The Nokia 5230 has outsold any single Android phone ever made- and I had never heard of it. Hope you enjoy the video! Get NordVPN here! nordvpn.com/91tech - It's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee!

"i love obscure phones like this" bro you might be the only person on earth who hasn't heard of symbian or nokia smartphones from the late 00s - early 10s

Saying Nokia "partnered" with Microsoft is a bit incomplete. Microsoft Trojan horsed them with a former executive who sabotaged Symbian and pushed hard to switch to windows phone before Microsoft bought Nokia mobile and get got a multi billion dollar payout, it was absolutely vicious. The guys name was stephan elop, the story is honestly pretty interesting

9:54 what you have just stumbled across is the Nokia Guitar Pick. It was to be used as a stylus for the resistive touch screen and was a big part of the XpressMusic branding back then. As for the tiny X on the corner of the screen, thats where your 3G signal bars would be if you had a simcard in the phone.

Josh not knowing what symbian is definitely makes me feel old lol 😂

i had one of these!! i also had the nokia c6 with the slide out keyboard,, although i did want an iphone back in those days, but these werent too bad before i got my first proper android which was a sony xperia ray

The guitar pick is a stylus. This was during the transition from resistive to capacitive touch screens. Only iPhone had capacitive touch screen that time. Others, including Samsung and Nokia copied the finger-oriented UI of the iPhone but they do not work well without capacitive touch technology. Hence, they had to include stylus, which are interestingly designed to be dangling. See the Samsung Omnia, which ran on Windows Mobile, and its weird dangling stylus.

I Used Symbian for many years and I liked it. It was capable of multitasking with a minimum RAM. My last Symbian phone was Samsung Omnia HD, great device. Sad that the ex Microsoft boss killed Nokia and Symbian with it.

It seems that you really don't know about Nokia before. Seeing how the nostalgia hit me seeing that phone again in action (it was my first phone purchased using my first salary almost a decade ago), let me tell you about what I remember about it: The Nokia 5230, and its sibling the 5233, were "downgrades" of the popular-model back then of Nokia, the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music phone. I had the 5233, which is quite similar but only sold to specific markets (i.e. Southeast Asia, etc). The "guitar pick" you have mentioned earlier is actually Nokia's wrist stylus bundled with those models since it particularly lacked a stylus stick. Then the hands holding together at the boot up screen is Nokia's company slogan before it was acquired by Microsoft. It was "Connecting People".

Nokia had some really interesting phones you could cover. Like the Nokia N9 which ran "MeeGo"... or the 808 pureview with the 41mpx camera

There was an update to the phone in it's lifetime where it allowed the user to have an ambient display which also had slide to unlock option. Two options to unlock a phone was a cool way to show off back in those days. I had this phone and I had alot of fun with this installing mods. Yes you heard it right. This phone had mods.

This takes me back to childhood, when my mum used an Orange (no longer existing in Austria) branded Nokia C5-03 with Symbian OS. It was an awesome phone for the time. I still have it

I have a Nokia 6280 from 2007 running Symbian OS. No touch screen, physical buttons only, no horizontal, vertical orientation only, no icons, it works with menus. And it still works after all these years.

symbian os one of the most compressed simple os that instead of scattering the freakin file of a game or application everywhere in the phone it uses the same installer package as the main source for its emulation while saving like 70% percentage of the storage and ram at the same time .. and is easily you can create your own customization like themes using just one folder as source and an html as install intruction

i used to have a 5800 which is kind of similar to this phone. higher end with better camera, flash, front camera and wifi. i installed a theme to make it look like windows 7 and also changed the boot animation as well. unfortunately i cracked the lcd so it doesn't work anymore.

I had one of those and it's a really really great phone used it for more than 8 years without any problem. It is probably my first mobile to experience internet and use it. Also the first time experiencing Maps and it was just awesome. This mobile even has a stylus left side on the back and you can easily pull it out and use. Slider is a cool feature too.

Those hands translate "connecting people" , that was Nokia's goal, and I think that "x" is on any phone that doesn't have a sim card inside

Adding in to the guitar pick debacle, when the original 5800 Xpress Music was launched; there were a few music related apps which let users create their own MP3s, or just fool around. One of the apps was a Guitar one, and there were ads and promos focusing on the same. To sum it all up, the guitar pick included had 3 uses for the phone. One was the stylus as many pointed out, 2nd was to be used with the guitar app, third is that it can be secured in the lanyard eye letting the user hang the phone around the wrist.The guitar and music apps were not bundled with Nokia 5230/5233 as these were non “Xpress Music” phones but can certainly be side loaded or downloaded.

I remember having one of these in dark maroonish color & i can tell you NOTHING sounded that good when it came to listen music back then, it was groundbreaking how good the audio quality was in these phones. That little thing next to nokia logo on the top right corner is actually a touch sensitive music shortcut, was really useful for me to quickly jump to the playlist.

This is a trip down memory lane! I had another phone from that series, the 5530. That series was the flex in the late 2000's here in Portugal. Who had the 5800 were the boss, because that one had wifi. Mine also had both. The resistive screens had their flaws, but the guitar pick and the stylus included in many phones of that time were the boss. Loved to see that phone again, who had those were the richest!

I also had 5230, black one with shiny metallic border and pink back cover. Atleast here in Finland those phones used to include few different colored back covers in their boxes to choose from. That software was indeed very slow and buggy, my unit loved to crash almost every time someone called, making it just vibrate nonstop until I removed the battery.

the "X' on the top left is for the network. That's where the phone used to show network but since you probably don't have a sim in there it shows "X", in fact as far as I can remember all Nokias used to do that, at least all that I have seen

I had this guy in 2012-2013, when going to second-third grade, always loved Symbian, still do.

So many memories. I had this phone after I lost an HTC My Touch from T-Mobile. After experiencing a capacitive touchscreen it was an infuriating process adapting to a resistive screen. I got used to it, eventually.

I had a Nokia phone from 2000 to 2003, and a flip phone from 2004 to 2008, and a Blackberry phone from 2008 to 2013, and a iPhone from 2013 to Now.

The x means that you don't have signal. In this case probably 2g or 3g

My mom and Grandma had these! And my grandma's still works! Finally I get to learn more about them! They had them in grey, and they're actually fairly nice, I loved playing the Rollercoaster game

I used to own 5320, loved it, it was my first touch phone. The only bad thing was the lack of WiFi

I remember my cousin got one of these, I had the Nokia N97 which was superior to the this one. Symbian was a good OS for it's time.

I remember the Symbian OS. I used to be involved with some software for Bible study; it ran on Palm OS and someone in Indonesia ported it to Symbian. Even though the OS no longer exists, the software is still available.

I love those obscure tech videos about products I don't know much about or in this case. at all. Good Job, Josh!

I had this phone and hands down the best phone I've ever had. Most of the features are available today but back then it was revolutionary.

Just recently I restored my old Nokia 700 to a brand new state with original parts. That's the phone visible at 5:00, just in black. It was the smallest smartphone at the time with an amoled display, extremely thin and works great. With symbian unsigned app patch applied it is still useful and quite nostalgic, with all the old themes, games and apps.

That guitar pick is for the touch screen when you're lazy to get the stylus out the back, it's because the touchscreen is resistive and not capacitive

I had the original version of this phone. The Xpress Music 5800. Nokia recycled that design on several subsequent phones at varying lower price points by stripping out different features (like wifi).

I don’t remember the 5230, but I do have a similar phone, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the full featured version of the phone, out of the box had a lot of accessories like a phone sleeve, stand, and even a composite video out cable, came with 25 songs from universal music, albeit DRM-locked, and some other promotional material. It was a great phone for what it is, as a music and a video player, and that’s about it.

What a cool review. Growing up in Europe, I was fortunate enough to own some of the iconic mobile phones from the early 2000's. My favorite brand was Nokia and I had models like 3310 (the indestructible brick), 6600, 6630, 9500, 3650, 3250, 7610, E61i, E90, N95, 5800 Xpress Music which is very similar to the one in this video and many other models. What a memory and exciting experience I remember that was. Now I'm using one of the latest flagship smartphones with all the bells and whistles but still miss those days when phones had cool physical keyboards and looked different from each other with different screen sizes and case materials.

Well, I had more Nokia phones then any other brand combined. My mom actually had the 5230, it's still lying in a drawer somewhere. My last Nokia was the N97 which was an all-round disappointment. It did have an FM transmitter which was neat.

Haha your sponsor got around my sponsor skip. And it was funny. Good on you!

Not only have I heard of this device but I owned a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, which despite being a year older was practically the same phone, but with a selfie camera. I loved that thing. it was the first phone I ever saw to just about start to resemble the modern day smart phone.

I not only had one, but also remember that it was offered in the USA as the Nokia Nuron on T-Mobile.

We had Nokia 5239 and it was so great !! Nostalgia overloaded !!!

I had one, Nokia 5230 so good, i got car holding pack too, man... so beautiful memories back there

My dad had one of these but in black. The 'guitar pick' is a stylus type thing because it has a resistive touch screen

Boy, the Nostalgia. I used this phone for about 2 years and I absolutely loved it. I miss Symbian

I remember back in High School I used the Nokia N97 as my daily driver until 2011 and then upgrading it to my first Android Smartphone the HTC Sensation 4G and have being using Android ever since.

My very first smartphone. Dude, this thing did it ALL from emulation to HQ video playback and had some of the crispest voice quality at the time. It was also tough as hell. RIP Nokia Nuron

My first honest to goodness touchscreen phone was the Nokia 5800 which I believe is the more expensive variant of the 5230 (5800 has wifi and a higher resolution camera). I was amazed by the amount of accessories included with the box. It came with spare styluses(one pointed, the other a guitar pick style), earphones, case, phone stand, tv out cable and a freaking copy of a Batman movie! Shot too many photos with it, watched a crap ton of movies and listened to thousands of songs! It was a multimedia powerhouse with its sharp display and powerful speakers. I even installed a variety of custom firmware on it with custom ui animations and such. I loved that device to death. 10/10 would buy again if I were sent back in time!

I have Nokia Symbian smartphone in my lair and still using it today. It was Nokia X7-00, running Nokia Belle Refresh. It was given by my mom's cousin back in 2011 for my dad, and now he's no longer using it because switching to Android.

Sometimes watching this channel I feel so old 😅 My second phone was a Nokia 5130 XpressMusic, but for a long time I dreamt of getting one of the Nokia touch smartphones 😂

I still have this device. I was in high school when I first discovered it. Some chick was next to me on a bus while I was going home and she showed me this phone. I got super hyped for some reason and my parents bought me this later on. I enjoyed it at first, but it wasn't great for audio streaming and video. It was a great budget phone at the least.

It was the time I can remember that badass MTV of great hip-hop and pop artists used Nokia Symbian smartphones and Blackberry.

I still remember this phone back then they were some of first smartphone of people around me The loop yes I remember that even Samsung gave it with their smartphones back in the days

Everybody had this when I was in middle school. I had the 5800 which is the same thing but had Wi-Fi. I remember I loved that it had the buttons in the italian flag colors green-white-red. The pick was to use the touch screen since it was so awful that using it with just your fingers was kinda hard. The 5800 also had a stylus. We used to keep the phone in our pocket with the pick dangling from the lanyard outside the pocket. It was like a social status or something.

I used to have these. Nostalgic. When u had it for a long long time the screen will have a permanent nail scratch on the side you used the most

The screen is what’s known as a ‘resistive’ touchscreen, where you have to physically push it down, not tap. That’s why the input was poorly responding to your touches. I think that’s also the reason for the guitar pick thing, it’s used as a small stylus.

I had that nokia phone from 2010 to 2013 such an awesome device

Had E71 for more than four years. It had Symbian S60 v3... I used to play NES Roms and Doom on it lol... The qwerty keyboard was sweet. Probably one of the best phone I ever used.

I own this phone too! Sadly lent it to my sis way back in the day and it got back to me later without the charger, and it's just been sitting there without being able to power on for years. It was honestly pretty okay, going from some cheap Fujitel phone to this was such an upgrade!

Had one of those, they also have the Xpressmusic edition. Lot of accessories out of the box. And color selection with black trims.

Fun fact: mine just arrived from the mail today this morning, the game pre-installed in mine is actually a guitar hero mobile clone made by Gameloft

My late mother used to own one of these. I would not say that it was popular here in my country because at the time the dominating Nokia phones were still using keypads. This brings back a lot of memories, I remember I would often play the game where you have a character run using your fingers and just try to get better times. I do not remember any other games we had and it is my first time knowing that the operating system used in that phone was called SymbianOS, which is why I remember it being very similar to Android. Thank you for creating this video and making me relive some nostalgic memories.

Funny seeing a gen z guy discovering Nokia. I had Nokia phones from the early 2000s till 2011, when I moved to a Galaxy S1 (and have been with Samsung ever since). I think my first Symbian (kind of the smart version of Nokia phones) was in the middle of the decade, definitely before iPhone. It was crazy to be able to connect to the internet anywhere back in 2006....

The small X in the left corner normally shows your signal strenght, but since the phone is in offline mode (because there is no sim card installed), it shows the X. I bought a nokia n71 ones from a shop that listed the phone "for parts", back in those days, the N series were the best of the best, and the phone i got was sold at the same store for 175 euro's in fully working order. I got it for 20 euro's, which was a great deal! But the phone remained in Offline mode, wether or not there is a sim card installed, i thought i was unlucky and bought a phone with a busted sim card reader, turns out, you can set the Offline mode yourself in Profiles, i didn't know that at the time, but i walked inside a phone shop and i just asked him why this phone is in offline mode when i have my sim in there, 10 seconds later, i saw reception and my carrier name appear on the display! I did a lil dance and the guy asked me why i was so happy, i told him my story and he wouldn't believe me :p great phone! It had 3g, i could watch television on this phone, which was nuts and mindblowing! Great times, the times when phones, were fun!

I used to have that phone (in black) when I was in high school around 2010. My classmates were drooling over that phone. Made me feel cool back then. 😅

I had a Nokia E63 back in 2009. Although these 2 doesn’t have a lot of similarities, This video brought back some sweet memories🥰

This was my mom's last non-Android phone. Quite awesome device I must say 😀 The gray button is brilliant, works similarly as Samsung's Edge panels now. If I'm not mistaken, this phone also had a stylus with it! Or maybe the guitar pick thing was supposed to work like a stylus 👀 Also the Rollercoaster Game worked normally at the time and I never experienced that prolonged loading when I had used that phone 😅 I always thought that late Symbian was better than early Android. It was sad Nokia had to ditch the OS when it partnered with Microsoft. Nokia also used a different OS for their Asha phones at the time, which was terrible compared with the one in the 5230.

Of course I've heard of it, I'm from Finland. I didn't use this specific model myself but I think I might have one laying around somewhere because I think I got a really beat up 5230 or 5228 from my friend once...

For me, Symbian was something amazing, while I didn't have it, I get up a couple of hours earlier, turn on the computer, write down emails, prices, addresses where I should travel (I can't carry a laptop, it's too heavy and too expensive to take), pack a paper map of countri so as not to get lost, I go to another city I buy a map of that city to find addresses (I get lost a couple of times during the day), I come home I type in excel and emails what I did-how much I sold during the day, and then I hear for a smartphone from Nokia, I buy it, install maps, excel, word, mail ... and the next day I go to work only with the phone, I find the addresses, immediately open the mail ,type the prices in excel, while traveling I listen to music from my phone, at the time it was unimaginable-unbelievable I will always remember that Symbian and Nokia. It was a change, after that everything is just improvements.

Back in the day i had a Nokia C6-00 which was basically a 5800 with a sliding keyboard. Great phone.

16:55 that X is there because you don't have sim.. when you have a sim in, that is a signal bar like the battery indicator on the right

Your video makes me feel so old. I used this phone back in the day but maybe for a year because it had no wifi. It was really popular in nigeria.

N97, N97 mini, 5800 are one of the must have if you don't want an iPhone. Of course, a cheaper 5230 still satisfy you.

Nokia 5230 , one of my favourite smartphones ever.

Had this phone back in the day, used to really like it, tho that lack of wifi was really annoying. Didn't have a data plan, parents refused to pay for one as I was like 10-11 at the time. I remember downloading loads of apps and themes from shady sites. The phone was so popular here that almost everyone i knew had one at somepoint.

i loved this phone when i was in high school. For 2009/2010, i was excited for the first touchscreen phone i ever owed, and the last nokia. i wish nokia would had gotten android intsead of windows. The pick is a stylus which is cool.

Had this device back in high school. Was a fan of the rollercoaster game

I used several Nokia phones including that one both high and low end with Symbian OS before it partnered with Microsoft. There was 6 OS systems before 2012 today only 2 which is so limited in choices. The Symbian was a learning curve but could be mastered with patience. Enjoy your KZfaq video and love that dog 🐕

My father actually works at Nokia. He says that Nokia could've made the iPhone, they had all the resources needed. The only thing Nokia lacked was creativity and thinking into the future.

I have the 5800 (with Wi-Fi and 3mpx AF camera) while my sister had a 5230 since back then she was a student and Wi-Fi was no as public yet. Loved my Nokia N8 with Symbian S60 Belle. The multitasking on Symbian was great plus it had copy paste from the get go.

The hands joining together is Nokia's Slogan from back in the day: Connecting People

Idk why but this brings up Memories. My Mom had it and yeah ive seen it a lot an just the fact that many of my childhood photos were taken with ist is so fuzzy

Still have a 5800 XpressMusic which had the same shell but in black and dark red combo. Came with a stylus, stereo speakers and it was my second smartphone. 2008 seems like a century behind us.

I had that phone when I was in high school in the Philippines and you’re the cool guy back then.

My first ever smartphone was the Nokia 5800 xpressmusic, which is basically this phone (but with some more features, and more suited for the western market)

bro! my dad bought me that phone way back when I was in high school and I remember I had only gotten to experience it for like 2 days before being mugged and have it stolen from me! I remember I was pretty excited when I got it since it was a pretty huge deal to have one back then... this video brings me a pretty strong nostalgia man

I still have mine! I got one back in the day ‘cause of the free offline maps by Ovi (and also because I couldn’t afford another Nokia model that had Wifi built-in). Unfortunately, the maps can’t be updated anymore and I lost the charger for it, so it’s been dead for a while. A cool phone that served me well

Still got the 7710 which has the s90 Symbian which is the first touch screen that was produced for public and the N92 which has the DVB-H digital tv and s60v3 and they are still functioning. The pick that was included on your lanyard you can use it as a stylus.

This was my first touch screen I got back in 2010 when I was 18. Wild.

I remember my friend had one of these while I had an awful Samsung Corby. Both of them would overheat and glitch every now and then. Being in South Africa WiFi only really came in about 4 years later so they were affordable and fit the purpose.

Bro, this is the first KZfaq video where I LOVED LOVED LOVED the sponsor spot. Wow. Cola is like the hands of the tech youtubers world

This was really popular phone back in the day here in Eastern Europe as well, I remember it was on every carrier magazine at one point

"Never Heard Of"? Dude! I won one of theese christmas 2k11 and it was DA BOMB!

My mom and dad both owned one. There was a similar and more high end Xpressmusic model that featured WiFi and multitouch but the phone lagged and crashed more so this phone actually had a better user experience. Even better than the n97 mini and I also had in my opinion.

The nokia guitar pick is supposed to be used as a stylus. lol

Had a Nokia n96 back-in-the-day. Love it! Phones were really interesting back then.

wow i did not know it sold this much! i have one myself which was kindly given to me a couple of years ago from someone who owned it back in the day. i am a phone collector

The one that seemed like a guitar pick was a "stylus" with a style. no pun intended. I had 5230 back in 2010, my favorite mobile from Nokia before I had my Nokia Lumia 800. 5230 is a mid-range touchscreen Symbian back then. the N-Series were the top of the line.

Oh gosh i remember this model had 3g and it looked same as 5233 i had almost all of the S60V5 symbian phones 5800 ,5233, 5230, 5530, C5-05 & the 3g model C5-03

The guitar pick was meant to be a creative alternative to the stylus since it's attached to a lanyard.