PhoneArena's Retro-Rewind: Nokia 3650

Today's smartphone market is extremely fierce as the depth and scope of offerings have dramatically modified the landscape to the point where companies can quickly rise to fame and shoot straight to the bottom all in a blink of an eye. Even though their presence may have been challenged by Apple's iPhone and Google's Android army, Nokia has been a steady force in the keeping their ship afloat in this cutthroat market. Even though the Nokia N95 can be argued as one of their greatest accomplishments to date, we've seen them make their mark in the US market a long time ago thanks to the iconic looking Nokia 3650. At its core, the device struck a chord in the hearts of consumers back in 2002 as being the first Symbian Series 60 1st Edition smartphone to hit the North American market. In addition, it was also one of the few commercially successful handsets to sport a built-in camera.



Before the sleek looking Motorola Q revolutionized the smartphone form factor, much like others during its time, the Nokia 3650 can be looked back as a titan in shape which could easily stand out when placed in the pockets. Being one-inch thick, the device was of course bulky, but naturally it didn't seem too out of the ordinary back them. Aside from its gargantuan size, the second thing people noticed from the start was its circular sized keypad which probably threw a curve ball to most users at first – making it one of the biggest complaints seen by owners. However, Nokia later listened to some of the criticism and reworked it with the Nokia 3620/3660 which opted for the normal keypad layout. It was actually believed at the time that the unique layout would've aided in speed typing, but there were still may out there who voiced their yearning for a conventional keypad. Some of its other features include a 176 x 208 pixel display with support for 4k colors, 850 mAh battery, 0.3-megapixel camera, WAP browser, email, 3MB of internal storage, infrared port, Bluetooth, and video support for MPEG4, H.263, and 3GPP. As we look towards the future with the Symbian^3 powered Nokia N8, we humbly can look back at the Nokia 3650 to witness the beginnings of Nokia's famous platform.



When it comes to sales figures, it may not have achieved some of the millions of units sold like what we see today with some of the current smartphone offerings. This easily managed to satisfy the gadget lover inside of certain individuals that wanted a high-end phone that packed some features that most phone owners were not accustomed to seeing. However, there were still some things that weren't perfect with the handset, but Nokia obviously improved some areas as we noted with the Nokia 3620/3660. Here in the US, the Nokia 3650 was sold through both T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless – it remains unseen if sales proved to be a hit. Looking back now, the Nokia 3650 can surely be commended for bringing forth the popularity of taking photos, in-depth applications on a phone, and the introduction of the long running Symbian Series 60 platform which spawned other memorable devices like the Nokia N95, Nokia E71, and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

Nokia 3600 Specifications
Nokia 3650 Specifications
Nokia 3620 Specifications
Nokia 3660 Specifications