The N79 was a lot like Sony Ericsson’s T610 in that it had no groundbreaking features of its own, but instead wrapped up the innovations of the day in an attractive and affordable package. Though small enough to fit into a pants pocket the N79 had a 5 megapixel camera with lens protection, plus a front-facing camera for videoconferencing. 3G and WiFi radios were at the ready to serve your data needs. Navigating through the old school S60 UI was made easier (or at least different) by the innovative Navi™ wheel. What I liked best was the return of Nokia’s Xpress-On covers — updated for the 21st century with some clever technology that made the background colour of the screen match the back cover of the phone. Had I kept my N79 longer I would have a fairly large collection of Xpress-On covers by now.

But I didn’t. You see, regressing from a qwerty keypad to a T9 number pad was made considerably more difficult by the N79’s awful buttons. They were flat, offered almost no feedback and felt extremely cheap. Hammering out text messages, a breeze on my Eseries phones, was now a painful chore.

Still, I was definitely won over by what Nseries had to offer — in particular Nokia’s gaming platform of the day, called N-Gage. A favourite title was Mile High Pinball, my first modern-day gaming addiction since Bejeweled on my Treo almost a decade prior. Imagine a pinball table that extended infinitely and you get the general idea.

Though the days of N-Gage were numbered, Nseries devices were getting better and better. My N79 got to tag along with me on a points-burning mission around the world in November of 2009; sadly, it spent most of that trip in my suitcase, sidelined by the Nseries that would take its place as soon as I got home…

Here’s Nokia’s N79 — a dummy model showing some available options for Xpress-On covers that came with. Changing the back cover on your N79 would also change the background colour on your home screen. Clever.

I played with an N79 during the N97 24/7 tour and was so enamoured with it that I started poking about for one soon as I got home…

… And thanks to an eBay auction I soon had myself a brand-new, factory unlocked N79 to call my own.

Here’s the N79’s Navi™ wheel in action, a neat feature that in no way excused the horrible number pad underneath — which is a real shame, since everything else about it was great.

As this was my first-ever Nseries device, I finally got to use my N-Gage account. And Mile High Pinball was far and away my favourite title on Nokia’s ill-fated gaming platform.

When Fido introduced their packet-based GPRS data service they yanked the CSD option at the same time. While the minutes from my calling plan would no longer take a hit from data there was now a data transmission charge, 5¢ per kilobit sent or received. Even on small WAP pages that could add up, and exponentially so if you were roaming abroad and needed valuable information at your fingertips. It should be noted that by this point in my life I didn’t just have a travel bug; a parasitic host had set up a permanent residence, relentlessly steering my career and cash flow towards the next overseas flight and hotel booking. My actor friends couldn’t afford to go or weren’t interested, but the mobile Internet proved to be a dependable and compliant travel companion.

Thus this new pay-per-use mobile Internet simply would not do. I called Fido and threatened to cancel my account — an obvious bluff, since there was no other GSM carrier in Canada at the time. I got to speak to someone in their retentions department, who offered me a $400 handset for $50 if I would stay on with them through the summer. Being the device whore that I am I could hardly say no, and the $400 phone I got was the Nokia 8390.

Like the 3390 before it, the 8390 had Xpress-On covers and could dance. But this newer, smaller Nokia also had a GPRS radio and onboard WAP browser. And yet I was entirely underwhelmed by it, never even gave it a chance, really. Maybe it was the small monochrome screen, maybe it was the constant, painful reminder that the mobile Internet would never again be as cheap as it once was. Whatever the reason… meh.  I seem to remember taking it to a bar that was open all night to broadcast a World Cup game from South Korea, but that’s about it. The phone would go up for auction on eBay the very next month.

What replaced it, however, would prove to be quite epic…

And like my old StarTAC the 3390 was blessed with a vibrate function. On its own the feature was convenient enough, but another Nokia engineering feat made for the stuff of legend. I discovered quite by accident that if I put the phone in vibrate mode, placed it upright on a flat surface and called it the 3390 would magically rotate about a centimetre or so on its base, without falling over.

In other words, it could dance.

For this to be even possible the handset would have to be weighted just so; ditto for whatever produced the vibration inside. Long story short, the dancing was clearly a planned feature — either pointless or awesome depending on your point of view — but proving nonetheless that Nokia’s engineers were light years ahead of anyone else.

Unfortunately, as an entry level phone the 3390’s days as my personal sidearm were numbered. But I kept it as a spare, and years later it would perform another feat matched by no other handset before or since: it was the first (and so far only) cell phone to ever be thrown at me by an angry girlfriend. It missed its target and smashed into a wall behind me, and thanks to its Xpress-On cover we both lived to see another day.

Except for the T-Mobile branding, my Fido 3390 was identical to this one — including the Xpress-On cover. You can read Steve Punter’s review from March, 2002 right here.

And aside from being the only phone I ever owned that could dance:

… The 3390 will always hold a special place in my heart as the only mobile device ever hurled at me by an angry girlfriend. Good times.

First, there was the Xpress-on cover. The entire front panel of the device could easily be removed, along with the number keys — which laid together on a flat piece of silicone. This essentially made a protective case unnecessary, as the user could, at their discretion, swap out the front of the phone’s housing at any time for something new. Of course I ended up buying a leather pouch anyway because I loved my 5190 that much. But I also started collecting Xpress-on covers. It didn’t quite get to the point where I had one to match every outfit, but it was close.

It’s also worth pointing out that when you removed the Xpress-on cover on the 5190 — or any 51xx series phone, I think — you were greeted with a smiling face, literally. Someone, somewhere had made the design decision to mold the plastic covering the earpiece of the phone into a happy face. It confounds me to this very day, but speaks to an attention to detail that I’ve not seen from any other electronics manufacturer before or since.

Perhaps it had more to do with my nascent career as an actor than the handset itself, but I also remember my 5190 as the phone I really started travelling with. My previous two Nokias had support for Canada’s old school analog networks built-in, while the made-for-GSM 5190 did not. Nokia and Fido came up with a pretty clever solution; for an extra seventy-five bucks you could get an external analog antenna that snapped onto the back of a 51 (or 61) 90 between the phone and battery. It made the phone about twice as thick but I used this very setup on a tour of Eastern Canada and it worked great.

Most importantly, this was the first phone that I properly texted with. I remember very clearly when SMS first proved its worth: I was with my girlfriend at The Chicago Improv Festival in the spring of 2000. We were watching a troupe perform and they were fairly awful. Worse, I couldn’t say anything disparaging to my girlfriend without disturbing the other patrons around us in the packed theatre. Then I remembered that an actor I had taught back in Toronto was also in the audience somewhere and was, like me, a Fido customer. So we started texting each other, sharing our misery and a blow-by-blow assessment of the unfolding comedy train wreck on stage. In this way I was transported from the tedium of a comedy show that wasn’t funny to a parallel universe, where I was free to bitch and moan about it to a kindred spirit — all without leaving my seat or disturbing anyone.

Except for my girlfriend, of course; she was none too impressed by the distractions of my glowing screen and flying thumbs.

This is it — the legendary phone that started my love affair with Nokias.

Though lacking a vibrate function the 5190 had so many other killer features, as befitting both a Nokia and a proper GSM handset. There was the groundbreaking Navi-Key, SMS support, Snake (!) and removable faceplates — which when taken off, revealed…

… A face! This is the actual plastic molding covering the ear piece of the 51xx series; something that few would ever see, yet someone took the time to add it to the design. Amazing.

When I had my 5190 Fido was still very much an urban carrier; to facilitate roaming on Canada’s analog networks Nokia made a sled antenna that would fit between the phone and battery, making the 5190 quite a bit thicker but no less awesome.