Buyers Guide To Choosing The Right Nokia Mobile Phone

By Author: Lucy Carter
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It's hard to imagine that Finnish company Nokia opened its doors as a maker of paper in 1865. Their name originates from the Nokianvirta River, where their second wood pulp mill was built by owner Fredrik Idestam. Having moved into the mobile communications arena in the 1980's, today they hold the proud title of being the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer. It is Nokia's easy to use operating system that has solidified their reputation as being a maker of reliable handsets.

Nokia has developed a wide range of different models. The following guide will help you understand their varied offerings to cut through the confusion when shopping around and enable you to select the Nokia mobile that suits you best.

Previous classification for the Nokia Phone Families

Ultrabasic - 1000 series

These are the cheapest entry level mobiles by Nokia. While they don't offer many entertainment features, they are popular for having a long battery life, being highly affordable and light in weight.

Basic - 2000 series

While still being inexpensive entry level phones, this mobile family offers more advanced ...
... features - many come with Bluetooth, cameras and colour screens.

Expression - 3000 series

These mid-range mobiles are targeted at the youth demographic. They are affordable and include some fun features.

Active - 5000 series

While being similar to the Nokia 3000 series, this range contains more features aimed at individuals on the go. This includes a robust construction that can take a beating and music playback.

Classic Business - 6000 series
This series is Nokia's biggest family of mobiles, consisting mainly of mid-range and high-end phones with a satisfying number of features. They are known for their unobtrusive design which has resulted in their being popular with business users.

Fashion & Experimental - 7000 series

This range offers a more creative design to appeal to people who choose mobile phones primarily for their aesthetics.

Premium - 8000 series

This family of phones are at the high end, pricier range. They don't necessarily offer a huge amount of additional features for the extra cost, but are constructed with premium materials for the more discerning.

Enterprise - Eseries

The Eseries offers business focussed smartphones which deliver advanced connectivity and support for corporate e-mail push services.

Multimedia Computer - Nseries

This multimedia smartphone family stands at the premium level, offering enhanced digital multimedia services such as photography, music playback, video capture, internet services and mobile gaming. They all support high-speed wireless technology such as Wireless LAN or 3G.

Current Nokia phone classification

Core Range - Cseries

The Cseries family uses Nokia's Symbian 3 software and encompasses their core range of handsets aimed at mainstream users. These mobile devices vary in offering a QWERTY keyboard, alphanumeric keypad or touchscreen display (the C6).

Social media & Entertainment Range - Xseries

With this Nokia range, the mobile devices are focussed on enhanced entertainment and social media functionality. Features of different models include touchscreen technology, direct access to Facebook contacts from the home screen, preinstalled DJ Mix Tour, Asphalt 4, and Spore games as well as dedicated music control buttons plus the ability to download music, games, videos and a host of applications.

Productivity & Business Range - Eseries

The newest addition to the Eseries rivals other competitors by having a battery life which lasts for 18.5 hours of talktime and 29 days on standby. It also supports a range of email services, one-click access to social networks and GPS navigation. The models in this series are popular with business professionals, with features that include device and memory card encryption, remote locking with SMS, device and mobile VPN.

Advanced & Flagship Range - Nseries

The Nseries boasts the most advanced features that Nokia's has on offer to date. The N8 is the latest model in this range and runs on their new Symbian^3 operating system, which delivers enhancements in the performance, user interface and multimedia applications. It's also their mobile offering that is integrated with Qt - a technology that lets developers write applications across multiple platforms with minimal modification.

Internet Tablets

The latest model in this range is the N900, which runs on the Linux-based Maemo operating system. At the Mobile World Congress this year, Nokia and Intel jointly announced the launch of their Linux operating system called MeeGo, which merges Maemo 6 and Moblin 2 software.

The above guide lets you get to grips with the wide range of Nokia mobile phones on offer. As you have seen, there is a range of portable devices available to suit everyone's individual tastes.
Peter Williams is a communications consultant and retailer of Nokia mobile phones.