Microsoft has finally bid adieu to Nokia from its Windows phone device segment. Nokia Lumia will now be available in the market as Microsoft Lumia smartphone.
Nokia France recently posted on Facebook: "In the coming days, you will receive a Facebook message regarding the change in the name of this page. We are on the verge of becoming Microsoft Lumia. Stay tuned for more soon."
Sadly, after this, we won't be able to experience any Nokia smartphone. It was a long, successful run for Nokia so far with millions of users and hundreds on phones it offered.
Years ago, mobile phones were scarce. Technological evolution was not as rapid as in the present day. Back then, Nokia released several path-breaking handsets which changed our expectation from a mobile phone. Not to mention, 1100 or 3100 tasted huge success worldwide.
Here, we will take you down the memory lane and talk about phones that actually helped technology cross over in this long journey to reach the advanced stage we are in. We chose nine of our favourite Nokia handsets across all times, in no particular order. This report is to thank Nokia for this beautiful journey. A farewell!
Nokia 6600Nokia
Nokia 6600
The reason behind keeping this phone on the top of the queue is nostalgia. This was my first dream gadget that I managed to buy for myself. Introduced in June 16, 2003, it was Nokia's high-end model of classic business series. Running on Symbian OS 7.0s with a VGA camera, music player, video player, bluetooth and expandable storage, this phone was predominantly business class in Nokia's range. The configuration might sound odd to a few people but let's remind you that back then, people loved this soap-like designed smartphone. Special thanks to this model for nudging out the gadget expert in me.
Nokia Ngage
Announced in late 2002, this device was designed to combine a mobile phone and a handheld gaming console. Instead of using cable for connection, Ngage introduced connecting through bluetooth for multiplayer gaming. It also introduced an online gaming arena the N-Gage Arena service.
The N-Gage also included MP3 and real audio/video playback and PDA-like features into the system.
Besides its gaming capabilities, N-Gage was a Series 60 smartphone, running Symbian OS 6.1, with features similar to those of the Nokia 3650 (it did not have an integrated camera). It was able to run all Series 60 software (other than those that require a camera), and Java MIDP applications as well. Its main CPU was an ARM Integrated chip running at 104 MHz.
Nokia 7710
The Nokia 7710 was a smartphone developed by Nokia, announced on 2 November 2004. It was Nokia's first and only smartphone to run the Series 90 interface on Symbian OS v7.0s.
Featuring a touch-screen colour LCD with a resolution of 640x320 pixels with a colour depth of 16-bit, this device had an internal memory of 90MB supported by a 128MB MMC card. The external memory could be expanded upto 2GB (highest available at that time). It also featured a digital camera supporting QCIF resolution at 17 frame/s in MPEG4, H.263 and Real Video 8 formats -- for which the device also supports full-screen playback at 15 frame/s. Additionally, a music player supports MP3, AAC, RealAudio 7 and 8, WAV, MIDI and AMR formats, whilst picture viewing is also in place with support for JPEG, GIF, WBMP, BMP, MBM and PNG formats.
Nokia 9110 Communicator
The Nokia 9000 Communicator was the first product in Nokia's Communicator series introduced in 1996. The phone was large and weighed 397 gm. The Communicator was powered by an Intel 24 MHz i386 CPU. It had 8 MB of memory, which was divided between applications (4 MB), program memory (2 MB) and user data (2 MB). The operating system was GEOS 3.0.
This awesome-looking phone had full business features like fax, short messages, email, wireless imaging, digital camera connectivity, smart messaging, TextWeb, web browser, serial terminal, telnet, contacts, notes, calendar, calculator, world time clock and composer.
The Nokia 9000 can be seen in Val Kilmer's hands in the 1997 remake of "The Saint", and also with Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock in the action comedy "Bad Company".
Nokia N95
The Nokia N95 was a smartphone, a part of Nokia's Nseries line of devices. It was released in March 2007. The N95 ran on S60 3rd Edition, Symbian OS v9.2. The phone had a two-way sliding mechanism, and was capable to be used as a full-blown media player too.
The N95 featured a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver with maps and optional turn-by-turn navigation; a 5 megapixel digital camera with Carl Zeiss optics, flash, video recording and video conferencing; wireless connectivity via HSDPA, IrDA, 802.11x and Bluetooth.
The media player had podcast downloading options and a FM radio tuner. And more impressively it had 8 GB of internal storage, a larger display and improved battery.
This phone won huge appreciation as best smartphone at that time.
Nokia 5800 Xpress Music
Remember "The Dark Night", in which Christian Bale used a mobile phone to interfere with villain's communication tower? Well that phone was Nokia 5800 Xpress Music.
Announced on 2 October 2008, this device was the S60 OS based device of Nokia with touchscreen capability. Nokia sold 8 million pieces of this particular handset.
Nokia E71
Nokia E71 still gets counted among the most successful non-BlackBerry QWERTY keypad based smartphone. Running on Symbian OS v9.2, with a series 60 3rdedition, E71 featured 110MB or internal storage space, 256MB ROM, and 71 MB of free executable RAM memory.
It also featured a microSD card slot, 3.2 MP camera with auto focus and flash and a front facing camera for video calling. Powered by a 500 mAh battery, it shared a full-blown physical QWERTY based keypad with a five way joystick.
Nokia 808 PureView
Released on 2012 Mobile World Congress this Symbian powered handset debuted with PixelView Pro technology, a pixel overstamping technique that reduces an image taken a t full resolution into a lower resolution picture, hence achieving better light and sensitivity.
Featuring a 41 MP camera with a 1/1.2-inch sensor and high resolution f/2.4 Zeiss 1-Grooup lens, this handset won the best innovation for 2012 from the Technical Image Press Association. Apart from this 808 PureView is significant for another reason: this was the last handset by Nokia featuring SymbianOperating System.
This phone also featured a full HD 1080p video recording capability with 4x zoom; 720p HD video, 6x zoom; and for nHD (640x360) video, 12x zoom. In addition, encoding is up to 25Mbps in 1080p H.264/MPEG-4 HD video format.
Special Mention: The Mobira Talkman
Encased inside a classic leather bag, this was the world's first transportable phone that weight a touch under 5kg. This model bagged quite a lot of attention, proving the sceptics wrong. This was the first model that sold like hot cakes and brought Nokia in to the game.
P.S- Nokia isn't gone forever. This cult mobile phone brand will remain in the hearts of millions of fan through the remaining 130 budget handsets available till 2023.
