Today, Microsoft announced that they’re dropping the Nokia name. Yes, that’s right - Nokia phones are no more.
Instead, Microsoft will be using the Lumia name on their mobile devices, deciding that Nokia - who they bought this year - are better off making networking solutions and maps.
It’s a sad, sad day - and we can’t let it go by without a tribute to the mobile phone company that, in all likelihood, gave us our first mobile.
But first: our soundtrack for the evening:
The indestructible brick
The Nokia brick was, in fact, made of the same material as Captain America’s shield, and, as we all know from owning one, is completely indestructible.
Here’s a great test from the folks at Wired’s Damage lab released just last week - the trusty Nokia 3510 getting dropped from a regular height, a building height, and, for the craic, freezing it in liquid nitrogen to see if they can kill it.
Remember those days when no-one had ever heard of a shattered screen? You’d just put the parts of your phone back together. The glory days.
The ring tone
Ah, Gran Vals! What a wonderful composition for solo guitar, written, of course, by Spanish classical guitarist Francisco Tárrega, in 1902. Or, as you know it, the Nokia ring tone.
Those few notes have interrupted more cinema audiences, plays, musical recitals and bus passengers than any other creation in human history. It got so bad that comedian Dom Joly made a segment of Trigger Happy TV in which he answered a giant telephone and screamed at it - reflecting exactly how people act with a phone.
Pocket typing in class
Pocket typing was, for a decade, the holy grail of life skills. Back before touch screens,we had
, which meant you could hit them without actually looking at them, proceeding by touch alone like some kind of secret agent.The trick was turning off the T9 predictive text so you didn’t have to guess which ducking word you were on. This meant there was no chance of getting caught using your phone anywhere you weren’t supposed to. School, church, boring meetings - these all became places you could text from.
The
move was being able to slip a glance at the replies without getting caught.Making your own ringtones with incredibly complex code
Sure, there were some terrible services that could text you knew ringtones for crazy prices, but who needed them when you had the amazing Nokia Composer?
With composer, creating your very own ringtone was as simple as typing:
1d2 4d2 4e2 2#f2 1g2 4a2 4a1 4d2 4#c2 8#f2 8#f2 8e2 4#f2 4e2 4#f2 4e2 8e2 4b2 4a2 8#f2 8#f2 8e2 4#f2 4e2 4d2 4d2 8e2 2e2 8#f2 8#f2 8e2 4#f2 4e2 4#f2 4e2 8e2 4b2 4a2 8#f2 8#f2 8e2 4#f2 4e2 4d2 4d2 8e2 2e2.
… Piece. Of. Cake. Mozart, eat your heart out.
The Matrix phone
Back in the days before Netflix, there was a new-age video format called “DVD”. And the first DVD everyone bought was a film called The Matrix, starring the Nokia 8110, with support from Keanu Reeves.
In the film, Neo rocks a Nokia 8110 - a premium-level business phone - kitted out with an awesome spring-loaded auto-sliding answering feature. Bear in mind, this was 1999 - this kind of space-age technology was unthinkable - and, in fact, didn’t exist. The real 8110 had no spring, but that didn’t stop it becoming the coolest phone around.
We were easily impressed back then.
Snake
Of course.
If you were born between 1985 and 1992, you probably think you’re an expert at Snake, the scrolling simple arcade game that came on every Nokia for years.
Fear not - today’s announcement doesn’t mean the end of the addiction. There are plenty of sites out there like playsnake.org that will help you get your fix.
God speed, Nokia phones. You will be missed, but not forgotten.