Nokia back to their very best

I have loved mobile phones from the moment I first had the opportunity to lay my hands on one. I consider myself to be something of an authority on the subject, especially during the years 1997-2003 when I was involved in the mobile phone retail trade.

Anyone who was an early adopter of hand held mobile phones will fondly remember the ubiquitous Motorola ‘brick’, this was the height of cool during the 1980’s, but far too expensive for someone of my age to afford. I did not actually own one myself, but my boss at the time did and boy was it a head turner. Not in the way it would turn heads now as people stopped and looked in amazement as you hauled this truly enormous phone to your ear, but because it was ultra high tech. It was the almost the stuff of science fiction when it arrived in the UK.

Motorola continued to dominate the market for a number of years; they introduced the Micro Tac series and eventually the legendary Star Tac. If my memory serves me right I would say their first serious competitor was the Japanese firm NEC. NEC produced an instant classic called the NEC P3. By the standards of the day the P3 was very slim and it was the first phone you could fit in to your pocket – but your pocket had to be deep. An interesting and much exploited tweak to the P3 was a feature which allowed users to turn it into a scanner which at the time could pick up police radio transmissions. This was illegal – but fun!

The next major player to emerge was the Finnish firm Nokia, soon followed into the mass hand held market by Ericsson of Sweden. Lots of other manufacturers such as Oki, Mitsubishi, and Nortel come and went. When the market consolidated the big players still in the game were Motorola, Nokia, and Ericsson. NEC faded after their failed successor to the P3, the P4 failed to keep their market share.

At this time all the phones mentioned were still analogue. They did not have the facility for a sim card (subscriber identity module) and this meant they were notoriously easy to listen to, along with police transmissions which were also analogue at the time. All that was needed was a £200 scanner from Tandy. Anyone remember the Squidgygate incident featuring Lady Diana? This is how the information comes into the hands of the press, possibly via GCHQ – but that is digressing! Listening into mobile phone conversations, was behaving like a ‘peeping tom’ but for audiophiles and this did become something of a national pastime for many people. This was soon to end though with the introduction of GSM technology and the introduction of encrypted transmissions.

Until the arrival of GSM technology, mobile phones were something of a novelty to most people and still in the minds of many people a toy for Yuppies. This changed in a big way during Q4 1997. This was the time every man and his dog decided they wanted a mobile phone. This was made a lot easier with the recent introduction of pay as you go phones. This immediately opened up the market to virtually everyone – and the world has never been the same since.

From this point things moved rapidly, new players such as Sony and Siemens entered the market. Many smaller players such as Alcatel and Sagem also tried their luck, but by this time market had matured and Nokia were rapidly consolidating their position as market leaders.

One reason, the main reason! why Nokia become so dominant was because of the ease of use of their handsets. This coupled with their innovative ideas such as changeable fascias for many of their basic handsets made them in instant hit with the fastest growing market – children. Winnie the Pooh and Tigger fascias were selling as quickly as they could be manufactured.

The one quirky bit of technology which was included in the new GSM format was a facility to send text messages. This was originally intended to make the job of the system engineers easier, the industry were taken totally by surprise when this feature becomes the phenomenon of the 1990’s. From an industry perspective this defied logic, after all; why go to the trouble of writing when you can talk? Yet again, Nokia were first off the blocks when it comes to ease of use in compiling and sending SMS messages. Anyone and everyone who was heavily into texting had to have a Nokia handset!

The next big developments were the introduction of built in low resolution cameras, MMS (picture messaging) facilities and MP3 players. From here on in it was steady progression rather than rapid advances. The next big thing to be introduced to the market was 3G technology and smart phones.

Anyone who has persevered in reading this long and poorly constructed ramble this far may well be thinking – come on – get to the point, and my point is coming very soon after I have this quick moan.

Smart phones, BlackBerry’s, iPhone3G’s, Nokia 97’s, these devices are fantastic, if you have long train journeys to make and nothing good to read, but in reality I find them incredibly frustrating to use for the purpose of actually making simple calls and sending text messages. I am not what could be described as a ‘technophobe’ but after recently canvassing opinion amongst friends and associates I have discovered that I am not alone in thinking technology for the sake of technology is not always a good thing.

The purpose of this long and disjointed article is to recommend a fantastic mobile phone to the readers of the TC blog. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you, live from Tameside, my newest and best tech acquisition of 2009, I present to you The Nokia 6303 Classic. This phone is a ‘classic’ in every sense. It is the personification of simplicity to use, a dream! You try walking a dog in the rain and send a text message using the ultra high tech Nokia 97 or a similar breed of phone – not an easy task, but with 6303 – you can do it without hardly even looking at it. It has all the features you would expect on a modern phone such as 3.2 million pixel camera, (which is actually quite good), a built in radio and MP3 player, removable media. Good solid metal construction and keypad buttons actually designed for adult fingers rather than toddlers.

The Nokia 6303 classic is not an expensive phone – but it looks good, is a nice size and has a classy feel to it. If you are taking out a contract or due an upgrade it would be free. On PAYG it costs around £100. If you want a phone which does everything you could reasonably expect a phone to do without the frustration of an overcomplicated smart phone I cannot recommend this phone highly enough. I give this phone a good 9.5/10. The only feature missing which prevents a straight 10/10 is the lack of a built in torch. Other than that it is Noka back to their very best.

Have a nice bank holiday!