Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

dw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 147 posts

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#121

Post by TacticalCoder »

neals wrote: post #61

As a kid, this phone was like my dream gadget, I still remember really wanting one and staring at it at the store. 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.

> 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.

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/Atari_Portfolio

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#122

Post by pjmlp »

amonavis wrote: post #103
pjmlp wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Looking back, the way OSS Middleware was supposed to reboot NetAct, was the wrong approach, we had better just rewrite everything in better C++ without the Perl/CORBA stuff, but many pieces were at play.

Not much else I can talk openly about it.

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#123

Post by bserge »

soylentcola wrote: post #116
bserge wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#124

Post by slim »

phire wrote: post #108
senko wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Meego is Maemo + Moblin if I remember correctly. It's the frakenstein monster he's talking about

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#125

Post by soylentcola »

bserge wrote: post #123
soylentcola wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#126

Post by FridayoLeary »

afavour wrote: post #81
pier25 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are Android keyboards that replicate it. I tried a few but for whatever reason they still couldn't replicate the experience. I suspect it's the lack of hard buttons - I could type out an entire message without looking at the screen with a T9 keypad. I've ended up switching to a swipe keyboard which I find efficient but it in an entirely different way to T9.

For some inexplicable reason new Nokias seem to have ditched T9. The one feature that gives 'dumb' phones an edge over touchscreens has been abandoned. The replacement is a horrid, crappy and eminently useless home - grown editor that is worse in every way. It seems Nokia execs enjoy shooting themselves in the foot. But anyway, their phones are irrelevant, it's just a pity that they seem to be going backwards.

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#127

Post by gauravjain13 »

neals wrote: post #61

As a kid, this phone was like my dream gadget, I still remember really wanting one and staring at it at the store. 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.

Exactly my experience! I had a Casio SF-R20 when I was around 13 years old, and it was a my first introduction to spreadsheets (IIRC the spreadsheet app was called Lucid 3-D).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_organizer#/media/Fi...

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#128

Post by christkv »

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…

The cosmo is a sort of attempt towards the communicators https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/cosmo-communicator

Re: Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched 25 years ago

#129

Post by jareklupinski »

tyingq wrote: post #79
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…

>The peak was, I think, when I accessed Excel over Citrix while sitting in the airport waiting for a flight. 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 :)

Ah, making me remember trying to monkey patch a script over ssh on my Blackberry Storm...

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".

Post reply on HN