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Choosing The Greatest Smartphones of All Time

Carl St. James
6 min readFeb 9, 2025

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Did I choose wisely? (Image by Author)

Did your favourite make the cut? — Whilst the iPhone popularised the idea of smartphones, other companies had been working on them for decades. With this in mind lets take a trip down memory lane and celebrate the smartphones that changed the world. As with all lists this is entirely subjective; if you disagree with any choices or want to nominate your own then let me know in the comments.

Nokia 9210 Communicator (2000) — Fold Before Its Time

If you think productivity-focused foldable devices are cutting edge then think again. When they were top of the industry Nokia released all sorts of weird and wonderful devices but perhaps none as flexible as the communicator series. At first glance a thicker cellphone, they could open out to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard and a widescreen display. Although prior models from the 1990’s existed beforehand, the 9210 came with the Symbian OS, an ARM processor and a colour display. With expandable memory via an MMC card, the device could play MP3s, browse the internet via WAP and download additional apps from the internet. That full keyboard meant it was the phone of choice for email junkies of the day…

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Carl St. James
Carl St. James

Written by Carl St. James

Making sense of modern technology, design and culture.

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