In something of a time warp, Marc from the PureView Club has somehow got his hands on a completely mint, as-new, boxed Nokia 7650 (from 2002), complete with original packaging, materials and even the screen protector. I have my own 7650, but it's bashed to heck and long since lost all of the above, making this look through the package all the more sumptuous. See also his size comparisons to discover how far we've come in ten years...

From Marc's article:

The Nokia 7650 was the first European phone you could make shots with ánd share them! So it really is the genesis of the whole concept of sharing pictures....

This is what you see opening the box – it must have been spectacular to see back then!

In 2002, you got at least a software-CD with your smartphone! But there’s more under there: a lot of old-fashioned amount of printed material a well… Of course, all extra documentation is in Dutch, but I guess you´ll get the general idea.

All that extra stuff I’ve just shown could be found under this box – containing The Device Itself. And yes, the headset  I think) is missing in this picture. I’m sure I have one somewhere though.

First close up: the screen protector is still attached to the screen.

Next shot gives some important “historical information”: the price tag from about 11 years ago is still there. From that you learn smartphones have become a lot better, but a lot cheaper at the same time.

You had to pay more for the Nokia 7650 (€630) than the Nokia Lumia 920 will cost you now in this country (€599, including a wireless charger even), not counting more than ten years of inflation. I think that’s quite amazing in fact.

See the article for the full set of photos and comments, along with size comparisons to the present day Nokia 808 and Lumia 920...

Quite apart from the camera specifications and apart from the screen dimensions (176 x 208!!), the other huge change from today's smartphones is the connectivity. There was no sign of Wifi, Bluetooth was brand new and untested, data topped out at GPRS and only very few of the 7650's functions were designed to go online - indeed, the main way to share your glorious (ahem) VGA photos was via MMS, a system that failed to ever take off because of network pricing stupidity.

Happy days though. At the time, I was using the Nokia 9210i Communicator, I remember, and was rather scornful of the new Series 60 interface. Rightly so, though history has shown a strange sense of irony in the way Series 60 became S60 and then took over as the only Symbian interface, including the very Communicator form factor I loved ten years earlier....