Today, if you pick up an old N8-00 and try to log into Facebook Messenger, you’ll get: “Login failed. This version of Facebook is no longer supported. Please update the app.” There is no update.

The N8 sits in a drawer. Its 12-megapixel camera still works. Its xenon flash still fires. But the “Facebook Messenger” icon—if you hacked one onto the screen—is just a gravestone with a chat bubble.

This is a from the early 2010s. Here is the story of “Facebook Messenger for Nokia N8-00.” The Premise (2010–2011) The Nokia N8-00 was a masterpiece of hardware trapped in a software crisis. It ran Symbian^3 (later Belle). In 2011, Facebook had a massive mobile user base, but “Facebook Messenger” as a standalone app didn’t really exist for most phones.