Why these sites exist and what you'll find in them.
Between 1999 and 2022, I ran a series of websites covering mobile technology, from the Psion EPOC handhelds of the late 1990s through Nokia's Symbian smartphones, Windows Phone, and eventually cross-platform mobile. At their peak, these sites collectively published thousands of reviews, features, news stories, and opinion pieces each year. All three of the main sites went dormant in 2022.
Over their lifetime, the All About sites reached over 100 million people and were, for many, the doorway to the early smartphone era.
With the sites dormant for a few years, I wanted to preserve the content rather than let it disappear. The articles are a record of over two decades of mobile technology history: the launches, the platform wars, the hardware innovations. Much of it isn't well documented elsewhere.
The flagship. Originally "All About ER6" covering the new generation of smartphones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson, it was renamed All About Symbian in late 2002 as the platform grew. For nearly two decades it was one of the definitive sources for Symbian smartphone coverage: reviews, how-to guides, application roundups, and deep technical features. The site covered everything from the Nokia 7650 to the Nokia 808 PureView, and continued tracking the post-Nokia Symbian ecosystem as it gradually wound down.
Launched when Nokia shifted its mobile platform to Windows Phone in the infamous "burning platform" moment, AAWP applied the same depth of coverage to Microsoft's mobile platforms. Reviews, app roundups, camera comparisons, and platform analysis through Windows Phone 8, Windows 10 Mobile, and the gradual wind-down of Microsoft's mobile ambitions. The site also covered the Surface Duo and broader Microsoft mobile ecosystem.
Launched to provide a cross-platform perspective after the decline of Symbian and Windows Phone. AAM kept the in-depth camera reviews and thorough approach the earlier sites had become famous for, applied across iOS, Android, and the broader smartphone landscape.
Every published article, review, feature, and news story from all three sites is here, complete with original images, comments (via Disqus), and the original site navigation. The archives are static HTML. The original dynamic CMS that powered the sites has been retired, but the content is identical to what was published.
The sites are read-only. You can't post new comments, and some interactive features (search, user accounts) no longer function. But you can browse all the content, follow links between articles, and navigate just as you would have when the sites were live.
These sites were never a one-person operation. Over the years, a great group of writers, contributors, and readers gave them their character.
First and foremost: Steve Litchfield. Steve was there for almost all of the sites' history, but it was in the last six or seven years, when I stepped into a different role, that he was the person who kept it all going. His encyclopaedic knowledge of mobile hardware, his relentless reviewing pace, and his passion for the platforms made the sites what they were. Without Steve, the archives you're browsing would be a fraction of their size and depth.
Ewan Spence brought the madcap, the humorous, and the unexpected. His pieces gave the sites a personality that straight tech coverage never could. He continues to ply his trade with Forbes and covering the Eurovision Song Contest in his own inimitable way. David Gilson was another key voice. And on the N-Gage and gaming side, Tzer2 brought deep expertise to a niche that nobody else was covering properly.
Thanks to the many other authors and contributors over the years who wrote reviews, submitted tips, and kept the content flowing.
But what really made the sites special was the readers. The comments sections, still visible throughout the archives, are full of passionate, knowledgeable, sometimes fiery debate about the devices and platforms we all cared about. That community gave the sites much of their character, and I'm glad those conversations are preserved here too.
There was also a wider community beyond the sites themselves. Many other Symbian and mobile blogs were out there, along with people working in the industry, and there was a real sense of care and collaboration between everyone. That's something that stays with me to this day.
A big thank you to everyone who was part of it. It was a lot of fun.
The "All About" sites grew out of earlier projects dating back to 1999. The archive portal includes preserved snapshots of these precursor sites: epoc.f2s.com (a Psion EPOC resource site on free hosting), epochelp.com, the original All About ER6, Symbian Themes, and spin-off sites covering Nokia's Maemo, MeeGo, and N-Gage platforms. Some of these files come from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, but much of the content on these earlier sites was also available on All About Symbian and All About Mobile.
There were also dedicated WAP and mobile-optimised versions of the sites in the earlier years. The original code for those has been preserved, though they're not included in this archive. By the end, responsive design meant the main sites were fully accessible from mobile devices, making the separate mobile versions redundant.
Beyond the content, it's a fun way to see how the site design evolved over time. From the hand-coded HTML of the f2s era through to the custom CMS that powered the later sites, there are some common design principles running throughout, and a few choices that are very much of their time. The design timeline shows how All About Symbian's look changed across six distinct eras, and the portal page lays out the full site history chronologically.
We were at events and conferences like Symbian Expo, Nokia World, and MWC doing live blogging, side-by-side photo comparisons, and hands-on coverage, at a time when non-traditional media turning up with a laptop and a website was unexpected. This was the turn of the millennium. The line between "proper" press and online publishing barely existed.
We were hosting podcasts before podcasting went mainstream, producing video podcasts when bandwidth constraints meant really thinking about distribution and delivery, and among the early adopters of YouTube for unboxing and hands-on videos. Building community through comments and forums, custom interactive features: these were all things we figured out as we went along, often inventing the format because nobody had done it before.
The mobile-friendly sites were cutting edge too. Delivering a usable reading experience on the devices we were writing about felt essential, and meant solving problems that the rest of the web wouldn't tackle for years.
Many of the patterns we established would be familiar today to influencers and content creators, but at the time it was uncharted territory. It's fun to reflect on how far things have come, and how many of the principles remain the same.
The original sites ran on a custom PHP content management system backed by MySQL databases. These evolved over the years, but when the first version was built it was really before the big blogging platforms like WordPress had come along, and the requirements of a multi-author tech publishing site with structured reviews, app roundups, and media handling meant building something bespoke and critically mobile-friendly was the only practical option at the time.
The custom CMS did come with its constraints, especially in later years. But it was pioneering in its own way, adopting early mobile web technologies and forcing us to really think about the limitations involved. That, along with being at the heart of the early smartphone period and its community, taught me a lot of lessons that I've taken forward into a wider technology and product career.
For the archive, every page was captured as static HTML, media files were preserved, and the server configuration handles URL compatibility so that existing links and bookmarks continue to work. The structured article data (24,000+ items with full metadata) has also been preserved separately.
If you find a broken link or a page that doesn't render correctly, it's likely a gap in the original content rather than an archive error, but I'm interested to hear about it either way. You can reach me at rafeblandford.com.
Historical site snapshots (the pre-2002 sites) are preserved with thanks to the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine. The archive sites use Umami for privacy-respecting analytics. No cookies, no tracking.