Exactly two years ago today I wrote:
In morning news linkage: genetic algorithms evolved a guy’s keyboard layout, the Simputer is coming, and Nokia has a cel phone with an integrated digital camera.
I caught this a week or so ago when I was checking the date of my first entry at postneo and it’s been hard to keep this inside since then. Can you imagine. Nokia shipped the 7650. Two years ago. Today. I linked to a post about a cel mobile phone with a camera in it. I didn’t mention Series 60, I didn’t know a whole lot about it until much later. The article that I pointed to didn’t even mention Series 60. The big thing then was “oh my goodness, this mobile phone has a camera!”
Russ played with one in Madrid on July 24, 2002, a few weeks after it came out.
Now, two years later, I have a Series 60 phone in my pocket every day. I use its built-in camera almost daily, though I tend to use email to post to my moblog. I only use MMS to send a picture to another mobile phone once every week or two. It is however a mobile development platform for me.
The number of Series 60 devices on the market has skyrocketed. The number of Series 60 devices waiting behind the curtain is unknown but tantalizing. My phone now has an interactive Python interpreter. It can also speak Symbian C++, Java, and OPL. I stay up until 4am trying to catch a Nokia press conference in Finland. Two years ago the 7650 was just an afterthought in a couple of links. “Oh, here’s a cameraphone. Neat.” Today I know that the platform is more important than any single feature. Sure the cameraphone is still a killer app. But the platform, man. You’ve got to see the big picture. It’s beautiful.
Series 60. What comes next? What about after that? Oh man, I can’t wait. I can only imagine what I’m going to be talking about two years from today.