Down The Rabbit Hole: Part I - I want my phone call

At some point in the middle of 2000, I had to switch an operator, and at that point, unfortunately, I could not stay with my beloved 6110, as it was operator locked, so I had to change. Having decided to go for a cost effective solution, I picked the 3210, a nice, solid phone which was quite affordable at the time. Immediately, I have noticed that the phone was much slower to respond than the old 6110, making the phone book more annoying to use. It also included animations, for example, after sending a message, or adding a contact, that were slow and could not have been disabled from the phone settings. However, the phone was small and had no bulging antenna, had a T9, and was generally nice, once you got accustomed to the different location of the alarm clock menu.

After a year and a half with the 3210, I was yearning for an upgrade and I have decided not to compromise and got myself, or more precisely convinced my mom to get me, a 6310i which was rather expensive for the plan we had.

Now, 6310i is an epic phone. Epic. No other word would describe it better. It had enormous battery life, was blazing fast, had great interface and large buttons. It was slightly better than its older brother the 6210 which was also a great phone. It came in two color schemes, the awesome gray and the awful black and gold. You would pick the awesome gray and live happily ever after. End of story.

After few happy years with the 6310i I have been given a phone by the company I worked for, it was the 6630. If you would put those two phones side by side and wipe the logos, you never believe that it was made by the same company. Weird shape, smaller and weirdly positioned buttons, a camera sticking from the back of the phone, as if it was added at the last minute. Very inconvenient to use. It was 3G, but as it lacked the front camera it was completely useless for video calls (I will get to those later), unless you used a contraption called 'Nokia video call stand'. Whatever.

If you read a review of this phone on the net you would think you are buying a camera, or some kind of smart organizer or a media player, anything but the phone. It was wide and not convenient to hold or to type, it had bad audio, and in most cases required a headset for convenient operation. Since the headphones that came with the kit were a bad joke, you were tempted to buy a blue tooth set that would kill the already weak battery. It was a disaster. Rumor had it that our company was given those phones by the operator who could not move them otherwise and at a great discount.

Now here comes the question, why would the company that is capable of creating an engineering marvel of 6310i would ever release a product like the 6630. What went wrong in those few years between them. So many things have changed, the technology, the UI, the operating system, which of the factors contributed to this fall. I will try to talk about some of this, so stay tuned.