The Best Selling Nokia Phones Ever

That's it. When Nokia introduces its first Windows Phone handsets later this year, Nokia U.S. president Chris Weber told All Things D, it's going to pack up shop with its Symbian and Series 40 phones and devote its fortunes in the U.S. to Windows Phone.

The decision comes after more than a decade of Nokia phones being sold in the U.S. Nokia had its American heyday in the middle of the last decade, between about 2002-2005, when it seemed like everyone owned either a Nokia bar phone or a Motorola flip.

Symbian, the world's most popular smartphone OS, never made a big splash here. In 2004 a bunch of popular phones came out with Symbian Series 60, including the Nokia 3650, 6620 and 7610. But they never grabbed popular attention as smartphones, and smartphones took off just as Nokia's ability to get its phones supported by U.S. carriers faded.

Truly great Nokia smartphones like the N95 and E71 became cult classics, with their fame spread by word of mouth rather than by carrier marketing, and their prices were kept high due to a lack of subsidies.

Even as Nokia declined towards single-digit market share here in the States, it had the occasional hit. The 5310 music phone for T-Mobile was an excellent example of what Nokia did well: it was slim and well built, with excellent hardware and call quality.

Nokia has the opportunity to reinvent itself with Windows Phone. The rumors about "Sea Ray," Nokia's first Windows Phone device, make it look like a solid, good-looking phone using an OS that's already popular with US carriers. Nokia could rise again.

Click on the slideshow above for some of Nokia's most popular U.S. phones.

1. Nokia 5190/6190

The extremely similar-looking Nokia 5190 and 6190 were the phones everyone on AT&T had for several years. These phones were popular enough that a massive aftermarket for faceplates developed, so users could dress up their dull gray 5190s and 6190s with everything from flowered bodies to Hello Kitty-themed apparel.

2. Nokia 1100

The inexpensive Nokia 1100 was released on some prepaid carriers here in the U.S., but it's also one of the world's best-selling phones. According to a Reuters report cited by Wikipedia, the 1100 sold a staggering 250 million units between 2003 and 2007. Reuters said that at the time, other companies couldn't compete in low-end phones, but by now a range of Chinese rivals such as Huawei and ZTE have popped up.

3. Nokia 6620

One of the few successful, mainstream Symbian phones in the U.S., the 6620 was a hit on AT&T and Cingular in 2004. Many people didn't even know that this was a smartphone, which was one of Symbian's problems. But I gave it an Editor's Choice, citing its high-speed EDGE data network, great music-phone capability, and PDA functions.

4. Nokia 6236i

Nokia used to make a range of feature phones for Verizon Wireless, and devices like the 6236i were known for solid reception and good call quality. A messy fight with Qualcomm led to Nokia quitting the CDMA business, then putting its name on rebranded Korean handsets. Nokia's reputation and market share suffered.

5. Nokia Crazy Phones

Perhaps untethered from the need to actually sell any phones, Nokia has spun out some really wild designs in its time. Here we have the successful 3650, an early Symbian phone for AT&T; the 6820, a great little messaging phone with a split keypad; the 7280 "lipstick phone," where you had to do all data entry with the little wheel; and the 7705 Twist for Verizon, which pivoted around a hole in the body.

6. Nokia N95

"The future called, and it left its cell phone behind." The Nokia N95 was an absolute revelation in 2007. I said, "It's the first 5-megapixel cameraphone to hit U.S. shores, the first decent camcorder-phone, the best music phone I've seen yet, and the only Symbian smartphone I've used that feels really, really fast. As if that wasn't enough, it also shoots video that's good enough to burn to DVDs. But wait, there's more. The phone's GPS mapping is gorgeous, its Web browser sublime, and its 3D games will knock your socks off. It plays sweet music, too, with a Napster or Rhapsody subscription. Oh, and it also makes phone calls." But the N95 was never picked up or subsidized by a US carrier.

7. Nokia E71

The best non-BlackBerry QWERTY phone ever, the E71 was a beautiful, elegant business smartphone that radiated executive cool. I made it my personal phone for a while. But the E71 took 11 months to make it to AT&T, another phone sunk by Nokia's lousy relationships with U.S. wireless carriers.

8. Nokia 5310 XpressMusic

Nokia's past few years in the U.S. haven't been all failure. When I switched to T-Mobile in 2008, I bought a Nokia 5310 because it was a beautiful, well-built, super-slim feature phone with great call quality. Nokia has always been famous for well-built devices, and the 5310 sold well.

9. Nokia Astound (T-Mobile)

Nokia marked Symbian as doomed in February, but that hasn't stopped the company from releasing Symbian phones. Its most recent U.S. carrier model is the Astound, which came in at a great price for an 8-megapixel cameraphone: only $79 with contract. But it's hard to recommend a phone that's running an OS which its manufacturer has turned away from.