Nokia 6800 Slide

[Evelina Paxman]

As any mobile phone geek can tell you, there was a time when Nokia was the cell phone company that mattered. Starting in the 1990s and until the advent of the iPhone and Android, it produced many of the planet's most successful phones. Join me to relive some of Nokia's biggest hits and craziest leaps of faith.

Naturally, it all started somewhere. With Nokia that was the 1011. It wasn't the first commercially available mobile phone and it wasn't the first GSM handset, but it was the first mass-produced GSM phone. It did little more than make calls and send text, but it was all Nokia needed to start on a worldwide roll.

The distinctively styled 8110 was the first Nokia phone to have a slider design. Its other names were "banana phone" (it had a curved shape when the slider was open) and "'The Matrix' phone" (it appeared in the film). Features were still slim at this point -- you didn't even get an alarm clock. At Mobile World Congress 2018, Nokia brought the 8110 back in bright yellow. And this time, it had 4G.

The small and light 8210 was another model that almost everyone had. It had an infrared port -- sort of a Bluetooth precursor -- and you change the covers. Also a silver screen star in its own right it appeared in "Absolutely Fabulous" (Patsy mistook it for a small shoe) and the first "Charlie's Angels."

The trusty, sturdy 3310 had voice dialing, interchangeable covers, a calculator and a user-friendly design similar to that of the wildly popular 3210 from 1999. And at the 2017 Mobile World Congress, Nokia brought it back in a new version.

Long and thin, the 6310i was Nokia's first Bluetooth phone and by this time Java-based games, voice commands, 2.5G data and a basic personal organizer were standard features. You could even send photo messages -- it just didn't have a camera.

The 3530 was one of many Nokia phones to feature a wacky keypad. The next year the 3595 added a few more features to a similar design and the 2300 splashed on a bright pink and purple skin. Color screens were still a new feature by the time.

Another actor -- it got its turn in "Minority Report" -- the 7650 was the first Nokia phone to feature an integrated camera. It also was known for its slider design, the Symbian operating system, a color display, and a navigation joystick.

As fun as Snake was, Nokia knew that more sophisticated mobile gaming was the future. Its next play was the curious N-Gage. Thanks to a clunky form factor that required gamers to remove the battery to swap titles, this one didn't last long at all. There was also the weird way you held the N-Gage to make a call (with its spine resting against your face). That earned it the name, "the taco phone."

The 3200 was a unique phone on a few counts. You could take apart the handset's shell and replace the paper faceplate with a selection of designs that came in the box, or you could draw your own. Also, instead of nine individual buttons, six oval keys set in uneven rows had two characters each. Its features included a flashlight, a CIF camera (remember those?), an FM radio, an infrared port, and polyphonic ringtones.

Powerful for its time, the 3650 was an early smartphone of sorts running on the fledging Symbian operating system. It also had a display that supported 4,096 colors, Bluetooth, a speakerphone, and an external slot for MultiMediaCards.

It was fitting that the 5100 was part of the company's "Active" 5000 series. Encased in a durable rubber shell it was protected from moisture, shocks and dust. The offbeat feature set included a thermometer, a flashlight, a calorie counter, and an FM radio. And if you didn't like the blue shell, you could change it for one in orange, green, or dark gray.

Sure it resembled a brick, but the 6600 was the company's most advanced model at the time. It had Bluetooth, the Symbian operating system, an infrared port, a VGA camera, a memory card expansion slot, an integrated RealOne player, e-mail, and an XHTML browser. In the riveting 2004 movie "Cellular," Kim Basinger's rescuer spoke to her on a 6600.

Who other than Nokia could make this phone? Part of Nokia's "Fashion" 7000 series, the teardrop-shaped 7600 had a 65,000-color display with keys arranged on either side. It also had interchangeable covers, a VGA camera, an MP3 player, Bluetooth, an infrared port and USB support.

An early pass at combining an MP3 player with a phone (the 5510 was an earlier music phone), the Nokia 3300 got a few things right, including great sound quality, an FM tuner, support for voice commands and an external memory. But if the split keyboard didn't put you off, like the N-Gare it was a "sidetalker." -3300-t-mobile/

The follow-up to the bulkier 6800 from 2003, the 6820 featured a novel flip-out keyboard for messaging. It was very cool at the time, and I loved how the display switched orientation when you opened the keyboard.

"Give 'em the old razzle dazzle" must have been the theme of the 3220's designers. Four rubber grips on the side of the phone illuminate in red and green when it rang and when you placed a call. Like on the 3200 you could make custom stencils, but the 3220 had a bigger surprise in store. If you added a special faceplate and wrote a message on the keypad, you could spell out the message in lights by waving the phone in the air.

Yes, this was a phone. Also called the "lipstick phone," the 7280 pulled apart in the middle to answer calls. Since it didn't have a keyboard, you interacted with the handset solely through a scroll wheel, a menu button, and two other keys. Dialing phone numbers on it was a pain, but texting was easier than you might think. Inside there was a VGA camera, an FM radio and Bluetooth. It even had a WAP browser, though it was frustrating to use on the tiny display. I only saw one person using it in the wild. In 2005, Nokia released a second version with the gold and shiny 7380 as part of the company's "Fashion" series.

Nokia only dabbled in flip phones. I used the Nokia 6133 for a year or so just before the iPhone appeared. It had an expandable microSD slot, EDGE connectivity and FM radio among other features. There was also a button on the right side of the hinge that lets you flip the phone open.

Made for music, the 3250 had a unique twisting design that enabled you to rotate between a numeric keypad and dedicated music controls. And it came in pink! It could store up to 2GB of music with a memory card; by rotating the camera lens, you could take photos. The Nokia 5700 Xpress Music had a similar design.

It opened, it twisted and it turned. The N93 was the pinnacle of Nokia's "give 'em everything we got" strategy for its N-series smartphones. Sure, it was gigantic, but it had a ton of features like a 3.2-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, video recording, Wi-Fi and a full web browser.

In August 2007, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) launched the Cell Phone Accessibility Project. Cell phone features, such as keys that can be identified by touch, displays that can be read by people with limited vision, and phones with speech output for people who cannot read the phone's display, are not widely available. Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires cell phones and phone services to be designed to be accessible for people with disabilities. However, far too many manufacturers and carriers of cell phones are not taking their obligation to provide accessibility seriously.

In July 2007, 11 customers in Florida, Georgia, Colorado, California, and West Virginia filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Frequent complaints from users of cell phones who are blind or have low vision include the facts that cell phones do not provide for audio output of information displayed on the screen; the visual displays on most phones are hard to read; numeric and control keys are not easy to distinguish by touch; and product manuals or phone bills are not available in braille, large print, or other formats that they can read. You can follow the progress of this project by visiting .

AccessWorld's first article on the accessibility of cell phones was published in January 2002. Since then, we have kept you up to date on new phones and software that have come along, and progress that has been made toward greater accessibility. This month, we feature four articles that are related to cell phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants).

In this issue, Darren Burton reviews Smart Hal from Dolphin Computer Access, running on the AT&T 2125 from AT&T (formerly Cingular). This is the second of two evaluations of screen readers for smartphones. Smartphones are a category of handheld devices that run Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. They generally have fewer features than Pocket PCs, but they are becoming more and more popular. Learn what you can expect from access to smartphones.

Bradley Hodges, of AFB TECH, evaluates Mobile Speak Pocket from Code Factory and Pocket Hal from Dolphin Computer Access, two screen readers for Pocket PCs. Pocket PCs are different from smartphones because they have additional power, more processing speed, and touch screens. Find out how these products performed.

Larry L. Lewis, Jr., president of Flying Blind, writes about accessing mainstream PDAs using wireless braille displays. He has worked in management positions for HumanWare and Optelec and brings an insider's perspective, as well as the experience of a power user, to this subject. Lewis contends that the new method of accessing off-the-shelf Pocket PCs is superior to using devices that are designed specifically for people who are visually impaired, such as the BrailleNote or the PAC Mate. He discusses the strengths and weaknesses of braille products that were developed by Handy Tech, Baum, and Optelec and then highlights what he views as the advantages offered by using these off-the-shelf devices. Read this hard-hitting view of what could be the future of PDA access.

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