What was the 'first smartphone' like?

What was the 'first smartphone' like? Picture 1

Modern smartphones are increasingly being optimized to be more convenient for users. Even mid-range phones have high-quality displays, fast charging speeds, large batteries, and powerful processors. However, many of them are still underrated even though they can do almost everything.

Only when we look back at the smartphone era of the early to mid-2000s can we truly appreciate the value of today's smartphones. Features that we take for granted today were oddities on phones at the time.

Setting up a new phone is more difficult

One of the troubles when using phones running Java and early Symbian "smartphones" often starts from the moment we buy the devices and install them.

First, these devices often did not have any cloud storage services, which was still a strange concept at the time. That means no convenient things like syncing photos and videos, contacts, or text messages from the cloud.

However, there are solutions for this, such as connecting the phone to a PC and installing the manufacturer's conversion tool. But unlike syncing accounts on smartphones today, people will have a lot of trouble if they change their phone to another brand.

We also need to copy contacts from the SIM card. Luckily, some phones support memory cards, making transferring photos/videos a breeze.

Each brand has a different type of charger

It can be said that phone companies at that time cared more about users when every phone was sold with a charger, but the annoying thing was that different brands would use different chargers.

While today's smartphones have only one standard USB-C port, Nokia back then offered a round head charger, while Sony-Ericsson had a strange two-prong charger. These proprietary connections are often used as data ports to connect to PCs, so people will be in trouble if they lose the cable.

Limited customization capabilities

Personalization is an indispensable part of modern phone models. Users can adjust everything from wallpaper and ringtones to theme colors and animation effects.

Old smartphones and early Symbian phones are not like that. Users can only set their own wallpaper, alarm sounds and ringtones must be used with the phone, and customization of the home screen or application menu is almost non-existent.

Surf the web using EDGE and GPRS

One of the most annoying things about old feature phones and Symbian-era smartphones is the terrible web browsing experience.

This was a time when mobile phones could only access WAP pages and not the entire website. WAP sites are simple websites built specifically for the mobile Internet.

This is when the Opera Mini browser becomes a lifesaver, significantly accelerating page loading speeds and saving mobile data in this era. Opera's app also does a great job of reformatting desktop websites for mobile viewing.

Furthermore, not all phones in this era are equipped with Wi-Fi. Even the few phones with Wi-Fi in the mid-2000s came with limitations.

For example, Nokia phones with Wi-Fi at the time forced users to manually switch between cellular and Wi-Fi connections. And these days we're often frustrated when our smartphone takes a few seconds to switch from a cellular connection to Wi-Fi.

Mobile phones today have a series of features such as Quick Share, AirDrop, each company's own sharing solution, email, cloud sharing, etc. But phones from the early to mid-2000s had to rely almost entirely on rely entirely on Bluetooth to share data.

Communication before chat apps

Today, users have a series of options for communication such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Zoom, Skype, Messenger, Zalo or Google Meet. as well as traditional phone calls and text messages.

At that time, most phones still used 2G networks, and not many devices had Wi-Fi connections. So, text messaging is one of the most popular ways to communicate due to its low cost.

This is also the period when network operators promote video calling. Networks thought 3G was perfect for video calling during the early to mid-2000s.

This is the reason manufacturers equip phones with front cameras. For example, the 2007 Nokia N70 is equipped with a VGA quality camera. At that time, the front camera was not primarily for taking selfies.

The app market does not exist

Apple, through the iPhone, popularized the idea of ​​a centralized app store managed by one entity. Before the days of Android and iOS, things were quite difficult.

Users of feature phones and early Symbian smartphones often have to use third-party app stores, region-specific app stores, and user-created sharing forums.

Additionally, these early mobile app 'marketplaces' were not regulated by any mobile carrier, so regulation was almost non-existent. These platforms are rife with junk, incompatible or 'chaotic' versions of applications.

Nokia created its own 'App Store' called Club Nokia in the late 1990s. This is a service portal that provides wallpapers, ringtones, and games.

However, Nokia eventually had to scale back the platform's ambitions, citing pressure from mobile network providers. Because selling mobile content was a big deal for service providers at the time.

Jessica Tanner

Update 03 April 2024