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Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

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Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#101

Post by fsflover »

nsizx wrote: post #63
fsflover wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You don't have to buy the AweSIM. You can use any sim-card with this phone, there is no lock. 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…

The laws of my country already make it illegal for my mobile provider to take my private data and sell it away.

This is US-only anyway. But apart from the data selling, there are also leaks.

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#102

Post by dagw »

Zenst wrote: post #60
wombatmobile wrote: post #30

> 25 years since it changed the world 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…

I owned one of these, not as good as a Psion 5MX that preceded if year before. Sure this was an all in one but no, always laughed at the ariel and the thing felt like you could almost use it as an ice-pick with the ariel folded down and the unit closed. But hey, was neat - just the usual issues of these open/close designs was the ribbon cable to connect the screen - those always seem to fail outside warranty period.…

not as good as a Psion 5MX that preceded if year before.

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.

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#103

Post by amonavis »

pjmlp wrote: post #94
rcarmo wrote: post #75

I used to work as product manager in a major telco and had one of every single model of those, and they were some of the best hardware I ever used. 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 functional…

Being at Nokia Networks during that last phase, I could observe in first person how many of those things went. 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…

Even today NetAct remains a hot mess.

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#104

Post by sumedh »

markstos wrote: post #100

I remember around 1997 I was reading my raw web site logs and saw the Nokia 9000 user agent appear. I knew what it was but never saw one in person. I wondered what some rich person was doing reading my website, probably about skateboarding back then.

It was probably the rich guy's son.

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#106

Post by grishka »

pier25 wrote: post #74
phpnode wrote: post #28

I still really prefer a hardware keyboard and miss my android G1 in many ways. I'm typing this on my touch screen phone and it's so much slower than texting was even on an ordinary numeric keypad with predictive text. For me touch screens ended productivity on phones and they solely became consumption devices

I'm surprised nobody has implement something like the numpad + predictive text on a touch screen. It would make a lot of sense having less buttons to mis touch.

Back when touchscreen phones were new, Nokia 5800 had a T9 keyboard you could use instead of qwerty.

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#107

Post by wbertberw »

senko wrote: post #87
rcarmo wrote: post #75

I used to work as product manager in a major telco and had one of every single model of those, and they were some of the best hardware I ever used. 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 functional…

Maemo wasn't the problem, and in fact N900 had a dedicated cult following for years after. 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 cha…

> not only meant Nokia had to rewrite its proprietary UI and repackage everything

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)

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#108

Post by phire »

senko wrote: post #87
rcarmo wrote: post #75

I used to work as product manager in a major telco and had one of every single model of those, and they were some of the best hardware I ever used. 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 functional…

Maemo wasn't the problem, and in fact N900 had a dedicated cult following for years after. 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 cha…

Still better than Meego, which they discontinued like 8 months before releasing the N9, the first and last meego device.

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#109

Post by wbertberw »

user3939382 wrote: post #92
raesene9 wrote: post #27

This article kind of misses out the later Nokia N900, which had great hardware, but suffered from Nokia's lack of support (IIRC they stopped supporting it about 6 months after launch). 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

Related, the Neo900 project apparently gave up. Does anyone know why?

They had massive organizational problems. At one point years ago I received a series of e-mails asking for permission to move my preorder funds from one org to another. That's when I wrote them off.

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#110

Post by fsflover »

marcodiego wrote: post #105

Nokia 9000 may be a landmark but nothing impressed more than the day I saw N900 running OpenOffice. I knew it was not a good idea, but that deeply impressed me.

Librem 5 smartphone runs a desktop GNU/Linux with desktop apps. You can even connect a keyboard and screen to it.
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