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| Top Phones of all time |
Its the year 2017 and smartphones have dominated our world from the time we wake up in the morning till the time we head back to our bed at night (for any average person :-P ). We check our mails, surf, socialize, play games and so on with them however, the rise of our phones becoming smart didn't happen all of a sudden. The "Portable Device" world witnessed many great innovations, inventions, implementation in the near 2 decades that has passed. There were many devices which failed and many rose to fame within months of their launch whereas some became the building block for today's smartphones ... whatever be it, lets have a look at the top 10 phones that became an all time favorite.
1. NOKIA 3310
Nokia rose to fame with the launch of this device. This phone has nothing in special when we compare it even with a dumb phone of this date however the build quality, the smooth operation, the insane battery life made it quite popular to such an extent that Nokia sold 126 million units of it.
It came with a monochrome display and the most popular Snake game. Due to its build quality the device has been into trolls for being APOCALYPSE RESISTANT (Well those are just trolls however it indeed had the best build quality when compared even with the present day fragile smartphones). The device was launched in September 2000 until being discontinued in 2005 for the updated variant. After 17 years of its release, Nokia decided to update it with the nostalgia factor by releasing the 2017 edition Nokia 3310 which came in many colours and even supported 3G (region specific models).
2. NOKIA 6600
Again speaking of Nokia, the 6600 falls next in the list. This device was introduced in October 2003 and was one of the first devices to run on the Symbian OS series 60 2nd edition. The device was like a flagship phone from Nokia and came with flagship specs dating back to 2003. It came with 2.16 inch color display, VGA camera, Bluetooth and even came with a memory card slot. It was a true smartphone back then since Symbian itself was a great OS.
The Nokia 6600 managed itself to sell round 150 million units during its lifespan until 2007.
3. NOKIA N95
Its Nokia again in the list and this time its the "HERO PHONE" i.e the Nokia N95. The N95 which was based on Symbian OS Series 60 3rd edition also came with an 8GB storage variant along with mass storage known as the N95 8GB. The regular N95 was released in March 2007 and the 8GB variant in September the same year.
The N95 came with 2.6 inch display and the 8GB variant came with 2.8 inch. Both the devices were of slider type for keypad and also featured a downward slide for music control buttons. It came with a dedicated Camera button along with a dedicated button for launching the gallery. The main highlight was the 5MP ZEISS OPTICS enabled rear camera along with an LED flash. The front facing camera was of VGA resolution. Apart from these hardware features, it came with GPS, Bluetooth, WIFI, Infrared and so on. All these features combined indeed made it a HERO PHONE until it was discontinued in 2009.
4. APPLE IPHONE 1st Gen
The year 2007 witnessed a revolutionary change in the mobile world when Nokia was dominating. It was Apple that bought a full fledged TOUCH enabled device and called it the Apple iPhone. This device from Apple ran the iPhone OS back then which was later renamed to iOS with succeeding devices.
The iPhone 1st Gen inspired Android development to a greater extent and made Google to bring better value for money features with the Nexus lineup. The forthcoming years also witnessed the fall of Nokia Symbian devices that made them to jump to Windows OS and the rest is history.
The device came with just 3.5 inch display with a mere 167 ppi and a 2MP camera. The Nokia flagship was superior by far however the touch screen functionality combined with a new mobile software and form factor back then lead to about 6.1 million units to be sold in about few quarters.
5. Google Nexus 1
The first generation of Nexus device was launched in 2010. The device may not be as popular as the Apple's first gen iPhone yet being the 1st gen Nexus, it had to be included in the list here. Back then it came with Android 2.1 i.e Eclair and was manufactured by HTC.
The device had a 3.7 inch display and just 512MB of storage capacity although it could be expanded upto 32GB and came with 5MP rear camera. The device was received quite well however, the Apple iPhone had dominated the premium market.
6. Samsung Galaxy S
Like the Nexus and iPhone series, the Galaxy S series also had a beginning with the Galaxy S. The Galaxy S2 was the successor and the "S" was launched in 2010. Like the iPhone 1st gen, the Galaxy S was also quite popular and managed to sell around 24 million units until 2013.
It came with a 4 inch super AMOLED display and Samsung's own Exynos SOC with 512MB RAM. The rear camera was of 5MP and front camera was of VGA resolution. The Galaxy S like any flagship back then, was feature packed and sell like hot cakes. It initially came with Android Gingerbread based on TouchWiz UI.
7. Samsung Galaxy Note
It will be injustice if we don't talk about the device that shaped the phablet category i.e the Samsung Note series that stood between any average device and a tablet. After the success of the first Galaxy S device, it was time for Samsung to unveil the most productive device i.e the Note. The Note N7000 as it was the model name came with a massive (in 2011) 5.3 inch super AMOLED display. It came with a very powerful specs consisting of 1GB RAM and 16/32 storage with Exynos SOC.
The main highlight was the S-Pen which enabled any user to write down notes, draw, sign and so on. This S-Pen made it quite productive and Samsung didn't even have any close competitor to this device which enabled it to sell around 10 million units within a year. The success of the Note was carried forward by the Note 2.
8. NOKIA N8
After speaking about Samsung and Apple lets come back to the legendary Nokia. Nokia had another device running Symbian OS that was quite popular and it was the N8. The N8 was like a flagship and had a touch input. It was another device from Nokia that was camera centric and came with 3.5 inch AMOLED display and 12MP rear camera. The 12 megapixels back then was a huge number and it also came with Zeiss optics and Xenon flash and was also capable of shooting videos at 720p. The front facing camera was of just VGA resolution.
What made it popular? Well, camera is the answer since it was the main marketing highlight apart from having powerful specs and was able to sell about 4 million units in one of the quarters of 2010.
9. Blackberry Curve
We did speak about Android, iOS and also Symbian however the last decade did witness another OS which belonged to the premium category i.e the Blackberry OS. The Blackberry Curve was one of the series that was quite affordable as against the other costlier devices. Blackberry devices mainly became popular because of their QWERTY keypad along with gesture control from the keypad and the trackball. The legacy was carried forward with some Android based Blackberry devices however they didn't do that well e.g Priv.
The Curve series consisted of an array of devices with the first device launched in 2007. The series included : 8300, 8500, 8900 and 9300 series with subseries consisting of hardware differences. Due to Blackberry's status symbol back then, many different variants of the Curve were sold worldwide and were quite popular. However, like Nokia, Blackberry did witness a downfall with their implementation of different OS i.e Blackberry OS to which the support has been officially terminated. At one point of time in 2009, the Curve was the number 1 selling device that even outcast the Apple iPhone.
10. Nokia 808 Pureview
The year 2012 saw the dawn of the rise of Android and iOS and the fall of Symbian and other OS's. However, Nokia came with a radically unique product and again kept its focus on camera with the 808 Pureview. The device came with a 4 inch AMOLED display and had 41MP rear camera with Zeiss optics and Xenon flash. The lens came with f/2.4 aperture and the Pureview was a new technology from Nokia that enabled oversampling which reduces an image taken in full resolution to lower resolution thereby achieving higher definition and lossless zoom.
The device did come with Hi-Tech camera specs which resulted in great quality shots and also supported 1080p video recording. It will take us another post to explain its tech and the Lumia 1020 was inspired from the 808 Pureview.
These were some of the Phones that were quite popular in the previous years. As said earlier, most of the devices have a nostalgic factor associated whereas some were the building blocks for today's ideal smartphones while some came with unique features. Do remember, that the numbers have been assigned randomly and have nothing to do with any rankings. Do let us know about the Phone that you owned first and also what device caught your attention that it became your all time favorite.
All information provided here has been confirmed and true to the knowledge of the writer.
All images via Wikipedia