Guess what I saw today?

[Hands0n]

I used to have two of the beasts, one each on T-Mobile and Vodafone, in that order. I thought, at the time, that they were great. They did just about everything that I wanted to then.

The built in browser was not too bad for the simple stuff. There was no notion of being able to access complex full blown websites, but a quick Google and a few pages was no real problem. The browser did used to crash quite a bit as it leaked memory like a very leaky bucket. Tethering was possible using USB cable - and later Joiku Hotspot came to the rescue, the paid-for version required for unfettered tethering.

But data in those days was ruinously expensive and so had to be used very judiciously. Any thought of Gigabytes of usage were completely foreign, unthinkable, the ravings of a mad person.

So, today, as I was walking back from lunch, I came over all nostalgic-like when I glanced in the window of a local hair dresser to see a young lad eagerly texting away on his Nokia N95 (not even the 8GB model).

It was a great little smartphone (?) in its day. Amazing to see one still in practical use.

[Ben]

Remarkable! :D There has been one in everyday use at our office until recently... in fact, the chap may still be using it - I shall find out!

Yes I remember that you had two. Nutter :p

I held out for the 8GB. I was glad that I did... it was a commendable improvement... but sadly it all came too late. Nokia's platform was about to demonstrate spontaneous combustion on a grand scale.

I don't doubt they're still functional bits of equipment. But damn, the perseverance involved in using one - makes me feel a bit whoosy!

[miffed]

I had a couple too , I bought one on Orange - But being from CPW I was expecting the handset to be unlocked ...and it wasn't ! This was a pain as I wanted to be able to use my T-mobile SIM in it , seeing as that account was HSDPA enabled and IIRC no one else in the UK offered HSDPA at the time - I then tried to buy the unlock code from Orange and they said they couldn't provide it , so I bought a second (unlocked) N95 from ebay , .....only to recieve the code from Orange a few days later ! Grr

I remember at the time I thought the screen was MASSIVE ! it seemed like the device was mainly screen with hardly any border at all -funny to look at it now it looks tiny and the border looks huge.

One of mine suffered from the annoying rattley slider problem ! (easily fixable with a bit of sticky felt) - Never really understood the point of the media keys - bit of a waste of time IMO.

I remeber thinking the "yank off" back cover was a bit weird too.

I hated listening to people yak on about the Camera being the holy grail , What none of them mentioned was the fact that you had to press the shutter button a full week before you wanted a photo !

It's what computers have become , don't you know ? :D

[Hands0n]

In an odd way I kind of miss those halcyon days :) Things were much simpler then. Back then we would kill for any reasonable amount of mobile data. T-Mobile cracked it with their FlexT. No one else did though. Even by today's standards that is a goodly amount of data.

I do think that it was the N95 that started the ball rolling, at least for me, getting my expectations up on what could be possible mobile.