Nokia's Smartphone: 25 Years Since it Changed the World

The Nokia 9000 Communicator -- "the office in your back pocket" -- was a smartphone even before the word was invented. It has been 25 years since it revolutionized the market. DW: Nokia presented its 9000 Communicator at the CeBIT 1996 computer fair in Hanover, Germany, and launched on August 15 of that year. "The office in your back pocket" added to the IBM Simon from 1994 and the HP OmniGo 700LX from March 1996. The 9000 Communicator was a smartphone even before the word had been invented. For a decade, the device was ââwhat a smartphone was supposed to look like. After the Communicator, Blackberry perfected the idea -- until Apple's iPhone with its multitouch screen in 2007 came along.

Opened like a minilaptop, with a keyboard and a black-and-white display with a diagonal of just 11.5 centimeters (4.5 inches), the retrofuturistic-looking device was made famous by actor Val Kilmer in the remake of the film The Saint. The 9000 Communicator was the first device to offer a combination of keyboard, quality screen, and business and internet software in one package. It had for the first time all of the features of a computer on a phone, putting email, web browsing, fax, word processing and spreadsheets into a single pocketable device.

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[spiritplumber]

https://forums.sufficientveloc... [sufficientvelocity.com] A bunch of cool nerds over at sufficientvelocity have analyzed the military tactics in garbage like Victoria and Turner Diaries,and have made it into a strategy game. In which you get to shoot nazis.

I remember the Nokia communicator.

[saloomy]

The Nokia 9110 was my first phone. The 9210i was my second. 9510 was my third. I hated every phone since then that was not a better palm pilot in my pocket. The iPhone was a God-send after that. The communicator was awesome for its time.

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[RitchCraft]

It looks like a slimmer version of the HP 200LX pocket computer, which I had and loved. I would consider purchasing a smart phone if one came in this form factor. I had an ENV3 years ago that I really liked because it opened up like a mini laptop with keyboard much the same way as the Nokia. Bring this form factor back please.

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[saloomy]

Huh.. Never even saw that before. It looks like it was cool in those days. I am convinced that for this size form factor, mechanical keyboards are no longer as fast or as accurate as display keyboards can be. especially in the portrait orientation. I do have the landscape orientation on iPhone. I usually turn sideways to type if in an application I am otherwise using in landscape orientation.

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[ghoul]

Touchscreens make it impossible without looking as there is no feedback. Plus oily fingers make the touchscreen stop working so dont try to type a response while eating a sandwich.

Re: I remember the Nokia communicator.

[saloomy]

The screen is easier to get oil and gunk out of than the mechanical keyboard of a blackberry. Plus; you are looking at the screen anyway when typing. I do not need to look at the keyboard when typing on my iPhone. The thumbs are in the way anyway.

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[Sleeping Kirby]

I loved my nokia 9500. I purposely held off on getting anything else until the N900 because nothing else was good enough. I actually miss the fact that phones felt like phones. As in the front screen was dedicated to making calls, had a front screen just enough to get call info and a number pad. Honestly, if they created an updated version (hopefully not with android or symbian OS), I would consider getting it. Especially since I'm still on the Nokia N900.

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[BAReFO0t]

iPhone a godsend?

Tell me with a straight face you don't still miss proper keyboards on smartphones!
Or a built-in file manager.
Or a dedicated copy/paste button and real cursor keys.

No, iPhones ruined user empowerment for literally decades.

Apple Newton

[The Wily Coyote]

One might argue that the Apple Newton was actually the first step before the Nokia 9000. Having said that the 9000 was an awesome device.

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[ghoul]

The Newton was awesome. Out of all the dick moves Jobs did in his life including denying paternity of his own daughter, killing the Newton just because it was John Scully's baby must rank right up there. Karma is a bitch. Scully didnt get pancreatic cancer sucka.

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[BAReFO0t]

It had no keyboard. It was more a precursor for PDAs than for the Communicator. The communicator tried to actually be a small laptop PC. Apple always went squarely against allowing users that power.

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[cusco]

Newton was a nice gadget, but the Compaq iPaq beat it hands down in every way. There were at least a dozen PDAs competing with the Newton, several of them better, but none had the marketing colossus of Apple behind it so they're long forgotten. While the Newton, in keeping with long Apple tradition, was cool to show off to your friends the iPaq was designed for work from the beginning. My boss got the first model with the cellular add-on, two weeks later he was able to remote into a customer's server to

Also screwed it all up

[LostMyBeaver]

Nokia was so hellbent on 2-5 days of battery life that they intentionally underpowered the device. Add their choice to
- run a shitty OS that lacked a debugger
- used a memory management system based on a terrible cleanup stack
- lacked exception handling
- lacked a proper linker so they actually patched binary files like idiots
- lacked touch or pen support
- used a "skinning system" that required app developers to rewrite or at least recompile their code for every device. They had no hope of a real app store.
- bragged about how all the apps on the platform crashing was a good thing because they could crash with less ram and cpu.

I can go on, but the fact is, they ambushed themselves, their customers and their partners. They basically screwed the whole market for years to avoid admitting they made a mistake.

I mourned the release of the 9000. It was a classic case of screwing up the market with a substandard device backed by a religious like zealotry where owners bragged about how the enormous shitty brick in their pocket was amazing because it had a brand name and cost so much that no matter how terrible it was, they would brag about it.

Psion anyone?

[BAReFO0t]

There were Psions with mobile network functionality.

And even with all the limitations of Epoc / Symbian, I fucking loved Psions!
The keyboards alone were worth their weight in gold.

I'm still bitter the iPhone ruined everything.
(I had a Symbian Series 60 smartphone at that time. It had some features that iOS still lacks, and deliberately so. It definitely was more of a personal computer.)

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[glatiak]

Nokia based that phone on the Psion. I had three of them over the years ... wonderful little pocket computers with expansion cards for bulky programs. Ran on a pair of AA batteries and had a serial line that I could plug into my mobile phone for email. Great keyboard and a stylus tucked behind the display on the 5c. Achilles' heel of the design was the ribbon cable between the display and the system unit -- it would eventually crack and need to be replaced. One could actually work on the thing, my current

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[cusco]

I had forgotten about the Psion. I was given one after the ribbon cable cracked and the screen would only work in a single (inconvenient) angle, so played with it a bit and was quite impressed. Then the cable finally broke and it joined the pile of useless electronics waiting for recycle day.