My Favourite Nokia: Simon Waller
Zayo Europe's Simon Waller reflects on his beloved Nokia 8210 - the world's smallest phone that proved technology's greatest power is enabling human connection.
Simon Waller, Director of Carrier and Reseller at Zayo Europe, shares his story with the Nokia 8210—a device that defined an era of elegant simplicity and holds a deeply personal place in his heart.
Towards the end of the '90s, the most exciting thing about a mobile phone was how incredibly small it could be. This was the vibrant era of minidisc players and early digital cameras, still a few years before the iPod and the iPhone revolutionised our pockets. In that world, smaller was undeniably better. And nothing epitomised that better than my blue Nokia 8210.
Announced in the autumn of 1999, the 8210 was an engineering marvel. It held the title of the world's smallest and lightest mobile phone at the time, weighing just 79 grams. Designed as a beautiful device without a protruding antenna, it slipped effortlessly into the front pocket of my jeans on a night out.
It is a misnomer today that we still call the bulky devices in our pockets "phones." In reality, they are "everything devices" that control us far more than we control them. My 8210, however, was just a phone - and it was perfect at being exactly that. It didn't bother me with notifications from apps I rarely use. It didn't send me breaking news updates or show me unread work emails on a Sunday. It didn't track my steps or know my exact GPS coordinates. It simply let me make calls and send SMS text messages of up to 160 characters, and its battery lasted longer than most of the relationships I had at the time.
Speaking of relationships, I was in a career transition period, soon to be issued a company BlackBerry that would immediately demand all my attention. But before that corporate leash arrived, my 8210 held a special place in my heart for one very important reason: I used its illuminated green keypad to send the very first text message to the woman who is now my wife.
Tragically, my beloved blue 8210 was stolen from my coat pocket at a pub one evening in the run-up to the Millennium. I don't think I've ever really gotten over the loss.
As I lead the wholesale business at Zayo Europe in today's complex telecom industry, I often reflect on that little blue device. We build incredibly advanced networks today, but the 8210 remains the best piece of tech I've ever owned. It proved to me early on that, despite all the bells, whistles, and features we invent, the greatest thing a piece of technology can ever create is the ability to create a simple human connection.
Simon Waller is Director of Carrier and Reseller, Europe at Zayo Europe. Connect with Simon on LinkedIn.
About Zayo Europe
Zayo Europe empowers many of the continent's largest and most innovative companies to meet the ever-increasing demands for bandwidth, security and reliability. It connects more than 600 data centres with a future-ready network spanning over 2.7m fibre kilometres and eight subsea systems. Operating across thirteen countries and connecting 47 markets, Zayo Europe delivers the infrastructure that powers Europe's digital economy. Its tailored connectivity solutions enable telecom service providers, cloud platforms, data centres, system integrators and enterprises to deliver exceptional performance from core to cloud to edge.
