Nokia 7710 (2004)

Announced November 2004
At first glance, the specifications of the Nokia 7710 look very contemporary. A Nokia smartphone with a large 3.5" 640 x 320 pixel touchscreen display, a completely new version of the Symbian operating system plus strong multimedia support, it doesn't sound a million miles away from the new Nokia N8. But this is November 2004, not November 2010.. and the Nokia 7710 is one of Nokia's most notable failures.

This was Nokia's first production touchscreen phone.. and basically the last touchscreen device they made for four years until the Nokia 5800 was released. The 7710 also came two years before the iPhone brought Apple's take on the same idea to market.. and ultimately it was the iPhone and not the 7710 that redefined the smartphone market.

When you look a bit more deeply at the 7710, the reasons for its lack of success are perhaps more obvious. This was a GSM-only device, supporting GPRS and EDGE data with no 3G or WiFi connectivity. Practically, it meant that most customers were limited to download speeds of just 48 Kbps, less than the speed of a dial-up modem. Nokia had introduced their first 3G handset (the Nokia 6600) the previous year, and the Nokia 9500 (also announced in 2004) featured WiFi support. So, it's not as if Nokia couldn't do 3G and WiFi.. they just didn't do it with the 7710, a move that effectively crippled it.

There were other problems as well. The 7710 was hampered by a slow 168MHz processor, fairly typical for the time but really quite underpowered for a big screen smartphone like this. The 7710 also had limited internal memory, but again the technological limitations of handsets from this era really made that inevitable, and Moore's Law usually helps to fix most performance problems. One of the big differences between the 7710 and the original iPhone is that the iPhone had access to much more modern componentry, especially a significantly faster processor.

The price tag of €500 before tax and subsidy also made this an expensive phone, combined with quite a few rough edges on the Series 90 operating system and a not terribly good display, the 7710 pretty much bombed in sales terms. A number of 7710s were retro-fitted with DVB-H receivers to pilot free-to-air mobile TV, but other than that the handset virtually vanished.

Given that there was obviously real consumer demand for a phone like this, at the time being met by the likes of the HTC Blue Angel and the Sony Ericsson P910i, then you would expect that Nokia would pick themselves up, dust themselves down.. and come up with something better. But in fact, Nokia cancelled the entire project and operating system and didn't return to the touchscreen market for another four years.

The repercussions of the 7710's cancellation are still being felt today. Although some of the work done on this phone was folded back into mainstream S60 devices and carried forward into Maemo (eventually leading to the N900), Nokia effectively wasted the chance to be the market leader in touchscreen smartphones.

These days the Nokia 7710 is quite collectable due to its rarity and unusual design for the period, typically selling for €200 or so in good condition.. although given its flawed design it is unlikely that anybody still uses one as their everyday phone!

Nokia 6300 (2007)

Launched 2007


This month we say goodbye to an old friend - after two and a half years as one of Europe's best-selling phones, the Nokia 6300 has finally been discontinued.

In the world of mobile phones, the 6300 is positively ancient. Most handsets are launched and them forgotten within a year, and yet the Nokia 6300 still remains very much in demand. On paper, the 6300 isn't that impressive.. so what gives?

There are several elements that we think contribute to the 6300's success. Firstly, this is a very attractive looking phone with a smart, understated design that appeals to many consumers. The 6300 uses high-quality materials, including stainless steel, in its build which gives the handset a very solid "well built" feel.

The Nokia 6300 is easy to use, with a simple keypad layout and the tried-and-tested Series 40 interface. The clear, 2" QVGA display also makes using the 6300 straightforward.
There's an MP3 player, FM radio, microSD expandable memory, Bluetooth and USB connectivity. There's a 2007-era web browser and email client as well.

The phone is not without its faults. The 2 megapixel camera is pretty basic, the 6300 lacks 3G and the small battery only gives 3.5 hours talktime. The replacement 6303 Classic is much better, although the Nokia 6700 Classic is probably a better replacement all around.

Not only is it a popular phone, it is a very good benchmark when comparing to other devices. Retailing at about €110 SIM-free, the 6300 is a quality handset for not very much money.. and it's the phone that other manufacturers have to beat.

Expect to see the 6300 around for a little while yet in the retail channel, although it's quite likely that remaining stocks will vanish quite quickly. But as we feel that the 6300 is a handset that many consumers are very happy with, we're sure that you will often catch site of one for years to come.

Nokia 6300 at a glance
Available:	Q1 2007
Network:	GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 or GSM 850 / 1800 / 1900
Data:	GPRS + EDGE
Screen:	2", 240 x 320 pixels, 16m colours
Camera:	2 megapixels
Size:	Medium monoblock 106 x 44 x 13mm / 91 grams
Bluetooth:	Yes
Memory card:	MicroSD
Infra-red:	No
Polyphonic:	Yes
Java:	Yes
GPS:	No
OS:	Series 40
Battery life:	3.5 hours talk / 14 days standby

Motorola 4500X (1980s)

It's easy to forget just how awful mobile phones used to be - but one look at the Motorola 4500X serves as a reminder that mobile phones were once something that you really didn't want to carry around unless you had to.

Dating from the late 1980s (we believe that our model is a Vodafone UK device from 1988), the 4500X was a massive 3.5kg device which was basically a handset connected to a heavy box containing the battery and electronics via a curly cord. The unit measures 260mm long by 118mm wide by 175mm tall (270mm if you count the antenna). This type of phone was known as a "hand portable" and it was just one step up from a car phone. 

The handset itself had a basic set of numeric buttons and some function keys, with a very simple LED display for output. There are no letters on the keys, because text messaging was still to come.

It wasn't the first commercially available phone - that was another Motorola handset, the DynaTAC (which we spoofed a few years ago for April Fool's Day) - but the 4500X wasn't much more advanced, the real innovation was the curly cord that meant you didn't have to strain yourself too much while talking on the phone.

It's hard to get an idea of just how big these things were - so on the left we have included a Motorola FONE F3 as a comparison. Even though the FONE F3 is about the most basic phone on the market today, it is still much more powerful than the 4500X. And at just 70 grams, it comes in at just 2% of the weight of its ancestor.

Surely something the size of the 4500X must have had something going for it? What about battery life? Nope - maximum talktime was perhaps an hour, and the 4500X needed pretty much continual charging to keep it going. People who had to use one of these things needed to plug it into their in-car charger between site visits to try to keep the thing going.

What about call quality? With a big antenna like that, surely the Motorola 4500X must have had crystal clear calls? Nope - this ran on the old analogue ETACS system which was appalling, no matter how big the antenna might be.

In fact, the Motorola 4500X was the last of the first generation of mobile phones. Shortly after the 4500X and its contemporaries, Motorola came out with the MicroTAC which weighed in at "just" 350 grams which started the trend for phones to become ever smaller, leading in time to the StarTAC which more-or-less defined the shape and size of a modern clamshell. The "curly cord" phone didn't die though, it evolved into the Bag Phone which is still available today.. the latest incarnation is the Motorola M900 Bag Phone.

You might note that all of these early handsets were from Motorola - Nokia didn't really make much of an impact in the early days and Motorola was regarded as the main innovator in the mobile phone industry. Times change.

You can see more of the Motorola 4500X and some contemporary office equipment in our gallery.

Motorola 4500X at a glance
Available:	Late 1980s
Network:	ETACS
Data:	No
Screen:	10 numeric LEDs
Camera:	No
Size:	Massive 260 x 118 x 175mm / 3500 grams
Bluetooth:	No
Memory card:	No
Infra-red:	No
Polyphonic:	No
Java:	No
GPS:	No
Battery life:	1 hour talktime approximately

Nokia 8310 (2001)

Probably one of the cutest handsets ever made, the Nokia 8310 was launched in 2001 at roughly the same time as the Nokia 6310. But the key thing with this phone was that it was an 8000-series device, and as today that indicates an expensive and very desirable mobile phone.

What the Nokia 8310 had going for it was its relatively small size at just 97 x 43 x 19mm and 84 grams in weight. Contemporary phones (such as the 6310) were significantly bigger and heavier. It was not just size that set the 8310 apart, it also had interchangeable translucent covers and special lighting effects that marked it out as a high-fashion item.

At launch, the 8310 was very expensive - coming in at the equivalent of €600 or £400 for a SIM-free phone. Even for 2001, the 8310's specifications were a bit basic, with an 84 x 48 pixel monochrome display, no Bluetooth or camera and only monophonic ringtones.. although the 8310 was a very early phone to feature a built-in FM radio, voice commands and predictive text messaging. It was also one of the first phones to come with GPRS, although exactly what you were meant to do with it on such a basic handset is unclear.

The striking physical design gave the phone plenty of "wow factor", and the 8310 was notable enough to be a newsworthy handset, and it was even seen in movies and TV shows as a suitably impressive accessory.

The Nokia 8310 is quite a collectable phone today - a good reconditioned handset can cost €100 or so. Strangely, Nokia never really came up with a follow-up to the 8310 - a high end ultra-compact version of this would be interesting to see seven years after the original. Perhaps it is time that Nokia came up with something worthy to succeed it?

Nokia 8310 at a glance
Available:	2001
Network:	GSM 900 / 1800
Data:	GPRS
Screen:	84 x 48 pixels, monochrome
Camera:	No
Size:	Compact monoblock 97 x 43 x 19mm / 84 grans
Bluetooth:	No
Memory card:	No
Infra-red:	Yes
Polyphonic:	No
Java:	No
GPS:	No
Battery life:	2-4 hours talk / 4-16 days standby

Three phones that changed the world, and three phones that didn't

As you may know, Mobile Gazette is five years old. As part of our Retro season, we look back at what we think are the three most influential.. and three most disappointing phones in the past five years.
 

The three most influential phones in the past 5 years..

 

Motorola RAZR V3

It's a familiar sight these days, but back in 2004 the Motorola RAZR V3 was nothing like anything that had gone before. At only 14mm thick, the RAZR was the slimmest phone around, and the use of anodized aluminium in the design made it look amazing. In fact, the RAZR had so much "wow factor", it regularly made the news.

It wasn't the first handset to be called a "fashion phone", but it is certainly one of the most memorable.. and the RAZR V3 sold millions of units. You can still buy them new today for about $100, which is quite a bit cheaper than the original $600 asking price.
 

The RAZR had some drawbacks.. the main one was that it was actually a pretty poor mobile phone underneath the pretty exterior. The user interface was horrible, the phone was slow and the phone didn't have a media player or expandable memory. Really much all the Motorola engineers had done was take the old Motorola V600 (from 2003) and squashed it down into a new case.

Motorola could never repeat the success of the original RAZR, despite coming up with dozens of variations. We caused a stir last year by saying that the RAZR was killing Motorola, and that Motorola's strategy had gone badly wrong.
 

Regardless of these ups and downs, we think that the Motorola RAZR stands out as one of the three most influential phones of the past five years, because it made other manufacturers take a long, hard look at their designs in order to make them more appealing.
 

Nokia N95

Nobody could ever accuse the Nokia N95 of being a fashion phone.. announced in 2006, the N95 defined an entirely new class of handsets that were stuffed with just about every feature you could think of.

Featuring 3.5G support, WiFi, GPS, a superb 5 megapixel camera, a large screen, powerful multimedia player and a clever two-way slider, the N95 was the most advanced phone that we had ever seen.

The N95 demonstrated that there was a market for high-end and expensive mobile phones, and it became the benchmark to beat. Even two years after launch, the N95 is still a very popular phone and there are only a tiny handful of devices that can beat it.
 

Apple iPhone

The Apple iPhone was announced early in 2007, and it's a love-it-or-hate-it device. But there's no doubting that it is a highly influential device that has inspired competitors to come out with a raft of "me too" devices.
 

The original iPhone lacked 3G or GPS, had a pretty poor camera and a number of other disappointments.. but it was the most polished phone to date with a fantastic user interface that won admiring glances.. even from those who claimed not to like the thing.
 

One simple measure of how these three phones compare in terms of popularity is a Google search. Looking up "RAZR" gives 28.6 million matches, N95 gives 64 million matches, and iPhone gives an astonishing 337 million matches. Does that make the iPhone more influential than the others? Possibly not.. but it has definitely created the biggest media buzz.

 

Other mentions

 
We didn't count the Nokia 6310i as that is actually six years old.. a phone that was pretty much perfect for its target market. The Sharp 902 defined the modern 3G phone, but was about two years ahead of everyone else. The Sony Ericsson W800 redefined the mobile phone as a serious media player. The Samsung D500 popularised the now common "slider" format.

 

 ..and the three most disappointing phones.

 

Motorola ROKR E1

The phone that both Motorola and Apple hope you had forgotten.. the Motorola ROKR E1 was announced in 2005, following months of speculation about an iTunes-capable phone.
 

Public expectations were high, with all sorts of snazzy conceptual designs combining iPod elements in a mobile phone.. more or less the same concepts that emerged before the iPhone was launched.

The reality was hugely disappointing. The Motorola ROKR E1 was a slightly tweaked version of the Motorola E398 from the previous year. The ROKR E1 could only store 100 tracks, regardless of the size of memory card, and it just didn't look the part.
 

It was a huge flop, despite the fact that it was actually quite a good music phone despite its limitations. The ROKR range still soldiers on today with handsets such as the ROKR E8, but the ROKR has always been a FLOPR compared to the original RAZR.
 

Nokia 7700

Back in 2003, several years before the iPhone, Nokia showed off the Nokia 7700 which featured a large touch-sensitive screen with a specially designed user interface, a multimedia player, camera, email client and pretty much everything that you would expect from a modern touchscreen phone..
 

..except the 7700 was made with technology from 2003, so it was bulky, lacked memory and was slow. Eventually the 7700 was cancelled and replaced with the 7710 which fared little better.
 

Along with the Nokia 6708, these three devices were Nokia's first touchscreen phones, but they spectacularly failed to make any impact on the market whatsover. Perhaps if the 7700 had an Apple badge on, things might have been different.
 

Panasonic X300

If you are going to make a phone that looks like a digital camcorder, then you would expect it to live up to its looks when it came to taking pictures and video clips.

But although the Panasonic X300 looked fantastic with a flip-out screen and side-mounted camera, the truth was that it was utterly rubbish.. even for 2004 when it was launched. When Panasonic's rival Sharp had just launched the first megapixel camera phone in Europe, the X300 was stuck at 0.3 megapixels. Video capture resolution was approximately 120 x 160 pixels and the X300 couldn't even record sound. The X300 didn't have any type of expandable memory and the 3MB available internally was completely inadequate. The only way to get pictures off was an optional and highly proprietary USB cable. On top of that, the pokey 128 x 128 pixel display was utterly inadequate.. and poor quality construction meant that it tended to break.
 

We admit that plenty of other phones from that time period had similar shortcomings, but none were as utterly disappointing as the Panasonic X300, although Panasonic continued to churn out uncompetitive handsets in Europe until the end of 2005 when they gave up. Although Panasonic's other products are excellent, and Panasonic's Japanese phones are quite impressive, their efforts in the European market were surprisingly poor and nobody really misses them.
 

Other mentions

The Sony Ericsson P990 looked good on paper, but bugs and a lack of interest from its manufacturer meant that this promising device never achieved what it could have done. The Siemens Xelibri 6 (and the whole Siemens Xelibri range) was an interesting idea that is still waiting for the right moment. The Motorola MPx220 failed to popularise Windows on ordinary phones. The Nokia 3200 allowed you to make your own covers.. but we're not sure if anyone ever did. The Nokia N91 tried to introduce the hard disk to mobile phones, but failed. The Motorola ZINE ZN5 is one of 2008's most disappointing phones because it comes with a first class camera, but no 3G or GPS.

Who knows what will be memorable in another five years or so.. we hope that we are still around to share!

Siemens SL55 (2003)

It was fiddly to use, had a terrible screen and poor build quality - but the Siemens SL55 is certainly one of the cutest phones ever made.

Launched in 2003, the SL55 was probably the tiniest phone on the market, measuring just 82 x 45 x 22 mm and weighing 79 grams. But it wasn't just the small size of the SL55 that turned heads - the elegant combination of curves and styling details meant that this phone has a huge amount of "wow factor".. and the SL55 was making inroads into this marketplace a full year before Motorola's RAZR.

The 101 x 80 pixel 4096 colour CSTN display was a bit basic even in 2003. The SL55 had GPRS, a WAP browser, polyphonic ringtones, but it didn't have Bluetooth or a camera.. and certainly nothing fancy like an MP3 player. Of course, it could make phone calls and send text messages too, and really that's all the SL55 was designed to be.. a compact, attractive phone for people who really just need basic functionality.

The SL55 was quite a successful phone, but Siemens could never really come up with a suitable successor. The SL65 and SL75 were better specified but lacked the charm of the original SL55, and eventually the whole Siemens Mobile business folded.

For a time, Siemens showed great promise with a number of highly innovative designs, but they never could reliably sort out their quality control issues. Ultimately the SL55 stands as a reminder of what might have been, and it still calls out for a modern remake.

Siemens SL55 at a glanceSource: GSMArena
Available:	2003
Network:	GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900
Data:	GPRS
Screen:	101 x 80 pixels, 4096 colours
Camera:	No
Size:	Compact slider 82 x 45 x 22mm / 79 grams
Bluetooth:	No
Memory card:	No
Infra-red:	No
Polyphonic:	Yes
Java:	Yes
GPS:	No
Battery life:	5 hours talk / 9 days standby

Motorola V70 (2002)

Launched 2002

This almost forgotten handset is clearly the inspiration for the new Motorola AURA. Launched in 2002, the V70's rotating function was just as unusual as it is today, but the rest of the technology in the V70 was looking a bit dated, even for 2002.

Like the AURA, the V70 was expensive at launch.. our research shows us that the asking price was around $750 or so.. but that's still a lot cheaper than the $2000 price tag for the AURA.

The Motorola V70 was a dual-band GSM phone with a rectangular 96 x 64 pixel monochrome display, a simple WAP browser, GPRS, vibrating function and voice dialling. It was a pretty lightweight handset at just 83 grams. Modern essentials such as Bluetooth, a camera and colour display were absent.

Today the V70 is almost completely forgotten, but it appears that it is quite a collectable device.. and it seems that someone in Motorola certainly remembers it!

Motorola V70 at a glance(source: GSMArena)
Available:	2002
Network:	GSM 900 / 1800
Data:	GPRS
Screen:	96 x 64 pixels, monochrome
Camera:	No
Size:	Rotator 94 x 38 x 18mm /83 grams
Bluetooth:	No
Memory card:	No
Infra-red:	No
Polyphonic:	No
Java:	No
GPS:	No
Battery life:	3.5 hours talk / 6 days standby