Nokia E-series

Nokia E61 perfectly aped the blackberry form factor and also had a great keyboard (with f & j nubs). I still fondly remember mine.

I had an Ericsson R320s at the time and that was the web page that convinced me to replace it with a Nokia E70. The joystick stopped working after many years and there was no fix for it. I switched to E90 and I hated the keyboard. It took a lot of force to press the keys and there was no clear key separation to touch-type. But that was the phone which I dropped on the pavement while riding the bike at 80 Km/h and it survived with just scratches! The best 3 phones I ever had. Now I have a N86 which I'm going to keep until the last 2G goes offline.

I can't tell you how many waiting rooms, grocery checkout lines, and delayed public transit that his puzzle collection gotten me through. On every handheld and laptop starting with the Symbian-based Nokia E61.

Totally! When I got my Nokia 5146 (still basically a 5110) - you had to pay I think £50 for the phone, plus the contract of £15 a month. A month or two later you could get the 3210 for free, plus a better contract from orange, that took advantage of the MMS options - plus had the programmable ringtones which was soooooo much cooler than the 5110. I was lucky to jump from the 5110 to the 8210, and then to a 8250 which I adored and used on an off through to 2007 - when I moved to the E61 then e71 - which both still hold a very special place in my heart!

2008 - Nokia e63. It had the near perfect balance of utility, usability, and durability. Granted it didn't do everything as well as later devices, at a cost of about $200 AUD it was an awesome bit of kit. Full qwerty keyboard, multi day battery, wifi, Bluetooth, gps, could be used as a weapon or beer opener if required. No doomscrolling, no single user/purpose apps, just a fucking solid communication device.

The main issue they had was fragmented Symbian versions. Oh that and they allowed themselves to listen to Stephen Elop. I admire their hardware innovation and I think it’s sad we lost it. My Nokia E61 is still one of my favourite past handsets (Sony’s second version of the Xperia Mini Pro, the iPhone X and the stunning Siemens S35 are the others). And now I probably gave away who I am to at least one person who knows me here.

I remember Nokia E-series phones with QWERTY keyboards had a little torch printed on the tiny spacebar. Everything else now feels unintuitive compared to that.

I believe most of the source was available but maybe some stuff was missing. Same with the N900 which was also nearly unusable. I frankly liked the Blackberry style Nokias better (E63 etc.) and source for those would have been great.