I used to have two of the beasts, one each on T-Mobile and Vodafone, in that order. I thought, at the time, that they were great. They did just about everything that I wanted to then.

The built in browser was not too bad for the simple stuff. There was no notion of being able to access complex full blown websites, but a quick Google and a few pages was no real problem. The browser did used to crash quite a bit as it leaked memory like a very leaky bucket. Tethering was possible using USB cable - and later Joiku Hotspot came to the rescue, the paid-for version required for unfettered tethering.

But data in those days was ruinously expensive and so had to be used very judiciously. Any thought of Gigabytes of usage were completely foreign, unthinkable, the ravings of a mad person.

So, today, as I was walking back from lunch, I came over all nostalgic-like when I glanced in the window of a local hair dresser to see a young lad eagerly texting away on his Nokia N95 (not even the 8GB model).

It was a great little smartphone (?) in its day. Amazing to see one still in practical use.