The Nokia 9000 Communicator

mobile device A mobile device or handheld device is a computer small enough to hold and operate in hand. Mobile devices are typically battery-powered and possess a flat-panel display and one or more built-in input devices, such as a touchscreen or keypad. ...

is the first product in

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

's Communicator series, announced at CeBIT 1996 and introduced into the market on five months later, 15 August 1996. It is powered by an AMD Elan 24 MHz

Intel i386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 archite ...

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

, with 8 MB of memory, divided between applications (4 MB), program memory (2 MB) and user data (2 MB), running PEN/GEOS 3.0. The Communicator, with its digital

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

cellular telephone, was one of the earliest

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

s on the market, after the

IBM Simon The IBM Simon Personal Communicator (simply known as IBM Simon) is a cellular phone and personal digital assistant (PDA) designed by International Business Machines (IBM), released in 1994. Built on an x86 processor, the IBM Simon features a ...

in 1994 and the

HP OmniGo 700LX The HP 200LX Palmtop PC (F1060A, F1061A, F1216A), also known as project ''Felix'', is a personal digital assistant introduced by Hewlett-Packard in August 1994. It was often called a Palmtop PC, and it was notable that it was, with some ...

, a

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

-based

palmtop PC A Palmtop PC is an obsolete, approximately pocket calculator-sized, battery-powered computer in a horizontal clamshell design with integrated keyboard and display. It could be used like a modern subnotebook, but was light enough to be comfortabl ...

with integrated cradle for the

Nokia 2110 The Nokia 2110 is a cellular phone made by the Finnish telecommunications firm Nokia, first announced and released in January 1994. It is the first Nokia phone with the famous Nokia tune ringtone. The phone can send and receive SMS messages; a ...

cellular mobile phone, announced in late 1995 and shipped in March 1996. The Communicator was highly advanced at the time, featuring sending and receiving

e-mail Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

and

fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other out ...

via its CSD (Circuit Switched Data)

modem The Democratic Movement (, ; MoDem ) is a centre to centre-right political party in France, whose main ideological trends are liberalism and Christian democracy, and that is characterised by a strong pro-Europeanist stance. MoDem was establis ...

, to transmit data over the

network at a bitrate of 9.6 kbit/s, printing documents using its

IrDA IrDA is a wireless standard designed for exchanging data using infrared (IR). Infrared ports for this purpose have been implemented in portable electronic devices such as mobile telephones, laptops, cameras, printers, and medical devices. The mai ...

port, and it also had a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

and business programs. It is formed of a clamshell design that opens up to reveal a monochrome

LCD A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not em ...

with a 640 × 200 resolution and a full

QWERTY QWERTY ( ) is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sh ...

keyboard similar to a Psion PDA, and weighing . It was priced £1,000 in the UK upon launch ().

9110

The Nokia 9110 Communicator is the updated model of the Nokia 9000 Communicator in the Communicator series. Its biggest change from the 9000 was that it weighed much less, but also had a newer

i486 The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor introduced in 1989. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the i386, Intel 386. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the Inte ...

-based processor.

Specifications

* Operating system: GEOS (running on top of

ROM-DOS Datalight was a privately held software company specializing in power failsafe and high performance software for preserving data integrity in embedded systems. The company was founded in 1983 by Roy Sherrill, and its headquarters is in Bothell, ...

) on the PDA side * Main applications:

Fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other out ...

, short messages,

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

, Wireless imaging: digital camera connectivity,

Smart messaging Smart messaging is a proprietary service developed by Nokia used for the sending and receiving of various digital media via SMS. Graphical Picture message A monochrome picture that can be sent between handsets as a series of SMS messages. The t ...

, TextWeb, Web browser, Serial Terminal, Telnet, Contacts, Notes, Calendar, Calculator, world time clock, Composer. * Display: 640 × 200 Pixels * Size: 158 mm × 56 mm × 27 mm * Weight: 253 g * Processor: Embedded

AMD Élan AMD Élan is a family of 32-bit embedded SoCs marketed by AMD based on x86 microprocessors. All of these products were backed with a long-term supply guarantee to meet the needs of embedded processors. However, when AMD acquired the Geode divis ...

SC450

Am486 The Am486 is a 80486-class family of computer central processing unit, processors that was produced by AMD in the 1990s. Intel beat AMD to market by nearly four years, but AMD priced its 40 MHz 486 at or below Intel's price for a 33&nb ...

processor at 33 MHz * Memory: 8 MB total, 4 MB Operating System and applications, 2 MB program execution, 2 MB user data storage, MMC card.

Reception and legacy

Then-CEO of Nokia,

Jorma Ollila Jorma Jaakko Ollila (born 15 August 1950) is a Finnish businessman who was chairman of Royal Dutch Shell from 1 June 2006 to May 2015, and at Nokia Corporation chairman from 1999 to 2012 and CEO from 1992 to 2006. He has been a director of Ota ...

, said in 2012 regarding the device: "We were five years ahead."

Awards

The Nokia 9000 Communicator received several awards including: *GSM World Award (for innovation) at GSM World Conference 1997 *Best Technological Advance by ''Mobile News UK'' *Best New Product 1997 by ''

Business Week ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'' (and before that ''Business Week'' and ''The Business Week''), is an American monthly business magazine published 12 times a year. The magazine debuted in New York City in Septembe ...

'' magazine

Successors

The product line was discontinued in 2000 with the introduction of

Nokia 9210 Communicator The Nokia 9210 Communicator is the third-generation Communicator series mobile phone produced by Nokia, announced on 21 November 2000 and released in June 2001. It greatly improved on the second-generation Nokia 9110 Communicator, providing a c ...

which introduced a wide TFT colour internal screen, 32-bit ARM9-based RISC CPU at 52 MHz, 16 MB of internal memory, enhanced web abilities and most importantly saw the operating system change to the

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

operating system. The 9210i launched in 2002 increased the internal memory to 40 MB, video streaming and flash 5 support for the web browser. The 9xxx Communicators introduced features which later evolved into

In popular culture

The Nokia 9000 is used by

Val Kilmer Val Edward Kilmer (December 31, 1959 – April 1, 2025) was an American actor. Initially a stage actor, he later found fame as a Leading actor, leading man in films in a wide variety of genres, including Comedy film, comedies, dramas, action fi ...

when he played

Simon Templar The Saint is the nickname of the fictional character Simon Templar, featured in a List of works by Leslie Charteris, series of novels and short stories by Leslie Charteris published between 1928 and 1963. After that date other authors collaborat ...

in the 1997 remake of ''

The Saint The Saint may refer to: Fiction * Simon Templar, also known as "The Saint", the protagonist of a book series by Leslie Charteris and subsequent adaptations: ** ''The Saint'' (film series) (1938–1943), starring Louis Hayward, George Sanders ...

'',Nokia. (1997, Apr 9)
Nokia 9000 Communicator makes a visible appearance in "THE SAINT"
Retrieved Apr 30, 2016, from Nokia and by

Anthony Hopkins Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins (born 31 December 1937) is a Welsh actor. Considered one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actors, he is known for List of Anthony Hopkins performances, his performances on the screen and stage. Hopkins ha ...

and

Chris Rock Christopher Julius Rock (born February 7, 1965) is an American comedian, actor, and filmmaker. He first gained prominence for his stand-up routines in the 1980s in which he tackled subjects including race relations, human sexuality, and obse ...

in the action comedy ''

Bad Company Bad Company were an English rock supergroup formed in London in 1973 by singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke (both ex- Free), guitarist Mick Ralphs (ex- Mott the Hoople) and bassist Boz Burrell (ex-King Crimson). Kirke was the only m ...

''. The phone is also mentioned in Bret Easton Ellis' book ''

Glamorama ''Glamorama'' is a 1998 novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis. ''Glamorama'' is set in, and satirizes, the 1990s, specifically celebrity culture and consumerism. ''Time'' describes the novel as "a screed against models and celebrity". Deve ...

''.

References

External links

*
More info
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9000 9000 may refer to: * 9000 (number) * The last year of the 9th millennium, an exceptional common year starting on Wednesday Business * ISO 9000, a family of standards for quality management systems * TL 9000, a quality management system ...

Products introduced in 1996 Mobile phones with an integrated hardware keyboard Mobile phones with infrared transmitter Flip phones