The last great flip phone, the Razr was impossibly thin at only 14mm. Unusually for the time, it also had an aluminium casing that looked achingly slick.
Ironically, the overwhelming success of the Razr was probably the main cause of the downfall of Motorola.
In hindsight, it’s apparent that the US phone-maker’s over-reliance on this successful and iconic series caused the company to fall behind, failing to innovate and compete with the soon-to-arrive large-screen phones from LG and Samsung.
2003: Blackberry 6210
The first true Blackberry phone, which integrated a phone with fully functioning email, web browsing and the much loved Blackberry Messenger.
The Nokia years
Tracing its heritage to paper production, Nokia entered the telecommunications industry first as a supplier of telecommunications equipment to the military and entered the mobile market in the late ‘80s.
Released in 1987, the Mobira Cityman brickphone was Nokia’s answer to the Motorola Dynatac and was an early hit for the nascent company.
But as Nokia’s first GSM phone, the 1011 in 1992, and 1994’s 2100 model that precipitated the Finnish giant’s rise to the top.
Marketed to the business market, the 2110 featured the design that came to be known as the “candybar” format.
It was the lightest and smallest GSM phone available at the time and featured the easy to use Nokia menu system.
It was also the first phone to offer a choice of ringtones and marked the debut of the melody that came to be known as “the Nokia ringtone”, based on the Grand Valse composition for classical guitar.
In the ‘90s, Nokia released more handsets than any of its rivals and in 1998 overtook Motorola to become the best-selling mobile phone brand in the world.
By the middle of 1999, Nokia’s Expression series, comes to dominate the market with the release of the 3210.
Its relatively low cost, under £200 on release in the UK, but a lot less by the end of 2000, meant this 3210 was affordable for young people and folk who’d been shut out of the mobile phone market until now. The result was 160 million sales worldwide.
Within a year, the smaller 3310 was released. It was not a revolutionary update from its predecessor, but its compact design, four built-in games (Pairs II, Space Impact, Bantumi, and Snake II) and the fact it could support long SMS messages of up to 459 characters made it a success.
But it was the phone’s sturdy construction and legendary reliability that turned it into an enduring cult. And the best part of 20 years later, still inspires memes and favourable comparisons to fragile, modern-day smartphones. Capitalising on a wave of nostalgia, in 2017 Nokia announced the release of an all-new 3310.
Featuring an updated design based on the original candy bar shape, the 3310 version 2.0 added a large 2.4-inch LCD screen, rear camera and an astonishing 25-day standby battery life.
Marketed both as a tribute to the original as well as an alternative to ever-more complex, more advanced smartphones, the new 3310 was priced at around £50 SIM free and was a moderate commercial success. The spread of 2G technology and early success of Blackberry phones inspired Nokia to experiment with physical QWERTY keyboards.
The 6800 was notable with its unusual fold-out keyboard, with built-in email and support for Blackberry emails. The early 2000s were also a time of wild experimentation and Nokia seemed to aim at to release a phone to suit every taste. It was also the era when mobile phones became fashion accessories and the company certainly wasn’t afraid to bring to market phones with an accent on style. Arguably over substance.
Modern day smartphones are pretty unrecognisable from the analogue bricks we used to cart around.
The likes of 2017's iPhone X and Samsung S8 have brounght us stunning all-screen fronts that are perfect for watching videos and playing games. Meanwhile thier face-scaning technology enables you to unlock your device just by looking at it.
Professionally dual-lens cameras are now becoming standard on high-end smartphones while the handsets themeselves are becoming ever more durable, with impressive waterproofing and tough Gorilla Glass screens.
Yet despite all this, Nokia's 2017 revival of its old classic, the Nokia 3310 was perhaps the most talked-about phone of the year, heralding in a wave of nostalgia ofr older wimpler devices.