In a Q&A session with OPK (check out Stephen’s earlier post if you’re not hip to that TLA), the unsurpressable Ewan MacLeod of SMS Text News
brought some much-needed levity when he asked the Nokia CEO what his
first handset was (a five-kilo monster in 1984 that stretched the
limits of what could be a "mobile" phone), and what he’s currently
carrying. It was hardly surprising to seem him pull out a Nokia E61,
which seems to be the business phone du jour, at least for the Northern
European set, knocking off the venerable Communicator.The E61 is a pretty fantastic device, but its popularity raises
another question: what next for the Communicator series? If
mobile-phone sites and forums were to be believed, another Communicator
was expected to be announced here. But with the success of a device
like the E61, is the Communicator form factor outmoded and outdated?
There’s not much that can be done on a Communicator that can’t be done
on an E61 (camera aside, of course), and the Series 80 software
platform’s been absorbed into S60, and the QWERTY thumboard is a more
than capable sub for the bigger keyboard on the Communicator.I found the widescreen orientation of the Communicators to be quite
nice for web browsing and other functions, but the E61’s screen and
advances in web browsers are, for me, anyway, an able replacement. In
addition, the market’s preference for thin handsets would seem to
dictate a shift in the physical form factor as well. So is the
Communicator — the first model of which was shown earlier in the
Q&A as a symbol of the first Nokia World-type event in 1996 — a
symbol of a bygone era? Something tells me no, actually, despite the
fantasticness of the E61. If nothing else, businessmen looking for
cachet by carrying the biggest, most powerful and perhaps most
expensive device on the market will remain quite an attractive niche!Source: Nokia World Blog
Even the CEO has one! I’m glad, and love my baby even more now.