The Top 8 Best Selling Mobile Phones Of All Time

By Vamien McKalin email: v.mckalin@mobilenapps.com | Jan 28, 2013 09:36 AM EST

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The mobile phone has been around for 66 years, and now, over 73 percent of the world's population owns at least one.

We take a look at the top 8 mobile phones that have managed to thrive and achieve the most success in this burgeoning market.

Nokia 1110

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Topping the list is the Nokia 1110, a device that went on to achieve 160 million units sale in its lifetime. No other handset managed to do the same. The most important thing to note here, is that the Nokia 1110 is not a smartphone. At the moment, no smartphone has managed to come close to the 100 million mark.

Nokia 3210

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In the number 2 position, we have the Nokia 3210. Who remembers this classic handset? It revolutionized the mobile phone industry as being the first ever phone to come with its antenna built in. It came with three games, Snake, Memory, and Rotation. Nokia went on to sell 150 million units, falling behind the popular 1110.

Nokia 2600

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Next up, is the Nokia 2600, one of the first mobile phones to come with a color screen. At the time, phones only had 256 colors and that was awesome. You know what was interesting? This phone had 4MB of internal memory, which was a huge deal back in the day.

Motorola RAZR

Credit: callet

Everyone who is of age should remember the Motorola RAZR; this phone came out as the thinnest mobile phone ever, and slowly it began to rise in popularity to reach a milestone of 130 million units sold. While it was considered as the thinnest, it wasn't exactly the best since the build quality and the software wasn't the best (I had one.) Still, this is Motorola's best selling phone to date. Unfortunately the company put so much focus on designing future phones to look like the RAZR that it slowly fell from grace.

Nokia 1600

Credit: mynokia.ru

With the success of the 1110, Nokia launched the 1600 with over 60,000 colors. That much coloration wasn't visible unless the user was viewing images. However, having that much in a phone with such a small display was great, even though users didn't have much use for it. This baby went on to achieve 130 million sales worldwide, the last device to hit that peak.

Nokia 1208

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Another feature phone, it's a bit surprising we are so far down in the list and not a single smartphone found a way to enter. Anyway, the Nokia 1208 is another device designed for doing basic things, though one of the top features was the ability to download polyphonic ringtones. I remember having a phone like this and nothing felt better than browsing the Internet or WAP as we used to call it. Doing all of that from such a small screen and on a snail like network blew our minds. The Nokia 1208 went on to accomplish 100 million in sales, which is rather an awesome number.

Nokia 6010

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Want a phone that can send text messages, browse the internet via GPRS, send and receive picture messages, play Java games and doesn't have a touchscreen? Then the Nokia 6010 is right up your alley. This phone came at a time when Nokia was king of the mobile world, and smartphones were just for business types. The 6010 is not the best looking mobile phone by today's standard. In fact, it's ugly, but back then this was a pretty good looking and powerful device. Nokia managed to sell 75 million of this bad boy worldwide, but you can't get it now because it has been discontinued.

Apple iPhone 4S

Credit: prlog

The final mobile phone on this list is the Apple iPhone 4S and yes, it's a smartphone finally. iPhone 4S surpassed 60 million units sold, the only smartphone to reach the 60 million peak. Apple changed the world of smartphones in 2007 when it first came to market with the original device. Four years later comes the iPhone 4S to become the top selling iPhone device yet. It's safe to say that Apple deserves this, for the company paved the way for the current smartphone operating systems and devices.

This list is dominated by mainly Nokia smartphones. What a shame it would be if the company with the top selling mobile phones falls by the wayside, never to rise again from the ashes.