Nokia has treated us to some spectacular new products over the last 12 months. Some kick-started a wave of innovation across the industry, while others put Nokia firmly ahead of the pack with unmatched mobile refinement.
We've rifled through the ranks of Nokia's 2008 line-up, weighed up the pros and cons of everything on offer, and selected our favourite devices of 2008.
Get the lowdown on the best handsets to bear the Nokia marque below!
1. Nokia N95 8GB
The N95 8GB redefined how people thought about mobile phones. Again. Taking the N95’s mix of brute force processing power, a high-spec camera and GPS, and adding a whopping great 8GB of storage as standard, it single-handedly put built-in storage on the agenda for rival manufactures, and meant phones could finally replace MP3 players without owners having to faff about with extra memory cards.
Now there’s an arms race brewing over mobile capacity. When the N95 was reborn in a slinky black shell it made 8GB the new standard for acceptance into the multimedia club. More than a year later and rivals are only just kitting their handsets out with equal capacities, while Nokia’s forges forward with the 32GB N97.
It's easy to take those advances for granted, but it all traces back to the N95 8GB. The world’s first true multimedia computer.
2. Nokia E71
BlackBerry might still be a byword for portable e-mail devices, but the cognoscenti know their devices are actually bulky, underpowered and lack the features more commonly found on rival ‘dumb’ phones. Not the E71. It’s a true Symbian smartphone, with enough guts to power multimedia apps as well as it does business software. On top of that it’ll power through push e-mail from standard POP3 and IMAP services, as well as Microsoft Exchange.
It’s 3G too, of course, unlike some BlackBerries. And then there’s the E71’s built-in GPS, 3.2 megapixel camera, full-blown music and video player and stunning design. There’s not a BlackBerry in the world to rival Nokia’s e-mail masterpiece, both in software and hardware. It’s a landmark, and one of 2008’s most spectacular devices. Did we mention it's a bit of a looker too?
3. 5800 XpressMusic
We had to wait a while for Nokia’s first touchscreen phone, but when it came, it was worth every minute of the delay. The 5800 XpressMusic represents Nokia’s biggest leap forward in interface design in years. Taking input from stylus pokes, finger prods and even understanding handwriting, it’s ultra-flexible and super-smart.
Innovations like the Contacts Bar, and the ability to see RSS feeds from friends’ social network profiles or personal blogs, prove the 5800 is a league above the bog-standard music phones of Nokia’s rivals, and it’s just the beginning.
From the 5800’s web browser, which even displays Flash webpages, to its 16:9 widescreen and superior codec support for video, it’s a true entertainment machine, and one of Nokia’s most important devices ever.