The Crazy Nokia Designs That Never Saw the Light of Day
In 1997, Nokia designed a kids’ phone that was shaped like Winnie the Pooh. Some 12 years later, the company dreamed up a phone that could stretch over your wrist and even change its appearance. These concepts never made it into people’s hands, but they are now available for your viewing pleasure at the Nokia Design Archive.
Launching today, the Nokia Design Archive was developed by Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. The online portal hosts about 700 exhibits. The full scope of the archive, however, amounts to 20,000 exhibits, so what is currently available now on the website is “just the tip of the iceberg," says Anna Valtonen, lead researcher on the Nokia Design Archive. Valtonen previously spent 12 years at Nokia, including holding a position as the head of design research and foresight.
Most of the exhibits date from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, when electronics became smaller and smaller, and the internet made mobile computing technology possible. This new era of interpersonal communication ushered in a decade of wild experimentation at Nokia, where designers were encouraged to consider how this new technology could fit into people's lives depending on their age group, interests, and culture. “If you're a teenager on the American East Coast, what do you want? Or if you're a granny in India, what's important to you?” Valtonen says.
The archive contextualizes crowd favorites like “The Brick,” or Neo's “banana phone" as seen in The Matrix, or even the Nokia 5110, where the game Snake first appeared. It also features intriguing concepts that have either fallen into oblivion or remained unseen until now.
Here are some highlights from the collection.
Photograph: NokiaWearable Wrist Device, Unknown Model 1
In the early 2000s, Nokia spent a lot of time experimenting with what wearable technology could look like. One answer came in the form of “medallions” that allowed people to “wear” images of their choosing on their neck or wrist. Nokia released two such versions as part of its Imagewear Series, but the archives suggest there were other models under consideration, like this wearable wrist device, possibly a model for Nokia Medallion II. “Nokia’s move into jewelry was a part of the wider trend to make mobile technology more fashionable and personal by turning it into accessory-like products with different possibilities for customization and personalization,” says Kaisu Savola, a researcher from Aalto University who worked on the archive.
Illustration: NokiaVision 99
In 1997, Nokia took a page from the marketing playbook and started thinking about market segmentation: What kind of phone would a sporty person want? What kind of design would kids find appealing? These questions formed the basis of a 43-page internal presentation called Vision 99, where Nokia designers sketched out concepts for phones wrapped in waterproof molds made of rubber or foam, and devices that were shaped like Winnie the Pooh. “At Nokia, the segmentation approach meant not only that the phones would be marketed to a specific audience, but that ideas of the target consumer were present already in the design phase of the product,” says Savola.
Photograph: NokiaAccess Touch
That same year, designers at Nokia were exploring the idea of a phone that could be used by people of all ages and abilities. Concepts for the “Access Touch” phone included flip-up screens for comfortable viewing angles, removable hearing aids that could slot into parts of the phone, voice recognition features for hands-free use, and protruding keys for people who are blind. According to the researchers, Nokia never ended up releasing a phone that was marketed as “accessible,” though the underlying principles of “universal design” most certainly trickled into other products.
Photograph: NokiaConcept Model, Human Form 1
In 2013, Nokia explored the potential of nanotechnology with a concept model called Human Form 1. The smartphone, which looked more like a sleek remote, came with a touchscreen that allowed users to “feel” the texture of certain images. You could zoom in on photos by bending the device or return to the home page by shaking it (a bit like the movement that works as an “undo” command on the iPhone today). In a video presentation, the company called it “a visionary solution beyond touchscreen and voice communication where technology becomes invisible and intuition takes over.”
Photographs: NokiaWebpad
Many of the concepts envisioned at Nokia never made it to the market, nor were they meant to. Instead, these concepts were dreamed up in workshops specifically developed to spark designers' imaginations, encourage them to think about their audience, and to spur discussions. Some of these ideas, like a holographic orb, or a device with a folding keyboard shaped like butterfly wings, never left the page. Others, like this wearable “webpad” became prototypes that designers would test around the office. “They went far, but [prototypes] make it so much easier to understand,” Valtonen says.
Photograph: NokiaMusic Device, Unknown Model 1
Before the smartphone boom in the 2010s, Nokia, like many other phone companies, experimented with multimedia devices that could perform specific functions, like taking a photo, listening to music, or playing a game. One of those devices was the Nokia Music Player HDR-1, which came with a removable 32-megabyte memory card that could hold up to one hour of music. The player was released in the early 2000s in silver and blue, but the archive suggests that Nokia experimented with other color palettes, as well, like a grey and blue model, and this glamorous red and blue version.
Photograph: NokiaUnknown Model, Nokia Hypercard
On top of niche music players and “fun cameras,” Nokia also experimented with what appears to be a banking device that comes with a flip-up credit card and a touchscreen offering a menu of options. The so-called “Nokia Hypercard” remained a concept.
Photograph: NokiaWhite, Gray, and Black Multimedia Phone, Unknown Model
In 1997, the company released the Nokia 6110 handset. The phone was one of Nokia’s new models that came with an addictive little game called Snake and inspired a slew of mobile phones that doubled as gaming devices. In an attempt to build on Snake’s runaway success, Nokia developed a phone that could double as a handheld gaming console. This resulted in the infamous N-Gage—Nokia's answer to Nintendo's Game Boy Advance. The N-Gage was released in 2003 and, after failing to capture people’s interest, was discontinued in 2006. Still, the Nokia Design Archive showcases a fascinating array of unseen concepts and prototypes from this era, featuring various button configurations and snazzy colorways like metallic orange.
Photograph: NokiaNokia 7700, MX 2
The same year Nokia released the N-Gage, the company also announced a “media device” called Nokia 7700. It was to feature a touchscreen, a stylus pen, and an elongated form meant to mimic that of the N-Gage. It was never released.
Photograph: NokiaBeige and Black Model for an Unknown Device 1
The archive contains many concepts and prototypes of models for unknown devices. This gadget is one of them. It looks like a portable camera with an LCD display, but it could also be a miniature projector, or something altogether different. As Valtonen puts it: “We don't have all the answers.”
