I Remember Nokia Devices

 

From left to right: Nokia N6682, Nokia 6650, Nokia E71, Nokia N82, Nokia N71, Nokia E61

The day has finally arrives that Nokia Devices becomes a part of Microsoft and Nokia will no longer produce devices for the next 2 years.  Many of my phones have been a Nokia so I've experienced Nokia's growth from the old black and green screens to S40 to S60 to Maemo to Windows Phone.  They've brought so many innovations such as ringtones, games, changeable covers, and mechanical image stabilization to phones.  The industry is going to lack a little innovation without one of its oldest companies.

Since I'm in the mopy mood, let me reflect on some of the Nokia devices that I have owned

My first Nokia was a 252 on Bell's prepaid Solo service. It had poor battery life, cost me $150 CAD and it was big and heavy (I'll add a photo of it when I can). It was the cheapest phone I could get on prepaid at the time. Sadly it can't start up any more.

The first Nokia I chose for reasons beyond price was the Nokia 6230. It sported a VGA (0.3MP) camera, color screen, and one of the few Nokia devices to support a memory cards with MMC. I had a 512MB card which was impressive for its day.

The Nokia 6682 was the first smartphone I bought. It ran the Symbian/S60 platform which was the most popular smartphone operating system in the world at the time. It impressed me with its colorful 2.1 inch screen and, rare at the time, 1.3MP camera.  Since it was a smartphone, it could run many applications beyond the typical Java apps of the day such as this SNES emulator.

2007 was an awesome year for Nokia has it impressed everyone with the N95 and N82 which included the dream list of all phone geek of the day such as a 5MP camera, 3G, GPS, and WiFi. Something very rare on a phone, even now, is a Xenon flash for night photos.  It froze objects in night photos.  This was really a phone that could almost replace a low end point and shoot camera. I loved this phone so much that I carried it with me well into 2013.

When you have to get work done these are the phones you want in your pocket. The E series was the only smartphones from Nokia that support secure ActiveSync On the left is the Nokia E61 which had a large 3.2 inch screen.  One the right is its successor, the E71. The E71 had an solid aluminum build, and great keyboard for typing. It had such a lackluster 3.2 camera that took worst photos than the 1.3MP 6682

One of the most innovative devices to come out of Nokia is the Nokia N900

It ran a Maemo which was built on top of the freely available Debian OS. The desktop supports widgets and shortcuts.  With no grid, you could place them anywhere on the desktop.  It came with command prompt right out of the package and you could install many freely available Debian packages such as Perl.  This phone was definitely not targeting the novice user.  For me, it was held back by its lackluster camera, thick profile, and resistive screen which is very annoying to use compared to the capacitive screen found on iPhones.

After a short hiatus, I was back with Nokia when I picked up the Lumia 1020 It's impressive 41MP camera and Xenon flash finally turned me back.  Windows Phone 8 was bearable but the photo quality more than made up for it. Nokia worked magic to bring 41MP into a OS that didn't support it. They brought an impressive suite of software to the platform such as Nokia's Here Maps and Nokia Pro Camera software.

I'm going to miss Nokia phones. They brought many firsts to cell phones and truly innovated.  Hopefully they come back in a few years and impressive us all, again.

So what are your Nokia memories?  Feel free to leave a post below with your thoughts or even a link.