wore off — just like we’re seeing today with mobile video chat”

    Thats funny… fanboys and haters are constantly insisting that front-facing cameras will make or break a product… or a whole corporation. Sometimes BGR does toss in a nugget of opinion that makes sense.

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