Nokia's and Apple's Mobile Histories Side By Side

Writing the articles about my history with Nokia was apparently quite well-timed with the announcement of the iPhone 4, where Apple yet again announced a load of new features as being brand-new, game-changing aspects of their new device, despite the fact that Nokia have been pushing out countless gadgets with such things for a while.

Before I go on, I should point out that I’m not anti-Apple. It’s true that I don’t agree with their approach to promoting their products by outright lying about them, and I’m not keen on their attitude within their products of “you must work the way we designed things to work”. However, there’s no denying that the iPhone did open up the market to new types of devices – Nokia tried and failed to get touchscreen into the mainstream more than once, but Apple nailed it. Also, the iPhone OS (iOS now?) user interface is incredibly intuitive and user-friendly and does seem very robust and stable (albeit due to the aforementioned “doing things the Apple way” approach – break out of that by jailbreaking, and that stability breaks down). They’ve really done wonders for the whole mobile market by raising the standards that everyone else aims towards.

Anyway, I thought I’d just break down some of the features that we’ve all come to know and love in our devices, and just see when Nokia and Apple actually pulled them off first. It’s likely to be a little biased against Apple, if only because they’ve not been in the market as long as Nokia, but a lot of these features really should have been the bare minimum in the first iPhone. I’ll try to give them credit where they were in the market through other mobile devices previously. As an aside, it may be worth noting that in one or two cases, my beloved N900 still lags behind a little. However, this table is looking at the companies, rather than the OS.

Also note that these items are based on what the company ships with their handsets, and my research has been mostly focussed around iOS and Symbian/S40 based devices – feel free to add comments with more accurate years for any I’m wrong on.

	Nokia	Apple
Multitasking	2001 (9210 Communicator) (any before this?)	Not really 2010 (iOS 4, limited)
Cut and paste	2001 (9210 Communicator) (earlier Communicators too?)	2009
App purchasing	Pre 2007 (Nokia Download) 2009 (Ovi Store)	2007
Music purchasing	2007	2001 (iTunes) 2007 (iPhone)
Full web browser	1996 (9000 Communicator?)	2007
QWERTY keyboard	1996 (9000 Communicator)	2007
Touch screen	2004 (7710)	1987 (Apple Newton) 2007 (iPhone)
8+Gb internal storage	2006 (N91-8Gb)	2001 (iPod classic)
3G connectivity	2002 (6650)	2008
Accelerometer	2006 (5500 Sport)	2007
MMS	2002	2009
Video calling	2005 (N70)	2010 (Wifi only)
5MP camera	2007	2010
320 x 240 (or more) resolution	2006	2007
HD video recording	2010 (N8)	2010
Music/video player	2005 (N70)	2001
Wallpapers/Themes	2001 (and before?)	2010
Turn-by-turn navigation	2006 (?)	Not yet
Voice commands	Not sure (before 2009)	2009
Open source OS	2010 (Symbian)	Not yet
Office suite	2001 (9210 Communicator)	2010 (iPad)
Community software*	2001 (and before?)	Not yet
Text-to-speech	2006 (5500 Sport)	Not yet (?)

* This is perhaps, just perhaps, a dig at Apple’s insistence that all apps installed on the iPhone be approved and supplied through the App Store. Nokia’s devices, on the other hand, have always allowed developers to distribute their software however they see fit, though there is still some approval process involved in getting listed on Ovi Store.

Of course, it’s worth noting that Nokia opted to drop some features for prolonged periods along the way. I doubt I’m alone when I suggest that the Office suite that Nokia inherited from Psion and implemented in the 9210 Communicator was superior in many respects to those available for Nokia devices now, for instance. It also dawned on me as I went along that I’m not entirely certain about how Nokia’s Series 40 has developed, or even Series 30, but I doubt they come into the running particularly…

Anyway, a lot of this is just food for thought really. It’s probably not a fair comparison, as ultimately we find ourselves in a world were both manufacturers are pushing out devices that appeal to a very large number of people. In my mind, it’s just a shame Apple didn’t aim higher to start with, or perhaps I wouldn’t be sat here today with a drawer full of Nokia devices…

Tags: aPPLE, Nokia, S40, Symbian

Category: Nokia, Symbian