All About Symbian - Symbian, Nokia and S60 unwrapped.
The Symbian Phone of the Decade
Published by Steve Litchfield at 21:33 UTC, December 30th 2009
Summary:
I asked an eclectic selection of 20 luminaries, bloggers and power users from the Symbian ecosystem: "Which is the Symbian-powered smartphone of the Decade? Which one was most significant, the most memorable, the most game-changing and the most loved?" Here are their answers, for your interest and amusement - and yes, a clear winner emerged...
Nokia 9210 Communicator (2000)
Steve Litchfield (ahem, me!): I can't really express the excitement I felt at handling the prototype of the 9210 a few months before general availability around the turn of the decade just finishing. It took everything that was in my phone and most of the things from my Psion palmtop and welded them into a single (almost) pocketable colour-screened device. And it kick started my love of large screened, qwerty-keyboarded designs - a direct ancestor of my current Nokia N97 mini? (Go back another 3 years to the Psion Series 5 and look at clues in its folding mechanism to see the oldest living ancestor!)
Michal Jerz (my-symbian): ...for being THAT SOMETHING!
Nokia E71 (2008)
Steve O'Hear (last100) ...an efficient messaging device with outstanding battery life and call quality, in a highly 'pocketable', desirable and robust form factor. Distinguishable not because of any "break-through" features but by how it manages to quietly pack in so much smartphone functionality - WiFi, GPS, QWERTY, Email, Camera, Web etc. - functionality that we now happily take for granted.
Nokia 9300i (2006)
Asri al-Baker (i-symbian) For me, the Nokia 9300i is the Symbian smartphone of the decade because it comes bundled with a full productivity suite that's superior to any office offerings today (Word and Sheet are the most important to me), with all connectivity options for a road warrior and the beautiful Series 80 UI, as well as OPL, all in a compact pocket friendly body, complete with QWERTY.
Sony Ericsson P800 (2003)
Michal Jerz (my-symbian): - ...for introducing UIQ 2, the best Symbian OS touch UI created so far.
(I forgave Michal having two picks, since both were interesting and both were so brief!)
Rafe Blandford - because it was ahead of its time (hybrid touch/non-touch) and was the first Symbian phone I owned (and thus opened my eyes to future possibilities). With a less sentimental hat on I suspect I might have to choose the N73 (first mass market consumer smartphone) or the N95 (convergence given form) as representative of the decade as a whole.
Nokia N97 classic/N97 mini (2009)
Tim Salmon (Phones Show Chat co-host): absolutely not for any touch screen reasons, as I don't need that, but for providing an array of reliable connectivity solutions functioning dynamically, largely invisibly to the user, bettering anything that had gone before (particularly on stability grounds).
Nokia N95 8GB (2007)
Micky Aldridge (Nokia Users): [editorial note - I suspect Micky was partly talking about the device below as well, but it was the 8GB model that he mentioned specifically, so...] ...purely as it changed the way we all used our mobile phones, from packing an amazing camera, superb browser and email, and not to mention those great stereo speakers, GPS and navigation; it was the first true all-in-one multimedia device, and led the way for the competition.
Ricky Cadden (Symbian Guru): - I'm going to have to say the Nokia N95-3, specifically. The monstrous 1200mAh battery, extra RAM and feature-set were unheard of at the time, and it also brought on the accelerometer craze that we have going on in current smartphones.
Nick Robinson (AAS's ratkat): - ...fixed the faults from the original, e.g. low RAM, and still cuts it as a fully featured smartphone over two years after release
Kev Wright (kevwright.com) - N95 8GB Far and away the best Symbian device ever. It was the last decent S60 phone they made, and still competes today.
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All good entries, but... the last entry above's 4 votes give a huge clue and extra endorsement to the (not unexpected) overall runaway winner, the true Symbian smartphone of the decade...
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Nokia N95 (classic) (2006)
James Burland (Nokia Creative): My head tells me to go for the 7650, but my heart knows there is only one answer… the N95. The legendary N95 was just so impossibly well specified. Perhaps future generations will find it hard to understand just why we were so in awe of its epic clunkiness. But for many millions, it was the ultimate expression of how a phone could be truly smart.
James Whatley (The Really Mobile Project): Without this handset, many of our current smartphones would not be around. From this game-changer we were spoilt; GPS, 5MP camera, dual sliding and most of all - the world (and Nokia) learned about the pain and suffering of not-ready firmware. The world's first real experience of what future smartphones will later become.
David Gilson (AAS contributor): The Nokia N95 was the most revolutionary Symbian phone of the decade, being the first to have GPS and Carl Zeiss optics together, all in the one unit.
Norman John (Symbian World): The Nokia N95 was the very first device to combine all the must-have features (GPS, 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, music player...) in a handy and really stylish housing. Moreover, it brought the full web experience to the mass market.
Jon Quach (tehkseven.net): The Nokia N95, it revolutionized the mobile industry by demonstrating what a smartphone can do by being one of the very first all-in-one-packages - GPS and all!
Ewan MacLeod (Mobile Industry Review): Super camera, super multimedia capabilities -- this is the handset that started it all and brought the multitasking mobile reality to the masses. Think ShoZu, QIK, Google Maps. Even today it can still hold its own.
Jan Ole Suhr (author, Gravity): The first all-in-one smartphone with an absolutely stunning camera (and it survived taking hundreds of snapshots of my kids playing in the sandbox) The "you-never-need-anything-else" smartphone for years. The only phone I cared to fix with duct-tape. The main development phone for Gravity 1.0!
Michele Cerreta (PiZero Design): Nokia N95: introduced HSDPA, 5 Megapixel camera and high quality video capture, graphics acceleration, GPS, TV-out capabilities all in a mobile phone; over 3 years later those features are still hard to find all together in a single device. Even from Nokia.
Miyuru ('K Flyer', Mobile Royale): Nokia N95 was the first Symbian device I got my hands on. It was the device which powered two self-hosted Wordpress sites and provided me with amazing opportunities. As a mobile blogger, I am yet to see such a powerhouse and a workhorse - it took the industry by storm. Nokia N95 is certainly the device of the decade.
So there you have it. It's official. And, if you cared to lump in the endorsements for the black 8GB model as well, you'd have an even more emphatic vote for the Nokia N95 as by far the most important Symbian-powered smartphone of the last decade. You may remember that, as recently as last week, I produced a comparison table in which this four year old design still managed to best the current competition in several important ways.
It's perhaps significant that, despite Symbian always being intended as being a multi-company venture, only one non-Nokia device was voted for above. Nokia's dominance seems fairly complete from 2000 to 2009 in the Symbian world, though with the appearance of the Symbian Foundation I live in hope of seeing significant products from other manufacturers.
So the Nokia N95 it is. It's as iconic as the Apple iPhone and, I'd argue, was just as influential in the phone world. Whereas the iPhone gave manufacturers a kick up the pants in the interface department, the N95, a year earlier, gave just as big a kick by raising the bar on what a converged device (as Canalys likes calling smartphones) should include. It was, quite literally, the phone that had everything - with no compromises.
It's true that technology advances since 2006 have brought along large internal mass memory disks, digital compass, FM transmitter, USB hi-speed, better multimedia codecs, and so on, but these are comparatively minor functionality upgrades to the high baseline spec that the N95 represented. And, as several people above observed, the N95 (and sister device, the N95 8GB) still compete today - in a tech world in which three years is an eternity, how many other devices out there could you say the same about?
I can't imagine that anyone will seriously contest the winner of the Symbian Phone of the Decade, but comments are, as usual, most welcome.
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 31 Dec 2009
Discussion
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Originally Posted by BrendanDonegan
What Nokia REALLY need this year is to release a device that, like the N95, is just so far out there in terms of how much it can do that the iPhones slick UI becomes irellevant.
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| Can anyone tell me if i can set up push email on my e71 nokia messaging? I mean real push email not some kind of set up where the phone checks every 5mins if there's a new email! |
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Originally Posted by bigdon
Can anyone tell me if i can set up push email on my e71 nokia messaging? I mean real push email not some kind of set up where the phone checks every 5mins if there's a new email!
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Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh
I vote N82 over N95.
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Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh
There's no such thing as the real push email. Even blackberry works the same way. Its just that they are good at marketing.
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BES is pure "push" the moment the email comes into your Exchange server, and quite often before it even hits the actual mailbox, BES sends it to your handset. I'm often hearing my BB alert me then a few seconds later seeing it pop up in Outlook.
BIS on the other hand, has to poll your various mail providers for email, I think it's around 15min, but still, once it has your mail, they are all instantly "pushed" to your handset.
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Originally Posted by bchliu
Man.. cant you N82 users give it up about the god-damn Xenon flash? BTW.. N82 IS an N95 - but on a single circuit board in a candy bar factor..
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The N82 is better, but the N95 started the ball rolling.
That is correct, year 2010 is in the old decade, and 2011 is in the new one. But that works only if we measure time in discrete increments of one year. As even 2010.000000001 is already a tiny fraction of the new decade, just as a child born a few minutes ago has already lived a few minutes of its first year.
So, there is no reason to expect the list to change, unless someone starts distributing a killer phone in the next 36 hours.
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
"I thought the decade ends in 2010 as it starts from xxx1?? :p "
That is correct, year 2010 is in the old decade, and 2011 is in the new one. But that works only if we measure time in discrete increments of one year. As even 2010.000000001 is already a tiny fraction of the new decade, just as a child born a few minutes ago has already lived a few minutes of its first year. So, there is no reason to expect the list to change, unless someone starts distributing a killer phone in the next 36 hours. |
I think the problem is made worse this time that no-one agrees what to call the years 2000 - 2009 and even 2010 - 2019, so we have a decade name. Previously the title could have said 70s 80s 90s, but 00s or 10s reads and sounds wrong.
If I look at the past decade I've spent working in the industry, the devices which really jump out to me personally are....
Nokia 6300 - still used by some people today, was the ultimate business phone for so long.
Nokia 7650 - first European phone available to the masses with a camera built in, I still remeber people saying that putting a camera in a phone was pointless and it wouldn't catch on.
Motorola RAZR - first mass market phone that alerted people to the fact that your handset could also be a style statement. On a global scale, it's a very strong candidate for phone of the decade
Nokia N95 - the first truly convergent phone with mass appeal. it completely raised the bar and redefined what a smartphone is all about.
iPhone - redefined the UI and UE space completely. Ironically I had sat in many meetings with various manufacturers years prior to the iPhone fantasising about protoypes doing this sort of thing but Apple got there first and they did a brilliant job.
It's a testament to Nokia/Symbian brilliance that they have 2 smartphones in this list and one feature phone too.
Knowing what Nokia has in store for roughly the next 18 months, I do not think Nokia will release any game-changers for a while - if at all.
:) Regards jApi NL
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Originally Posted by bchliu
Man.. cant you N82 users give it up about the god-damn Xenon flash? BTW.. N82 IS an N95 - but on a single circuit board in a candy bar factor..
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If u r basing about d earliest den u shud consider 3210!darn.hahah.n82 amazed me even i dnt have it.yes, it was a nice cameraphone.plus 3250 was an awesome phone with its twisting body.
