Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “When Phones Were Fun: Nokia’s Star Trek Communicator (2009)”.
This video is sponsored by incogni. Would mobile phones exist without star trek, yeah back in my pocket? Nowadays, i learned from dr marty cooper himself that it was mostly the dick tracy radio watch, not the star trek communicator that inspired him. While he was working on motorola’s original mobile phone. Well, it really was dick tracy, but when it came time to making that product pocketable well, you don’t need to look hard to see where the star tack got its name. The generation of star trek fans that had waited three decades for a flip top mobile communicator. Finally, got something that at least felt close, but it would take another 10 years before the cell phone industry finally gave trekkies a proper star trek phone only to cruelly beam it away before it ever saw the light of day. I’M michael fisher – and this is the story of the nokia star – trek communicator, [ Applause ].
It’S tough to tell the story of the nokia star trek communicator without at least touching on the phone, whose name was literally star trek. This one is on loan from avi greengart president and lead analyst of texponential and don’t let its humble looks fool you. It wasn’t just another mid naughty’s clamshell. This was a fully fledged smartphone running the same windows, mobile 5 that i was using at the time on. My motorola q, with many of the same features crammed into what in 2007, was considered an ultra-thin casing. But while i knew this as the htc star trek, because i was a tech nerd who read way too many blogs, the rest of the world knew it as the singular 3125 or the doepod s 300, or the imate smart flip or the qtec 8500.
Yes, these were the days of htc as odm when it would preempt its own brand for any carrier or manufacturing partner, so star trek would never be much more than a nickname and honestly, if i’d been htc at the time, i wouldn’t have wanted to license it Either 2007 was a low point for star trek’s cultural influence. The last series had been cancelled due to low ratings two years before, and not coincidentally, that was also the last time anyone tried making a star trek phone. I actually remember when the news broke. I was so excited, it was an outfit called sona mobile and the phone would have included star trek community and game offerings on top of a custom windows mobile skin.
But the phone was almost immediately delayed as a result of unspecified production challenges before ultimately vanishing into the vapor from whence it came in 2006., and that left those of us who didn’t want to trick out our razors with a do-it-yourself instructables kit. Pretty much convinced that the dream of a star trek cell phone was effectively dead. Slingshot around the sun to 2009 abrams reboots, the star trek film franchise with a thrill ride of a motion picture the onion famously called too fun and watchable to be a star trek movie interspersed among the lens flares and whip pans, new flip top communicator props and A blatant bit of product placement from what was then the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer and deep within that company’s california design offices. A confluence of the two was being concocted, and this is one of them. I bought this on ebay about 12 years ago and immediately set about making a very low budget unboxing video that i don’t recommend you watch and ever since then i’ve been trying to learn more about it. But to this day, most of what i know i learned from what’s inside the box.
Fortunately, for all of us, it’s a pretty comprehensive box. Nokia took real pride in the presentation here with a period appropriate starfleet logo, both embossed on the jewelry box and printed on the fully branded welcome guide. I love how the battery is called a fuel cell and the display of view screen. You flip the guide over and you learn. This is a starfleet communicator series beta, which you know makes sense. A prototype edition numbered between 1 and 14 limited for internal evaluation and non-commercial.
An email address that, unsurprisingly, no longer functions, dig into the foam to pull out the communicator itself and good god. Man, it’s made of solid neutronium, 150 grams, might not sound massive, but that’s 30 percent heavier than the nokia n76. It’S built upon and the cold to the touch cover explains why yup just like on the props it emulates, the lid of this communicator, is actual brass, now slowly oxidizing to a greenish gray. After all these years on the back, you can see the textured matte plastic meant to evoke the 1960s kydex, as well as an embossed starfleet logo.
That appears to be the same as the one in the box. The style of that insignia plus the refit starship enterprise carved into the mini usb port cover up top puts the intended future vintage of this thing somewhere between 2273 and 2347. And if that means nothing to you, i’ll just say that this fits right in as a sleeker model that might have launched sometime after star trek vi now, with that kind of attention to detail. Maybe it’s no surprise that yeah this does the one thing every trek fan asks about when i first show it to them. Hailing frequencies open under the cover. The stock n76 keypad has been completely redesigned, topped off by a redone d-pad. That pays tribute to wah-chang’s iconic circular speaker of the original. It doesn’t spin but play with the light a bit, and you can see the familiar moir pattern. One that’s also replicated in animated form. On the 2.4 inch lcd, several starfleet wallpaper options are pre-loaded to choose from, as well as a handful of audio clips that might be familiar to anyone with a star trek fan in their life and yeah. This is a true smartphone, with a full gsm stack, a camera that well at least took pictures and all the capabilities of symbian s60 third edition. So why wasn’t? I still clipping this to my landing party belt circa 2010, when i bought it i’ll explain after this subspace transmission from my sponsor.
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Mr mobile get 20 off thanks to incogni for sponsoring this video. As with most prototypes, the usability compromises on the starfleet communicator are prodigious. The power button is so tiny. You need to press it with the back side of a thumbnail if the phone is top-heavy. Thanks to all that brass, the redesigned keypad is so mushy and imprecise.
As to be almost unusable, i think what they might have done here is grafted a custom plate right onto the unmodified contact sheet of the n76 keyboard itself, and no, i’m not disassembling it. To find out also sliding off the battery door reveals a lot more stone, knives and bearskins electronics than you usually see, including the hard points for the volume keys which are actually covered up by that custom backplate when the phone is closed. Kind of like the outer display is covered up by the brass antenna grille. Those last two issues, especially confused me when i first got a hold of this thing, because they just seemed like such huge oversights for a device that was going to come to market.
But as i’ve learned through some research this week, helped out by friend of the channel ben wood of the mobile phone museum, it looks more and more likely that this wasn’t ever meant to come to market according to one former nokian. This communicator was conceived and executed. Purely as a technology, demonstrator or marketing collaboration never to exceed its 14 or perhaps, as this label suggests, it’s 12 unit run apparently back in 2009 nokia had an entire factory expressly dedicated to producing concept.
Devices like this. How times have changed the only star trek phone? The average person was able to buy to commemorate the events of stardate 2233. Hey nice was this pretty weak nokia 5800. It had the custom, ringtones and wallpapers. You expect from a minimum effort tie-in but of course, no semblance of the hardware design that trek fans actually wanted.
Now, as for the 11 or 13 other examples that apparently exist well, the person who sold this one to me tells me that, at least at one point, jj abrams owned one, which is pretty cool, but i’ve never seen another one, either in the wild or online. Ultimately, paramount missed its chance to spin latinum from nerd love in this specific way. Really, the only time a star trek phone would have worked was right there in the mid-aughts, when most phones really did come in communicator-sized clamshell packages, but thankfully the story didn’t end there. In 2009, maxine would share a detailed guide for how to convert a toy communicator into a fully functioning bluetooth speaker that paired with your phone and in 2016, the wonderful folks at the wand company would build a commercialized version of that idea.
I reviewed it on one of my first videos for mr mobile and i continue to adore the wand communicator today. Communicators of the 23rd century have continued to evolve as well. The second abrams film endowed them with the ability to receive text messages, while the excellent strange new worlds. Tv series gave them video calling just this year and, as i gently put the nokia communicator back into safe storage and returned to my motorola razer 5g, a device that preserves its flip top spirit and still does all the things. I need a modern smartphone to do. Well, i’m forced to make a rare admission.
While phones were fun, then some of them are even more fun today. Folks, if you have any information about the nokia star trek communicator, please share it below i’m always eager to learn more about the favorite phone. In my collection and if you’d just like to nerd out with me about star trek communicators in general, hey i’m fine with that too sound off down below. As always no manufacturer had an early look at or editorial input into this video.
The loan sponsor is incogni until next time from michael fisher live long and prosper and stay mobile. My friends, you .