The Nokia Flagship Store lies at the heart of New York City, somewhere around 57th and 5th and surrounded by Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., and Nike Town stores. It’s blue, it’s small, and it’s probably the only store to have its own bouncer.
But inside is a treasure trove of Nokia phones (okay, maybe 10 phones repeated like 20 times each) for your browsing pleasure.
So here we go, my first impressions – Nokia Flagship Store edition:
Nokia N75: more plasticky, thicker, and lighter than I expected. I was always wondering how Amazon could possibly sell this phone for -$19.99 with a 2-year agreement. It’s not necessarily a bad phone, and the inside is quite classy-looking. It just doesn’t have that heft or expensive feel of the N76.
Nokia N95: Out of four N95s I checked, 2 of them had loose sliders. I don’t think this is a very isolated problem.
Nokia E65: Has a very satisfying slider, one that you won’t hestiate to snap open and shut without a moment’s hesitation. Unlike my N95, which I can’t even slide open full speed for fear of breaking something. Tapered edges are definitely not my thing though.
Nokia 6126: The “press-to-open” button is a real gimmick, yet I could not stop myself from pushing the button over and over. I must’ve done this at least 20 times. The flip is attached to a spring, so the closing motion locks it in place until you’re ready to open it. Nothing else really impressive about the phone though.
Nokia E61i: Looks better than the E61, as well as being smaller and thinner. Buttons are awfully squishy which made typing a little annoying. Sometimes you can’t really tell if you’re pushing a button due to the amount of resistance behind the keys and the fact that there’s no solid click feeling (like the Samsung Blackjack keyboard, for example). With smaller, more tactile buttons (and maybe shorten the width a little bit), the E61i would be a winner.
Nokia 5300 XpressMusic: Looks and feels like a cell phone for kids.
Nokia N71: Nokia’s first Nseries flip phone. Although the N71 is so old now that I didn’t expect it in the Nokia Flagship Store.
Vertu Phones: Sure, the Vertu line has its own floor, but the handsets look rather…ordinary. They definitely do not look like thousand-dollar phones.
Missing: There were quite a few Nokia phones missing, especially from the Nseries line: the N90, N91, N93, N93i, and L’amour collection models among them.