Bidding farewell to a clockwork Nokia

The future as seen in 1951

Now I went looking in my collection of Eagle comics today for an image of Dan Dare Pilot of the Future using a hand held communicator which was usually featured as a watch you could talk into.

I could of course have used one of the shots from Star Trek but the franchise quite rightly is very protective about its copyright and any way Dan Dare was a round in the 1950s when the idea of such devices was still reckoned to be either daft or so far into the future as to dismissed.

All of which is a lead into the fact that I have now become the owner of a smart phone.

For years I clung to my old clockwork Nokia and even had a flirtation with the ancient Nokia 3310 but in my heart of hearts I knew the future lay with something bright and new which would connect to the internet, let me wander across social networks and of course let me make a phone call.

To be fair my last Nokia would allow internet access but it seemed more effort to use it and it confused me.

So I stuck with a phone which just bounced if you dropped it, had a battery which lasted all day and played Snake.

A little bit of my future, 2015

But even dinosaur mobiles do not perform well after being through the washing machine on a 45 minute wash.

The bag of rice, and the gentle warm rays of an April day did nothing to bring it back to life and so I have joined Dan Dare, Captain Kirk and pretty much everyone on the planet and can now communicate in several different ways almost at the same time.

That said it remains a painful learning curve and one which continues to impress on me that I may not be that smart to operate a smart phone.

A sad fact illustrated by my discovery that having registered the sim I should turn the phone off and on again to become linked to my provider.  This I discovered only after a day of waiting.

And the point of the story?

Well I suppose it is that simple one that all technologies and message systems have their day.  I no longer listen to the wireless, await news delivered by the telegram and can only just remember a TV which had just two channels which changed by operating a dial on the set and offered no colour.

Pictures; detail from the Red Moon Mystery, Eagle Comic, October 5, 1951, Vol 2 Nu 26, and the Nokia Luminia 635 from the collection of Andrew Simpson