How cool was the first Symbian phone to sport a digital camera?
Starting at a whooping 600 euros, the Nokia 7650 was Nokia's statement entry into the mainstream smartphone market.
There's a widespread misconception that Android phones and iPhones were the first ever smartphones. But that's not quite true. While both operating systems (OS) broke unthinkable new grounds in mobile phone technology, smartphones have existed since the early '90s, featuring the best cutting-edge technologies of their time. One of such phones is the Nokia 7650.
Released in June 2002, the 7650 was the first consumer-grade Symbian OS phone to feature an integrated digital camera. It was about the size of a deck of playing cards and sported a sleek, stylish slide design. The display was 2.1 inches long, covering an area of approximately 14cm square (the size of a large postage stamp), with a resolution of 176 x 208 pixels that could process 4096 colours.
The device was powered by a 32-bit processor with a clock speed of 104 MHz. It had 4MB of internal storage and operated on the first iteration of the Symbian OS—the Symbian 6.1 and the Series 60 v1.0 user interface. But what's a smartphone without internet connectivity? The 7650 supported GPRS (2.5G) and a WAP 1.2.1, xHTML browser that could download one song at 40 kilobits per second. That’s like one MP3 song every 15 minutes.
Although packed with several other features that were considered revolutionary at the time, including a 5-way navigation joystick, predictive text input, Bluetooth, Infrared, etc., the 7650’s integrated camera proved to be its biggest selling point.
It could capture still images at 640 x 480 pixels, either in portrait or night mode. Additionally, it enabled users to view JPEG files imported via email or MMS. However, with just 4 megabytes of storage space and each photo requiring around 33 kilobytes, users had to delete or transfer their pictures to another storage, usually a computer, to free up space for new ones.
Considered a flagship, pricing for the Nokia 7650 started at a whopping 600 euros, the equivalent of 70,200 naira in 2002 (exchange rate of 1 euro = 117 naira). Our minimum wage then was a meagre 5,500 naira in wealthy states like Lagos. Nevertheless, with GSM technology still largely limited, having only arrived in Nigeria a year ago—in August 2001—it was stinkingly luxurious to shell out that much on a cellphone.
Of course, Nokia didn’t see Africa as a lucrative market for their high-end products back then, shrewdly choosing to concentrate their marketing efforts on phones like the 3310, which, though expensive, was the rational choice—at least until 2006, when GPRS coverage became somewhat widespread and more affordable.
Thanks to the second-hand smartphone market, many Nigerians now use high-end smartphones. How much times have changed.
Did any of your ‘rich’ parents, uncles, aunties, etc., or maybe even you, have the Nokia 7650? Tell us in the comments.
Extra, extra…
The Nokia 7650 was featured in two big Hollywood movies. Can you guess them?
Answer: Minority Report (starring Tom Cruise) and Tomb Rader: The Cradle of Life (starring Angelina Jolie)
Also, check out this brilliant ad concept featured in Minority Report (2002).
Mood for today:
