The 800-pound gorilla of the cell phone industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s was Finland’s Nokia. In 1996, it released the 9000, the first of its Communicator series of phones. The Nokia 9000 opened up, clamshell-style, to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. It had a web browser as well as digital camera connectivity. It could make calls, of course, and send messages, and had the now-usual suite of contacts, notes, calendar and calculator apps. But since cellular data plans were rare and expensive, the Communicator series was not a mainstream success. Too soon.
