Smartphone platforms - my personal journey and rationale!
There are some questions I get a lot. One in recent days is "Why are you using iPhone?" A decade before that it was "Why are you using Windows Phone?". And around these there was Symbian, Palm OS, and Android, ALL of which have kept me in their clutch for multiple years between 1996 and 2026. So three decades! But what did I use when? And, perhaps more importantly, why?
1996-2001 (EPOC and infrared)
While not a smartphone per se, these four years introduced me to wireless comms, thanks to a smart OS, SIBO/EPOC on the Psion palmtops, and using their IrDA (infrared) capabilities to hook up to various 'dumb' phones which had infrared capabilities or dongles. My favourite was the Ericsson SH888, which was made of titanium and which had IrDA built-in, so I'd position it next to my Psion Series 5 (for example) and then be checking email. (You have to remember that in this time period, email was about all you could do online. There were no social networks, and only a very rudimentary World Wide Web.)
(My writings? Palmtop magazine, principally, which was a mail order affair shipping from Bicester, near me.)
2002-2004 (Treos)
Although Nokia was, technically, the first to integrate a smart OS (Series 80, based on Symbian, which itself was the evolution of Psion's EPOC) with telephony, in the Nokia 9210 in 2000, it was large, clunky, and expensive. So while I lusted after one, my personal journey led me for a few years in the direction of Palm OS and Handspring's new Treos. They were so compact yet powerful and I loved the way the screen cover protected the keyboard or Graffiti area.
(My writings? Palmtop magazine still, though my experimenting with Palm OS led to a parallel magazine, Palm User, which ran for a couple of years.)
2004-2013 (The Decade of Symbian)
I recently wrote up all the classic devices I used or reviewed in my Symbian Museum, so do go read that as well. Essentially, I was back in love with the multi-tasking power of Symbian (following my years of skipping between running apps on Psion), allied to the wild and wonderful form factors and camera innovations introduced by Nokia during these years.
From QWERTY clamshells (9500, E90) to imaging powerhouses (N90, N93, N86, N8, 808) I've never had so much tech fun in one decade. Yes, iPhone started out in 2007 but it wasn't a serious proposition, I'd argue, until the iPhone 4S in 2011 that it became a competitor in my eyes, with a camera that was starting to be even vaguely comparable to my favourite Nokias. Android was up and running by 2011, with the Samsung Galaxy S II the pick of the crop and, again, I started to understand that the competition was catching up, with way faster internals and components improving fast.
(My writings? The paper magazines got integrated into Palmtop User and this ran for a year or two before starting to wind down and eventually stop - a story for another day. Plus I was now writing for All About Symbian, eventually becoming the main editor. I also started video blogging in The Phones Show, starting in January 2006, the first person to review phones on video in the world, as far as I know... Oh, and I also wrote for a number of High Street magazines, such as PDA Essentials, but the Internet was gradually forcing such publications out of existence.)
2013-2015 (Windows Phone)
I'd become aware that Windows Mobile had been going for well over a decade and indeed had been hacked for Windows Mobile 6.5 on devices like the HTC HD2, with Microsoft reinventing the OS for Windows Phone 7 in 2010 and Nokia joining in the Windows Phone fun in 2011 with the Lumia 800. Beautiful little device but it couldn't get close to swaying me from my beloved Nokia 808 PureView. 2012 arrived and the Lumia 920, with Qi charging and a decent OIS-equipped camera, but still I couldn't fully commit.
So... 2013 and the Lumia 1020. Now we had an 808 follow-up (indeed the initial model number was the Nokia 909), complete with Xenon flash. And OIS. But it did mean switching platforms, so I did. Running the 808 with my secondary SIM, my primary went in the 1020 and I was pretty happy for a couple of years. True, there was the challenge of always scavenging around for obscure apps to fill in the gaps because of the lack of official third party service apps, but that was half the fun. Meanwhile I had something compact, with a wonderful camera and a host of accessories.
The Lumia 950 and 950 XL followed in 2015 and for a few months I was content enough, especially playing with Continuum and the excellent cameras (again). But was starting to get restless and realising that I needed more apps and services, especially since the iPhone and Android hardware was now easily good enough day to day...
(My writings? All About Windows Phone followed All About Symbian, principally because we were following Nokia as much as the OS. Both sites are still online as I write this in 2026 if you want to follow your nose back through the archives!)
2016-2019 (Android)
My heart went instinctively to Android when looking for a followup platform, not least because the plug and play and open filing system nature (including microSD on most devices) made me feel right at home from Symbian - but with 100x the number of third party applications. In quick succession I went through the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 6P before hitting the sweet spot, for me, in 2018, with the Samsung Galaxy S9+ - the most hardware features of any phone ever? All in the one device. I was all set. Or so I thought!
(My writings? Even though Windows Phone had ceased to be a 'thing', I was still writing niche and comparison pieces for the two All About sites, though content gradually and naturally became more generic. I also branched out to both Android and iPhone sites as a contributor, though opportunities here were thin on the ground.)
2020-2026 (iPhone)
In early 2020, an iPhone-using viewer of my Phones Show and a listener to PSC had an idea. "Look", he said, "I'll BUY you an iPhone 11 Pro. Just keep it and use it and see if you agree with me that it's better than anything else." It was a staggering offer and I accepted, of course, though I was sceptical. How on earth do I get all my 'stuff' onto the iPhone? And indeed it took a month of settling into iOS and working with it and not against it before the iPhone 11 Pro clicked with me. Now I had all my music and videos and millions of potential apps all in a compact device that had a better camera than my old Lumias. And with massive future proofing and super battery life.
The next half decade has seen me review dozens of Android devices and iPhones. But however good the former, they only distracted me for a moment because that year's iPhone always edged it because of compatibility with my family, also on iPhones. If I had no immediate family then I might lean into my geekier instincts, but then I'd also be lonely and sad... So for most of this period I've had a flagship iPhone (for the speakers and cameras) and a variety of devices vying for my second/backup SIM card, most recently the Surface Duos (folding done right) and Sony Xperia devices (everything but the kitchen sink thrown in).
(My writings? With the death of my dad and having to take a year out of 'work', I stopped writing for the All About sites and these days take to this blog if I want to vent an opinion on something or tell a story!)
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