It is hard keeping up with all the new phones...

But you can go to the Nokia website www.nokia.com to find out what's around. The page phone comparison is useful for comparing up to 6 phones and their features.

Features you can compare are:
Size (L X W X H), Weight, Talktime, Standby, Built in antenna, NaviTM Key, Predictive Text Input, Chinese Input, Calendar, Clock with Alarm, Internal Vibrator, Calculator, Phone Book Size (Phone/SIM), Short Messaging Service (SMS), Voice Dial, Xpress-onTM Covers, Ringing Tones (Default + Download), Ringing Tones Composer, Caller Grouping, Profile Settings, Picture Messaging, Games, Internet Access, Built-in-Data, Built-in-Infrared, Recent Calls List, (Dialled/Received/Missed) , Chat, Screen Saver.

Other information that may be important:

Nokia Rotation, Playing the Nokia rotation game Nokia Snake, Nokia Snake 2 Nokia Opposite Nokia mobile phone serial number Nokia mobile phone version information Changing the Alpha Tag on Nokia phones

Do you want to be a Nokia Ninja?

Nokia is a huge Finnish electronics company that has grown filthy rich from selling mobile phones to poor, unsuspecting teenagers. Just kidding :)

The Company

Nokia's history runs WAY back - all the way to 1865, when Fredrik Idestam started a wood-pulp mill in southern Finland, to manufacture paper, calling the company "Nokia"

From making paper, the company evolved to making chemicals and rubber in the 1920s. From here it went to making industrial parts and raincoats. In the 1960s, Nokia was researching radio transmission technology, after they had bought shares in The Finnish Cable Works - a company making copper wires for use in telegraph, telephone and electricity

In 1970, Nokia developed a digital telephone switch, replacing the traditional analog electro-mechanical switches. This allowed for computer-controlled telephone exchanges. The digital switch was built on Intel microprocessors.

Around the same time, development of a mobile network began. Dubbed NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony), this system was launched in 1981. Nokia had an important role in the development of the protocols and the network (which was analog). In the beginning of the 1980s, a new standard was launched, GSM (Global System for Mobile communication). Nokia was quick to jump on the bandwagon, and started developing GSM mobile phones.

Around the beginning of the 1990s, Finland experienced an economic recession. Nokia decided to ditch their other actions, and invest more in their electronics and communications sectors. The explosion in the sales of GSM phones towards the end of the 90s has made Nokia one of the largest and most important companies in Finland

Currently:

  • Nokia employs more than 60,000 people all over the world.
  • Nokia invests 8.5% of net sales in research and development
  • Nokia has their annual Nokia Game - a genius marketing stunt gaining them massive attention.

The Products

The Mobile Phones

Because Nokia has become most famous for their Cell Phones, I decided to write a bit extra about them here.

Nokia started off early making 450 Mhz band and 900 Mhz band telephones for the NMT networks - and 900 Mhz band telephones for the GSM mobile network. They later started producing telephones that could use both the 900 and the 1800 MHz bands, because the 1800 Mhz phones had better penetration in urban environments.

In the US, the GSM network runs on the 1900 Mhz band - which explains why most of the cool and fancy telephones aimed at the European market either never make it to the US, or arrive with a different name and at a later time.

In general, Nokia cell phones have been known to have great quality and reliability, with the exception of the Nokia 6210, which was notorious with its 25% error rate.

-30-

The name Nokia comes from old word (no longer in use) nois. Nokia meant sable and (as sables were extinct) pine marten, and later it meant any black-furred animal. (The word nois is similar to modern Finnish noki, "soot").

The world evolved to mean any animal that was hunted for its fur.

After that, it evolved to mean a place where trappers gathered to trade furs.

This is the history of the name of the smaller town near Tampere, and the name of the company.

It does sort of explain why cellphones are used for business these days - and why the Nokia phones used to be black and these days they're rather colorful.

(The information in this bit was from Jouko Jaakkola, a researcher from town of Nokia, in Helsingin Sanomat kuukausiliite 11/2001. Article by Unto Hämäläinen.)

Nokia is a small city (pop. 26900) on the banks of the Emäkoski River in the county of Pirkkala, some 15 kilometers to the south of Tampere, Finland.

History

Nokia has been around long enough that even its name is obscure. The most probable theory is that it comes from Old Finnish nois (pl. nokia), meaning a type of dark-coated marten found in the area to this day, and the animal is thus enshrined on the Nokia coat of arms. In modern Finnish, on the other hand, noki means soot and nokia would mean soots, but using the plural makes little sense in either language.

Nokia was the setting of one of the largest battles in the Club War, a 1596 peasant uprising against Swedish feudal lords. The peasants, armed with clubs (surprise!), took up residence in Nokia Manor and won several skirmishes against the feudal cavalry, but were decisively defeated by Klaus Fleming on January 1-2, 1597. Thousands of clubmen were slain and their fled leader, Jaakko Ilkka, was captured a few weeks later and executed. The Club War was the last major peasant revolt in Finland, and it permanently consolidated the hold of the nation state. Much later, in the Finnish Civil War (1918), Nokia (along with neighboring Tampere) was a Communist stronghold and saw some combat.

Industry

But Nokia had started on its road to world domination in 1865, when Fredrik Idestam established a pulp mill in Nokia and started manufacturing paper. The factory prospered and a town started to develop around it, replacing what had previously been just farmlands. In 1898, Nokia spawned the Finnish Rubber Works, which manufactured galoshes and later also tires. And for a long time this is what Nokia was known for in Finland: in almost every Finnish home you can still find a pair or two of long black rubber boots, emblazoned with exactly the same "NOKIA" logo found on Nokia's cellphones.

The first step on the road to telecommunications was taken when the Finnish Cable Works were opened in 1912 in Helsinki. Its 1967 merger with the Rubber Works resulted in the creation of the Nokia Group, by then a vast industrial conglomerate for rubber, cable, paper and electronics products. Combining most of these skills, during the 1970s Nokia developed the DX 200 digital telephone switch and the revenue share of the electronics department started to balloon.

The die was cast in May 1992, when newly elected CEO Jorma Ollila decided to concentrate solely on telecommunications. The rubber, paper and consumer electronics operations were spun off into their own companies (all with names of the form "Nokian X"), but the telecoms group retained the name Nokia for itself. The rest is history.

Present

Oddly enough, Nokia (the telecom company) no longer has a single building in Nokia (the place), their Finnish operations have been moved mostly to the Helsinki area and Salo. The rubber and paper companies are still there, and Nokia's spectacularly unsexy motto remains "The City of Rubber, Paper and Electricity". These days, Nokia's biggest -- some might say only -- draw for tourists is the Rantasipi Eden Spa Hotel, the swankiest spa and hotel in Finland featuring lots of liquid fun for the whole family. (You'll probably need some liquid refreshment after paying the bill though, as day pass prices start at €25 per head.)

References

http://www.nokiankaupunki.fi (City of Nokia, also in English)
http://www.nokia.com (Company of Nokia)
http://www.rantasipi.fi (Rantasipi Eden Spa Hotel)

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.