Windows Phone Thoughts: Nokia Communicator 9300: A Smaller, Shinier Brick

"Nokia is launching a slimmed-down version of its flagship Communicator. The Nokia 9300 will go on sale worldwide sometime in early 2005, priced at between $785 and $845. It weighs in at less than six ounces (170 grams), compared with 8.6 ounces for the most recent Communicator, the 9500. The 9300 lacks the 9500's digital camera and Wi-Fi chipset - lending to the machine's smaller battery - but it is also noticeably slimmer than its predecessor. Like all previous Communicators, the 9300 has a traditional "candy bar" shape and can be opened along its side to reveal a larger LCD screen and QWERTY keyboard."



The 9300 comes with Blackberry wireless email software, can edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations, has a PDF viewer and a MP3 and multimedia player. There is 80MB of storage capacity, along with a MMC slot as well as Bluetooth and USB connectivity. I rather think that leaving Wi-Fi out of the 9300 will prove to be a mistake, but the form factor certainly has a lot gong for it. I wonder when we are going to see similarly shaped Pocket PCs with clamshell style keyboards. That's a form factor that is sadly missed in the PPC world. Sigh. Still, well done to Nokia. Any company that starts removing embedded cameras from PDAs and phones has my vote! :wink: