E71 — Download Facebook Application For Nokia

You didn’t browse Facebook on an E71. You app’d it. Searching for "download facebook application for nokia e71" today leads you down a rabbit hole of dead links and malware-ridden archive sites. But back then, there were three main routes:

Nokia had its own app store before Apple made it cool. It was clunky, slow, and required a Nokia account, but it was the safest bet. The Facebook app here was roughly 500KB. Yes, kilobytes .

Let’s take a trip back to the age of Symbian S60v3 and see why that search query was the gateway to mobile social networking. In 2009, the iPhone was still finding its footing. Android was a weird green robot. If you wanted a professional phone with a real keyboard, you bought the E71. It was lightning fast for emails, had a battery that lasted a week, and could survive a drop off a desk onto concrete. download facebook application for nokia e71

The E71 was the last great keyboard phone, and its Facebook app was the last time the platform felt like a utility rather than a surveillance tool. You used it to check in, update your status (with a character limit), and then put the phone back in your pocket for three days without charging it.

But it had one flaw: the default web browser was terrible. Loading the full facebook.com over 3G (or worse, EDGE) took two minutes, drained your data plan, and required the zooming precision of a brain surgeon. You didn’t browse Facebook on an E71

You’d then spend an hour searching for "Nokia E71 Facebook app certificate expired" only to realize you had to manually change your phone’s date back to 2010 to trick the SSL certificate into working.

But for a solid three years, the burning question on every business traveler’s lips wasn’t “What’s the battery life?” but rather, But back then, there were three main routes:

Facebook actually ran a mobile site ( m.facebook.com ) that offered an app download link. If you visited that page on the E71’s WebKit browser, it would detect your Symbian OS and serve you a .sis or .sisx file.