20 years of GSM digital mobile phones
Twenty years ago today, on 9 November 1992, Nokia launched the world's first commercially available GSM digital mobile phone - the Nokia 1011 - strengthening consumer interest in the world of mobile connectivity. The candybar device - which weighed a whopping 475g and could sustain a conversation for no more than 90 minutes - …
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Loved my Nokia 7110
The Nokia 7110 had the best ever single feature in it's spring-loaded slide-down cover. I used to spend hours just hitting the button to open it, then sliding the cover back into place with a lovely chunky click, pretending I was a cool haxor dood in the Matrix*. Probably spent longer doing that than actually talking on it. I was sure that the spring would eventually break or pop out, and sure enough it did, but only after several years of abuse and after I had bought a new phone anyway. Nokia had some good build quality back in the day.
(* Yes pedants, I know that was a mocked up version of the 8110 in the film, but no-one could tell the difference down the pub.)
Re: Loved my Nokia 7110
I must say you pick up one of the Nokia phones from around that time (even the budget ones) and they feel amazing quality and robustness compared to the flimsy plastic/aluminium crap folks pay £500 for only to replace a year later.
Navikey
The navikey first featured on the 3210, not the 3310.
Re-writing History
"Since the iPhone's introduction in 2007, we've literally seen hundreds of smarties hit the shelves..."
Rubbish - for years before iPhone's introduction in 2007, I have been using smartphones; the original SPV (Classic) (2002), SPV E200 (2003), SPV C500 (2004), Samsung i300 (2005), XDA Mini S (2005 - 1st of my touchscreens), XDA Orbit II (2007), HTC HD2 (2009) & now my S3... only the last 2 of these post-date 2007 iPhone. All of these have music playing functionality as well as the ability to load different applications.
Let's get this straight - Apple DID NOT invent the smartphone or even the touchscreen smartphone. They did not invent the portable digital music player. They did not invent the tablet computer.
They DID do much to popularise these device families, but they are not the ancestors!!
So stop trying to rewrite history like some glove puppet of Apple & write a factual article that acknowledges Apple's influence & even dominance; but credit where it is due to non-Apple smartphones.
Re: Re-writing History
Uh-oh someone said something good about Apple! Summon forth the QQ police!
No they didn't invent it, but they DID trigger the smartphone revolution. the wave of adoption that took smart phones and put them in EVERYONE pocket, not just business and tech people.
Re: Re-writing History
Urm... where in that quote do I ever say Apple 'invented' the smartphone?
Hundreds of smartphones have hit the shelves since the iPhone was released. I think that's pretty factual.
Seems you have grossly misread the sentence to allow a means for your anti-Apple rant, but if you read the whole piece, you'd see smartphones start to be mentioned at the end of page 2 long before the word iPhone is ever brought up.
Re: Re-writing History
Well said. Many of us were using smartphones, even 3G smartphones, for years before the 2G iPhone launched. Apple were late to the touch screen / smartphone market.
Re: Re-writing History
I had a couple of Orange SPV-and-similar-MS-phones. They were pretty flaky, but the thing that was great was the MSN Messenger client. I could chat with all my friends, even when stranded in rural Devon for a week, and the whole thing sipped data so sparingly that being wired to the thing 6-or-so hours a day cost less than £3/month on PAYG.
But no, they're a completely different class of device to the iPhone, which I resisted right up until the iPhone 4 on cost/scratchiness grounds.
Re: Re-writing History
Don't hide behind a careful interpretation of what you said.
A casual read would certainly have it that after the iPhone lots of smartphones were around.. implying they weren't before. There were dozens of devices selling millions of units prior to the late arrival of Apple to the game. They didn't even create the market - it was already created by the likes of Nokia and SonyEricsson with their Symbian based devices (Symbian was a UK company BTW).
The implication of your chosen phrase is that smartphones didn't really exist before the iPhone an implication patently not true.
The only thing that can be said of the Apple is that the media - especially the BBC well known Apple fans - leapt on it and promoted it at every available opportunity praising it (despite its severe limitations) and making outrageous and untrue statements all over the place (it is the first phone to download applications being the main one).
Other than that the piece is quite good fun. Don't forget the old Sony Z5 - one of the cutest phones of its time (and not a bad looker now even - although the stick out ariel dates it - the Z7 got rid of that a couple of years later). This phone was (I think) the first to offer proper email (smtp+pop) and 'real' (html 3 over http) web browsing (and yes, it did cram the web page to the screen width). [It also offered wap for the unfortunates :) ]
Re: Re: Re-writing History
It's hardly hiding... I guess a casual read would mean starting at that point and ignoring the entire article?
I previously talk about smartphones long before that with the Ericsson R380, mention handsets like BlackBerry, Pocket PC and Palm and then talk up how feature phones started to evolve into smart devices.
Only then does the iPhone get a mention and all I say is that we've seen hundreds of smartphones hit shelves since that point. It's merely a bookmark in the timeline.
Apologies if there was any ambiguity, but I really think things are being exaggerated far too much here.
Re: Re-writing History
So stop trying to rewrite history like some glove puppet of Apple & write a factual article that acknowledges Apple's influence & even dominance; but credit where it is due to non-Apple smartphones.
Computer tip #136: learn to read first.
Computer tip #137: don't automatically assume worst case if multiple interpretations are possible.
I think we CAN credit Apple with reversing the trend that smart phones were getting smarter than their users - iPhones were only revolutionary because they did something that was classic Apple: take an existing concept and make it much more accessible (and look better, but I consider that the lesser of what it brought).
Depending on definition, even the phone with the best form factor ever (yet the worst keyboard and software), the Motorola RAZR v3i was a smartphone as it could pick up email and sort of surf the Net but it was punished with a horrific UI. The most interesting one IMHO was the Sony Ericsson P1i which had a touch screen (stylus driven) which could reasonably recognise handwriting, but made that promptly unnecessary by providing IMHO the best keyboard ever: 20 keys which you could press left or right. That, and the built-in business card scanner application were genius ideas - but FAR too complex to use for your average end user. Ditto with the Crackberries, which were about as user friendly as combining a pre-lubricated condom with an elastic band.
THAT is what Apple improved. Granted, the iPhone too has some places where you have to dig a bit more, but even I have not even tried to find a manual online whereas normally it's the first thing I do with whatever I buy. After that, Google spat out Android and things became more interesting, especially since Nokia royally screwed up by not using Symbian to innovate. Blackberry's only redeeming feature was that you could tell it to go offline in the evening, something that has only just shown up on iPhone in the Do Not Disturb feature.
Apple showed quite simply that making things easy did not equate to declaring users for dumb. It showed that looking at a UI from a USER's perspective was welcomed (now there is a revolutionary idea for IT people)..
Re: Re-writing History
Rubbish, the iPhone brought the smartphone into the hands of the masses. Before 2007 smartphones were dull and clunky.
Re: Re-writing History
Smartphones were a tool for geeks before the iPhone. Post iPhone everyone has them.
An office is a good gauge of that. In 2004 when I started my current job I was one of about 4 people to have a smartphone. This remained pretty much the same until around 2009/2010, now it's a question of who doesn't have a smartphone.
Re: Re-writing History
Want to know the reason tech geek types (almost by definition every reader here) get very upset when you infer smart phones did not exist before the iphone? Because it strengthens the RDF.
For example, you didn't even mention the Sony Ericsson P800!!!!!
I could browse the internet with my blue plastic stick, do a remote desktop vpn thingy with it so i could command my pc to capture tv with my nebula dtv card while on holiday in cornwall. Oh, and take pictures with it (and video with a hack) and use BLUETOOTH (iphone users- don't worry, you can look it up) to connect to my gps dongle and use osmaps 'acquired' from usenet and stored on the EXTERNAL MSDuo memory chip to do geocaching and stuff IN 2003!!!!!!!!!! You could do everything and more with that phone than an iphone 3 YEARS EARLIER. The usual reply by non techy mates at the time to this wizzardry was "gosh, your phones big isn't it!"
These mates now own fruit based phones that are much larger than my original P800.
E.g. an ifriend, when asking about my new SGS3 recently, informed me that I should get an iphone (4S) like her because they are obviously better. I replied "but my new phone has a quad core porcessor???"
"whats 'quad core'?" was the answer.
Your article strengthens the RDF....
@Tanuki
My first mobile was a circa 1998 Ericsson S868.
That thing held onto a signal like a dog to a bone, it had buttons, a two line monochrome dot matrix screen and great sound quality.
Today's touch screens are all about gimmicks and not functionality, bring back functional phones please, I can't stand touch screens and phones that can't hold a signal.
Re: @Tanuki
what is it with you people? if you want a crap [functional] phone go and buy one from asda for £20. nobody's forcing you to use a touch screen phone.
How about the Nokia 6822?!
I still haven't owned a better phone for texting (and I've owned everything from Androids to Blackberries through to Apples and even the Sony Ericson P9XX series) than this truly well built and innovative effort. Just check out this body:
http://www.welectronics.com/gsm/Nokia/nokia6822.jpg
My first mobile phone was in 95 and was a (snappily titled) sony cw-h333. my favourite phone ever through taking into account the era and tech available at the time was the ericsson t28, flippy mouthpiece, voice recognition that worked and tetris. The worst was a nokia N80 a dreadful piece of tat that I quickly got rid of for something else.
I had a 6310 then moved onto a N73. It was the N95-8GB that was really my first smart phone. In many ways I'd still be happy with it (traded it in when I got my N900).
Nokia Communicator, anyone?
BEST.DEVICE.EVER.
WLAN was missing, but apart from that - marvellous kit.
Re: Nokia Communicator, anyone?
If you still got one, you can have some sort of wireless network via PC+bluetooth+ some advanced trickery.
Of course, Nokia caved to carriers and made it complex so we would be robbed for edge data. See what happened later ;)
Re: Nokia Communicator, anyone?
And another vote from here.
I had three starting with the 9110, and they all paid for themselves. I bailed for an iPhone around the time of the E90.
Expandable memory, IR, micro-Office clone s/ware and a decent-sized hardware keyboard (relatively...) made the last couple unexpectedly convincing as pocket laptops.
Who remembers that version of Nokia now?
6310i had Bluetooth. I used to use it as s modem. I kept mine for maybe 3 years. the longest I have ever had a phone before I lost it.
Great phone, good battery life for the time as well.
The best phone
For me was the Ericsson SH888. It could connect to my Psion with a cable or through IrDA - giving me a mobile office which could handle .DOC and .XLS files, including those attached to emails. It was the most ergonomic phone I have ever had and swapping batteries took all of 3 seconds and felt and sounded just like changing magazine in a hand gun.
Unfortunately, those batteries lost capacity very quickly and I could no longer find replacements, otherwise I'd still be using it.
I wanted one of those...
...ended up with a Moto Timeport T250 in about 2000 (with a free T180 on the deal with BT Cellnet, both still declare that name). It was a choice between that and a 6210, both because they could hook up via IR and offered good network coverage. Having my ISP on a local number in Leeds helped - just dial the modem on the S5 and it came out of the bundled minutes.
IIRC the SH888 had just end-of-lined as the T250 replaced the earlier Timeport models (kept the same silver case though). SH888 was all over the Psion press (and places like Clove etc) as the best of it's time for S5 users.
Also had some Samsung flip thing from work that had a massive 32MB of user memory (about 6 songs - just about the commute back then), before later moving on to Sony p900, and then after switching to using HP iPaq 5550 for work, the T-Mobile Vario II, (drove over the Vario III, got a Vario IV as replacement). The Vario II and IV span the original iPhone release, and the style of the Vario series shifted away from rounded case with recessed screen and obvious physical buttons to a completely flat front with hidden touch-sensitive buttons (apart from the 4-way thumb control).
Memory cards
The memory cards have changed as well; my first Sharp (with a 1.3 meg camera) took a 8Mb full-size SD card and my Nokia 6300 has a 128Mb micro-sd card.
Nokia 6610 FTW
I bought a posh (and expensive!) new Nokia 6610 in 2003. I'm *still* using it every day to this day - I don't use any other mobile.
Can anyone on here beat this?
Poor Nokia 7650
I remember effectively and really multi tasking on 7650, using psiloc stuff, opera mobile. System was location aware thanks to an application (via cell Ida) and I was running my own answering machine.
When space was running low, I moved to compressed apps and address book.
I also used salling clicker to control and further automate my Mac and phone.
All you remember is freaking colour snake from 7650?
Orbitel 901
Wasn't the Orbitel 901 the first commercially available GSM handset?
Memory lane
I've owned, and destroyed, loads of phones in this list, even ones I'd forgotten about.
Nokia 5110 - everyone had one of those. Stupidly I sold mine for a Ericsson A1018 which was rubbish.
The Ericsson R380 was a great phone but took over an hour to free the message memory (about 100 texts). I dropped it in a Tesco car park and the buttons all fell out, it was never the same after that.
Nokia 7650 was a phone ahead of its time but I bought one with a faulty earpiece on eBay and tore the ribbon connector trying to replace it.
Orange SPV - buggy as hell and mine packed up in short order. Shame as it had potential.
Nokia 6310i I had for 5 years (longest yet) - the power button fell out die to being dropped too often and soon after I was given a E65 which got nicked soon after.
Current phone is a Nokia C1-01 - good hardware and software. I bought a N95 on eBay a few months ago only for the display connector to pack up, so the C1 it is for the foreseeable future.
Re: Memory lane
A uncle of mine got one of those, I was quite impressed with how it performed. Shame Nokia is going to kill it all. Oh well, better hold onto my delicous N900 for as long as possible.
My first phone was a Phillips C12 on BTCellnet....with the scrappy doo tune text noise youn couldnt change....2 lines of text and the "game" was Biorhythms. Best phone, sony erricsson w800i, had that for 5 years. Worst would be the last phone...nokia 5800...so slow! Currently got a s2...love it but it still doesnt beat the sony
Far more importantly...
GSM was the beginning of the end of US technical dominance. The US became a mobile phone technological backwater, an evolutionary dead-end.
This gave everyone else the necessary kick in the arse to create new stuff without bowing and scraping to "Uncle Sam".
Why did the iPhone succeed against the common wisdom of the time - because people forgot how utterly shite the phones USians had in comparison to the rest of the world
All you have to do to get thumbs down is NOT insult Apple. Why are people so afraid?
Tired
Human nature, we are really tired& bored from that company and their fans/fanatics. No need to bother.
Old?
I'm still using the Nokia 7110 from 1999 (on page 2)
Re: Old?
If I were you I would stick with it and buy a badass Android tablet with 3G/4G instead of upgrading (!) to another phone.
Gsm is here to stay.
Smart phone battery myth
OH by the way, i get really fed up with the 'my old nokia xxxx can go for 15 years on one charge, you know, i use it as a PHONE'
Well, I can get easily close to a week out of my SGS off one charge if i only use it to for calls on 2G. That is, remarkably, if i use the SGS3 in 'dumbphone mode' the battery lasts as long as a dumbphone!!!
Or. i don't know why you would bother with those fancy electronic computers, my abbacus never runs out of power and i can still do maths with it. Who needs all that extra stuff.
Sound quality
Talking on my Nokia 5110 was like talking on a real telephone. I haven't had anything that good since. And the ring must have been a real proper speaker -- people used to say 'what's that music - oh, it didn't sound crap like a mobile phone'.
Signigicant that the article doesn't really mention sound quality for recent phones.
Obsolete?
I keep an old Nokia 3330 with a PAYG sim as an emergency phone in the motor, well it picks up signal where a smartphone struggles and still gives good call quality. Snake is also OK for a bit of retro gaming.
Most popular phone
I believe it's the Nokia with the torch in it, the 1100. 250M produced according to Wackypedia, so one in 30-ish of humanity own or have owned one. The 1616 is the modern equivalent and can regularly be found for about £9 in the supermarkets.
Out of the article, I still actually have a Startac, GA628, T68i, 7650, e606. Did have a Razr and a N95. The one I carried all the time for years was a 7210 though. That phone could really take the knocks. Shame about the buggy firmware though.
is the author trying to flog his Motorola M300 on eBay? is that why clicking on the photo directs there? :)
Smart?
Isn't funny that when your smartphone goes off to the mender's and you are forced to use a 'back up' old phone you suddenly realise how much better as phones they where in the old days.
Did anyone else suffer.....
.....the dreadful Motorola Timeport L7089.
The only phone I have used that needed to be thrown on the (carpeted) floor to make it work properly (not just mine - it was a standard feature!). That's assuming you could work out the appalling menu system.
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