Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago
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The peak was, I think, when I accessed Excel over Citrix while sitting in the airport waiting for a flight.
In comparison, the N900 I have sitting in the bottom of a storage box someplace was a major disappointment--Maemo never came close to delivering half the functionality I had in a 9500, even though the design principles were pretty advanced for that time.
(I strongly recommend reading "Operation Elop" for an idea of what that later stage in Nokia's life was like, and why Maemo tanked: https://asokan.org/operation-elop)
But the 9000 series was definitely something I wish we had today in some usable, non-niche form.
I never had a N900, but I have a similar memory of fixing a work problem while traveling in the late 90's. I used a terminal on a Palm Pilot over a dial-up modem, typing into a shell using the "graffiti" handwriting. It was...painful and triumphant all at once :)
At that time I felt the future of system administration meant taking the manual things I could do over a smartphone and abstracting them into lists of tappable buttons, like "Provision Web Server" and "Set Up New Developer".
Curious why you bought it instead of the iPhone.
Nokia spectaculary blew its own foot with deprecating Maemo after only a few months - either the stupidest move in history or result of internal power struggles - and force-marrying it with Intel's Moblin (itself a decent mobile OS) to create unholy mess that was Meego.
The book (btw awesome find, gonna read it at the first chance I get!) agrees with my recollection of the events:
> The operating system was named Maemo. As soon as it was permitted to be fitted on a phone, that first Maemo smartphone was a reasonable success. It attracted a community of open source developers who created Maemo apps. With 12,000 members, this was the largest mobile developer community in the world. Then Nokia did something remarkable. It partnered with the chip manufacturer Intel, and the two companies renamed Maemo to MeeGo.
Consider Maemo was Debian-based, using GTK, and Moblin was RedHat-based, using QT. It not only meant Nokia had to rewrite its proprietary UI and repackage everything, it also threw all the thriving dev community under the bus.
this is half-correct. Maemo->Meego did shift from GTK to QT, but they kept the Debian packaging on the N9 (the only device to ship with Meego)
Nokia used to have internal shows to get employees feedback for future products, Maemo not having a radio modem was a common remark, naturally they couldn't add it due to Symbian.
Also think that Elop gets more blame than he deserves, as many see his connection to Microsoft and not the bonus from Nokia's own management board.
NetAct versus other networking products, also suffered from the same culture issues, by the way.
Not much else I can talk openly about it.
You're right, but you're going to upset a whole bunch of people who think that what people wanted was Debian on a phone, and are uninterested in hearing the last 10 years of market evidence to the contrary.
[0] Btw, I'm absolutely not dissing this: I have my own fetish - something of a thing for old synths, particularly those of the early-ish digital era in the 80s that are still fairly affordable, and recently bought a Yamaha RX5 drum machine... from Australia. It wasn't _that_ expensive, but it's a similar level of expenditure. I love old analogue synths too: I just can't afford them and, with these, because they're a bit more sexy and fashionable than the digital options, you can often pick up much less expensive modern day reproductions and homages.
To be honest, I don't know what I wouldv'e done with it, being 12 years old.
Anybody remember those "organizer" gadgets, with a screen and a calander and notes, but not a phone? I got one of those and didn't really use it for anything useful.
I did now just order de Fold 3. Comparable.
The Psion was such a lovely device, it would fit in a large pocket, but had a proper keyboard that you could comfortably type at a decent speed on. It was also my introduction to programming, and so probably indirectly responsible for me coming out of school with reasonable grades (having been able to actually finish work), and a career I'm still in twenty years later.
I have it in the drawer near my PC at the moment, I think I put in a battery the other day, still works.
Later on I bought a secondhand Palm V from the internet, I think it was €25,- that thing was pretty cool and more of the 'smartphone' functionality than the organizer; you could install apps on it and the like, so Sudoku was a favorite.
Older, I guess, but I still have an Atari Portfolio from 1989 or so. It still works but I don't use it anymore ; )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_organizer#/media/Fi...
If you like that kind of form factor/functionality, there's current devices too like the cosmo communicator https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/cosmo-communicator
Very solid device otherwise- i went from an Xperia X1 to the N900.
For those looking for modern PKB phones the Unihertz Titan and the upcoming Titan Pocket are some other good options.
I've ended up switching to a swipe keyboard which I find efficient but it in an entirely different way to T9.
> Such T9 formats for text entry therefore remain available in all latest [as of August 2020] iterations of LG keyboards, certain Samsung keyboards, and third party T9 keyboards such as Go keyboard for Androids and Type Nine for iPhones, as shown on this LG V60.
Also, there was another method of touch input that used swipe gestures to write words, I can't remember the name, but I remember that it was far from intuitive to use.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_(predictive_text)#Successor...
Selling same core concept to both mass markets and professionals
* has made everything cheaper and more powerful, and
* has decreased input ergonomics for heavy users.
Communicator/Blackberry with hardware keyboards were in some sense peak in input ergonomics for accuracy and speed in thumb-typing. Now it's just less or more suck with touch screens. I don't even bother to install ssh terminal for iPhone because easier/faster to carry tiny laptop than suffer the experience.
In the end though the peak for me was Windows mobile, everything up to 6.5 was literally just a pc in your pocket, after that they made the mistake (imo) of trying to compete with apple and android for user experience and failed miserably. For my part I never wanted the improved UX- a start menu style system with a stylus was great for me. Nokias N900 was great, but in the end too niche to compete with HTC and Apple when they were pumping out androids and iPhones. I handled purchases at my work for smartphones and gave the HTC hero as suggestion for my colleagues since it was simpler and got a N900 for myself, and though I liked it a lot android certainly went a lot further in the end.
Also jumped into Windows Phones, as its development experience was miles ahead (still is) from whatever comes out of Google.
With exception of Android, I never needed a "gaming rig/server configuration" for mobile development.
Anyway it is what it is.
Prior to the iPhone the acme of portable touchscreen interface design was the Newton Messagepad 2100. Its interface was superior to Maemo in practically every way, despite being discontinued ten years prior.
Maemo feels like a crappy, half-assed attempt to implement some of the Newton's magic on top of X11, and with weird desktop mouse-oriented design elements (menus, scroll bars, combo boxes, Windows-style tree-views, even cursors in some apps) bolted on awkwardly without any thought about their appropriateness to a tablet operating system. I wrote an extensive article comparing the two way back when, when I was doing a moderate number of contributions to the N800 platform. Maemo was amateurish at best, with an incredible array of inconsistent and obtuse iconography, several inconsistent sizes and designs for the same exact kind of GUI element (text buttons, icons, ), a complete lack of state persistence, absolutely horrible fonts, and a desperate need to be backward compatible with X11, hardly the best choice for a mobile OS GUI foundation. It was clearly built by linux software developers and not GUI designers.
iOS didn't borrow anything from the N900: it borrowed directly from the Newton and from MacOS and NeXTSTEP, when it wasn't inventing things from whole cloth.
Thankfully now Android has shown us that Linux can shine in the mobile pad market, if you jettison X, stupid archaic design elements from desktop GUIs, and design a consistent and organized interface from the ground up considering the needs of the device and and user.
I wondered what some rich person was doing reading my website, probably about skateboarding back then.
You could probably make an interesting article on how much a modern smartphone in 2021 differs from the 7650. Fundamentally I don't think it's as much as many would think.
Series 80 was a dead end too I think?
Edit: I hadn't realised how much earlier the 9000 was. I guess in '96 it might have made more impact? I can't remember ever seeing one in use, though.
I own a Planet Cosmo Communicator which is a homage to the Nokia Communicator (as well as Palm devices). I also purchased the successor, the Planet Astro Slide, which has a slideout keyboard like the (patented) Nokia N900 (among others, like Symbian-based). The keyboard of these devices is, like the Planet Gemini's, great.
That said, I believe a smartphone like Nokia N95 was more of a game changer for the general consumer. And Nokia became popular because of their iconic dumbphones (and their networking pioneering, hence their name reference to town in Finland); not so much their smartphones.
The main benefit was a nice(ish) keyboard for texts and emails.
I once wrote and emailed in a consultancy report from the back garden of a pub, just to prove I could. But it's not something I'd have been happy doing regularly.
If Psion had somehow added mobile data to their Organisers they'd have killed this market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5
The main thing these devices did was normalise ARM and pocketable form factors for serious mobile use. But they were really micro laptops and not large mobiles.
They were more like very early versions of the MacBook or Air. The iPhone - rightly - went in a different direction.
The platform was really limited, app development was tricky, but at the end it did the job and there were very few alternatives.
We actually ended up using emails as our sync mechanism: internet connectivity in places we served were as limited as you can imagine and also because of device limitation. It worked in a way that changes in data were serialized and sent to server that merged the data into the master and sent you changes back via email as well.
Now the internet, and increasingly mobile internet is becoming the default way of accessing almost any service, so having a phone that works for you is something that people are ready to pay for. You end up using it so much, that people feel like it's not a waste of money.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
Which ties everything that happened to some individual hero.
We do that in tech for people too, but also devices. I think I'd be interested to read a smartphone (and indeed general computing history) that focused on the other elements like the relentless miniaturisation of tech, battery improvements, radio technology, societal adaptations etc. rather than "this obscure/famous person/device invented the future".
My older brother had a Communicator until the lid broke.
Later he had another early smartphone from Spectronics, it was controlled with buttons on the sides that you had to learn but once you learned them they were very intuitive.
Nokia’s Communicator may have been the most capable phone computer of the pre iPhone era, but it didn’t change the world. It was too expensive, too closed, and not well enough marketed to change much of anything.
I’m surprised to see it glorified here, not because it wasn’t a nice piece of visionary tech, but because the company that made it had such little impact on changing the world despite pioneering the category.
Yes, they weren't in the hands of every stylish adult or high-spending teen, but it wasn't for them. I'd guarantee it influenced the thinking of other people building products in that category for at least a few years. And in the long run the world changed due to that product category.
Blackberry innovated by shrinking the keyboard to thumb size, and making do with a smaller display so it could fit in a pocket instead of requiring a handbag.
Those two innovations/ bold compromises over the Communicator enabled RIM to discover the first addictive euphoria of an always connected social device with the crack berry.
I say “social” but it wasn’t really because the app was really just email. But RIM got it into the gossip columns through Paris Hilton and Janet Jackson, setting the stage for the blockbuster device that landed in 2007 when Steve Jobs showed everybody what a leap forward into a new category could be.
That right there gave them a winner in those early days.
Now what gave Blackberry there consumer base was the PIN messaging which was a basic chat system that was simple and effective, something a bit more for those that grew up on SMS to engage with and they did.
But crux was, this was too dam expensive and heck a few years later Blackberry would have it's moment and that did more for the market than the Nokia communicator ever did. Heck the IBM Simon did more than the Nokia did for pushing things or about the same lack-lustre uptake. FWIW I got my communicator for free from a friend who orded one and got two with the company failing to take back the second one in a period of time that made it legally his (he notified in writing so was 3months, maybe 6).
I would also ad the Sony P800 was more game changer as well than the nokia communicator. Also owned that and for the era - pretty darn good.
The 5MX was released 1999 and the Communicator in 1996. That being said, I agree that the 5MX was fantastic piece of hardware that in many ways has never been matched.
I got sick of buying Psion 5's and 5MX's because they always broke in 6 months.
PS: if you want to make a stance, go back to analog world ;-)
If I was forced to use an old Nokia as my daily driver, I would probable use a 5800 instead.
FAQ about the first one: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....
Also, see the FAQ.
> Introducing Librem AweSIM: > Unlimited talk, text, and data for just $99/mo
"just"? Really? Isn't that awefully expensive?!
I have a plan with ulnimited talk, text, and 40GB of data that I use extensively (including for a lot of youtube videos) and I've never hit this limit. I pay €8/mo for that. For people who would need even more data, there are 200GB plan for less than €20/mo.
2. This is not just a cellular service provider:
Librem AweSIM adds an extra layer of privacy to your customer data to protect you from targeted tracking. We register your phone number in our name on your behalf and keep your personal and financial data private and out of the hands of companies who would sell it to others.
Even then, $99 USD/month is about twice what you'd pay with a regular carrier.
Because you live in happy Europe, fellow european.
But people in the US have to pay that ridiculous amount of money for on average worse service.
Europe is very well connected.
every damn tech author has it built in to hate on old tech and QWERTY. Screw them all, id take a snapdragon in an “ugly” but massively functional form factor (like the one on the right) over these garbage screen-bars with trash virtual keyboards.
The target audience of Nokia 9000, people like you or me, are long since not the target audience of flagship smartphones. Bluetooth keyboards, 11" laptops, or some highly custom and expensive hardware are the choices for a proper "mobile office" today.
It’s depressingly impressive that the correction at the end of the article has three typos.
Shrinking a laptop to the size of a telephone wasn't the right thing to do.
Definitely glad that others were soon to follow with the more modern displays, because the first iPhones themselves were like a step back in many other ways compared to the Palms, Blackberrys, and PocketPCs of the day.
Getting updates on the regular changed the world (not always for the better)
Windows Mobile (and even fking Pocket PC) had text editors, browsers, music and video players, file management and transfer tools, GPS software, painting tools, etc.
Granted, you needed three cells in your brain to, gasp, install apps yourself, but they were available.