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Comment by mnmmn123456 | Hacker News Reader

It didn't change the world. The iPhone did 10 years later. I guess the article is of interest because it has this wrong claim weaved in and even at it's time the "Nokia Communicator" wasn't a big success. Maybe we didn't know what FAANG-like success looks like at that time and everyone thought "Nokia is such a respectable, successful company in Scandinavia". Probably the article is of interest now because, we didn't see 2006 (year the iPhone came out) and all the years after.

Shrinking a laptop to the size of a telephone wasn't the right thing to do.

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We have all noticed that the world has changed with iOS and Android, and we're still trying to recover from that disaster.

Well, not the iPhone, but Apple's marketing. We had everything the iPhone did with Windows Mobile. Hell, even Symbian did fine. They were just aimed at "professionals" and completely ignored consumers.

Yeah...I remember the iPhone release. I was so jealous of the capacitive screen and solidly implemented graphics acceleration. But compared to the HTC WinMo phone I had at the time, it was missing such futuristic capabilities as 3G data, GPS for turn-by-turn nav, 3rd party apps, copy/paste, MMS, background apps, front camera (although it was less important because video calls on 2G was a non-starter), and the ability to even change your background or ringer to something that didn't ship with the thing.

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.

At the time I had a Tytn II, which had all of those. Guess that's why I never got the iPhone.

I also had one of these (that's what I was referring to). Between that and AT&T exclusivity in the US (right after all the domestic wiretapping info became public) it just wasn't an option for me at the time.

Did Windows Mobile have firmware updates independent of carriers? AFAIK, Symbian didn't.

Getting updates on the regular changed the world (not always for the better)

Both of them did. You updated it yourself. Ffs

No apps.

You can't be serious... Do you think they just had a preset number of programs and that's it?

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.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. The thought arises: what's the motivation for Deutsche Welle to suddenly post an article about a derelict Finnish proto-"smartphone"?

At the time Nokia was not derelict. It is stated in the heading, it is now 25 years ago when Nokia started its path to become a global juggernaut.

When did I say Nokia was derelict? Please pay attention to what I really wrote.

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