From 1998 until 2012, Nokia was the biggest mobile-phone maker in the world. Its failure to adapt to the post-iPhone market led to its decline—it lost the top spot to the Korean electronics giant Samsung—and the eventual purchase of the company’s storied phone division by Microsoft, another company that was late to the very personal computing revolution embodied by the dominance of smartphones. But it’s hard to imagine phones existing as they do today without Nokia’s innovations over the past twenty years. Below, a slide show highlights the company’s the most notable releases, and offers a look at just how far phones have come.
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<b>Nokia 1011</b><br />This is it: the very first G.S.M. cell phone was the Nokia 1011, which was released in November of 1992. Photograph: Nokia.