The Crazy Nokia Designs That Never Saw the Light of Day [Wired]
The Crazy Nokia Designs That Never Saw the Light of Day [Wired]
They thought about making a Switch in 2004 ...
https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_eabfd363-1d3d-4ba0-8604-7df4f05376c7/
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Nice find!
This creepy-ass liminal space mock-up of how one of their stores might look...
That one is even more goatse looking than the N-Gage
Nokia was cool when phones were fun.
I especially like the alien design.
Nokia was the Casio of mobile phones. Sad it couldn't keep up with the smartphone era.
They chose windows os over android. It was their downfall. The amazingly designed phones we could have had if they would have used Android instead... I miss my old Nokia phones, all of them but especially the 3310.
Windows OS was the better OS as the time, ran great on low spec hardware, and the tile system and integration of apps was a a lot better than anything Android or iOS has to offer at the time. The downfall was hardly any apps, changing the OS so much every update that the people that were developing left the eco-system because they where fed up of having to change their apps again, and hardly any first party apps. The promise that you could run Android apps on your Windows phone device was never delivered. Also Steve doubling down that he was too busy to use apps so why would you want them on your phone thing.
I still love my Lumia and turn in on from time to time
Ah, replaceable batteries...
Honestly, I kept my Nokia going until I got a Fairphone - purely to be able to replace the battery.
It was great when visiting places they just asked me to install some shitty app (ie to view a restaurant menu, etc.) I'd just show them the Nokia and they'd have to treat me ”properly”
Ok, but that webpad genuinely seems way ahead of it's time. I want a webpad, and I'm 1000000% sure it's software is so out of date it would be like running windows 3.1 today.
Still though. How awesome does the webpad look?
Nokia were doing insanely awesome things with their hardware, beyond basically building phones which were impervious to standard human idiocy (hi, I am an average human idiot).
The one in the thumbnail looks like it became the N-Gage taco phone.
Direct Link to the archive: https://nokiadesignarchive.aalto.fi/
Anddd now we have boring slab design, thanks Steve Apple.
But there are tries to make flip phones again with bendy screens - too fragile I think.
The biggest problem with that is sadly the most functional design also happens to be the most boring.
Nokia were crazy back in the day but I think people may remember them a bit too fondly. I remember how whenever there was some new tech or idea they would absolutely trickle them out just to try and squeeze as much money out of you as possible. If there were two new pieces of tech they’d release two phones, with each of them having one of the new pieces of tech. Back in those days they just refused to make the absolute best phone possible. That’s one of the biggest changes that came from the iPhone.
You not think it could've been a cost saving measure too though and that putting the two new pieces of tech in one phone would've made it too expensive for anyone to buy
As a Nokia Mobile Phones employee in the mid 2000s, I can confirm this was indeed the case. The US wouldn't pay over $100 for a handset, and Nokia was already losing money on hardware in the phone sale to have it subsidized by network providers. Nokia wanted to add tech and capability, but the high end stuff didn't sell at a profit and carriers wouldn't sell phones that were more expensive than their customers would pay. Apple was an exception due to marketing as "premium".
They released a crude version of the model in the thumbnail. It was the 5510.
I had one in high school. The design was kinda gimmicky but the phone had good features for its time. it had an FM radio receiver, and I remember you could even transfer MP3 files onto it, although it was a hassle to do so.
The beat feature was the "0" button being in the corner of the device, and it would dial 000 several times per week while in my pocket. There was no way to lock the keypad.
That one seems like it would be easy to remake with current day components. Keep the display the same to extend battery life, give it smarter internals and slimmer design. That could be the work phone, the texting phone, the going hiking phone, the daily driver that has several days of battery life.
But the more I think about it, a Bluetooth keyboard paired with a normal smartphone would not need its own phone plan and would provide the physical buttons for typing. It just won't be as cool as that thing.
Paywall, so I can't see the others, but the one on the thumbnail isn't that different to the N-Gage
Thanks, was just going to post this. I've added the non-paywall link to the post.
Nokia Jaws was the best.
I wish Nokia was still a big player in the phone business. My favourite (and most unique) phones were Nokia:
N95 - still looks gorgeous and classy and the "slide both ways" design blew my mind at the time. If they would release a new version I would probably buy it.
N-Gage - it was a cool and gimmicky phone, I admit it, only bought it for playing games, but loved how weird it was.
Lumia 920 - I loved windows phones, actually this was my second one and for me it was the best I could wish for. It had great camera, it was fast and looked super cool compared to the android competitors at the time. A shame the era of windows phones didn't last long.
The first phone I bought myself (I had others before, but they where hand-me-downs) was the N900, which should have been the next generation of smartphones/devices. But because of Microsoft and Stephen Elop it wasn't.
Those look like real life windows media player skins from the early 2000s.
I miss my Lumia 820. The UI was so smooth and the free music app in it was amazing for my needs. Sadly it ended before windows phone OS. Now I’ve been using a dumbphone (Nokia too) for 7 years.
Thank you for the unpaywalled link.
That feature photo device is a text-er’s dream. You could probably get some serious speed out of it.
I owned the N-Gage and the 5510. I probably would have bought this.
I miss my Nokias. I was rocking a N810 with bluetooth internet sharing to my flip phone when the IPhone came out. It was so much better in every way, especially being able to use the actual www. Same with window phones. we were rocking the full internet and top notch cameras for a decade before iphone finally upped their game.
I tried using the Leaf for a couple weeks. It was interesting.
