Hasta La Ideas

Although it’s no longer in the business of making consumer products, let alone smartphones, there is little doubt that Nokia was once a giant in the design industry. It flooded the mobile market with dozens of phone designs, some of which have reached both fame and infamy. That was just the tip of the iceberg, however, since like any company with decades of history, it has collected quite a pile of concepts, prototypes, and experiments, many of which never saw the light of day.

The newly opened Nokia Design Archive revealed a lot of these old ideas that floated around the Finnish giant’s halls, some of which might have just been too early for their time. Some of those concepts may have seemed odd or even impractical a decade or two ago but are, oddly enough, today’s latest trends. Still, there were plenty of odd concepts and designs coming from Nokia’s vault, and here are 10 of the strangest ones that never made the cut, for better or worse.

Designer: Nokia (via Aalto University’s Nokia Design Archive)

3G Device: Dawn of the Mobile Web

Remember a few years back how the tech world was all hyping up 5G and how it broke down the barriers of communication over the Internet? If so, you can probably imagine all the buzz around 3G in the early 2000s, promising the power of the Web under the fingertips. Of course, the old SMS and GPRS phones of those days were hardly capable of taking advantage of this new technology, so it fell on the likes of Nokia to design a brand new world of mobile devices for it.

The company made a few concepts that put the use of 3G at the forefront and, curiously, many of these ditched the traditional T9 keypad that was still in wide use back in those days. The elongated and egg-shaped forms of these concepts and prototypes are, of course, alien to our modern design tastes and wouldn’t fit most of the Web’s uses today. It’s still interesting that, even as early as then, Nokia was already playing around with all-screen designs that predated even the iPhone.

Human Form Concept: Bend and Twist Like the 80s

As if an all-screen phone wasn’t already outrageous back in those days, Nokia also toyed with the idea of a smartphone that wasn’t made of metal and glass. Or at least not the ones we’re used to even today. As if trying to mimic the human body’s ability to contort, this “Human Form” concept used a flexible display to offer more “intuitive” ways to use a phone.

The device’s squid-like shape might already be too narrow for even scrolling through social media comfortably, but the twisting and bending gestures are hardly intuitive. It also requires even more muscle strength to pull off, which would immediately alienate a lot of users. Thankfully, we’ve moved past that obsession with using purely physical gestures as our brains evolved to consider swiping and pinching to feel almost like second nature.

Foldable Messaging Devices: The TXTing Generation

Social media might be considered the bane of society today, but there was a time when texting was the practice that was frowned upon by grownups. Never mind the almost indecipherable abbreviations and acronyms, the ironically anti-social behavior seemed to isolate teens from their surroundings even as they connect to an even wider network that crosses geographical borders.

Of course, these are exactly the kind of people that Nokia was catering to, so it’s no surprise that it tried to design devices that focused primarily on messaging. Rather than forcing people to type with a limited number of keys, the foldable devices put a full QWERTY keyboard at their disposal. That said, it left very little room for a decent display, so you’re practically left with a pager-like reading experience in exchange.

Fun Camera: Before Action Cams Were Fun

It wasn’t until around the 2010s that smartphone cameras actually started to pose a threat to point-and-click shooters. Before then, people would still prefer actual cameras, no matter how inconvenient they were to take out of your purse or bag. It was certainly no fun, which is probably why Nokia tried to design a standalone camera that made it easier to capture moments, even in low-res images.

The pear-shaped device had a few quirky details that made it feel like a cross between an action cam and a retro camera. For example, there is a display but its use is for checking the camera’s stats. The large hole at the top is actually a viewfinder for eyeballing those shots. The rather colorful designs and whimsical shape of the Fun Camera made it clear that it was targeted at a younger audience, though that activity predated the social video craze that would later take the Internet by storm.

Dual-Screen Phone: When Foldables Were Still a Distant Dream

We might now have foldable phones, but there was a time when few could even imagine having more than just one simple, rectangular screen in their pocket. Not Nokia, of course! It already envisioned the need for two screens even before dual-screen laptops and phones would enter mainstream consciousness.

That said, this dual-screen concept looked more like something designed for media consumption than a regular phone. Its default landscape orientation made it easy to enjoy content and maybe even tap away on a virtual keyboard. Using it as a phone, however, might be less enjoyable, which is probably why it would have never succeeded in an age when people actually used their mobile phones as phones.

Laptop Concepts: Serious Work

Nokia might be best known for smartphones and networking equipment, but it certainly didn’t limit itself to those categories. It explored almost every industry possible that could benefit from its expertise, particularly those that
involved mobile computing. Of course, that meant laptops, and Nokia apparently had a few ideas for those.

Yes, it would actually launch its own line of laptops eventually, but those were more on the conventional side of design. Here we’re seeing laptops with their touchpads above the keyboard, laptops with a second display above the keyboard, and even two-piece laptops. Sounds familiar? There are now laptops available commercially from major PC brands, making you wonder if Nokia would have succeeded in that space too.

Hypercard: Digital Wallet Came Too Soon

You can now use your smartphones these days for anything from paying for groceries to hopping on trains, but there was a time when that kind of digital convenience was pretty inconceivable. Even today, some find it difficult to part with a physical representation of their money, even if it’s just a thin piece of plastic.

Once upon a time, Nokia wanted to meet these people halfway with a Hypercard device that seemingly stored all kinds of cards you’d normally have in your wallet, from money cards to loyalty cards. It was pretty much the digital equivalent of a cardholder but still distinct from a phone. It could give some people a bit of assurance, even if meant doubling the things they had in their pockets.

Aeon: Early Modular Phone Dreams

If there’s one ideal smartphone design that has yet to become a reality, it’s the dream of a truly modular phone. Project Ara, the LG G5, and now the HMD Fusion all have their interpretation of a modular phone, but theirs was definitely not the only one nor the first. Nokia also had its vision, and it was only conceptualized as a “wearable” device.

The Aeon concept device has two unequal parts, both with touchscreens, and both are able to function independently from each other. It would be possible to take the lower part, which could display a T9 keypad or some other touch UI, and put it on a pendant or other wearable accessory. Unsurprisingly, the idea never caught on, and we still dream of that future of ever-expanding phones.

Medallion: Questionable Fashion Sense

Wearables are technically supposed to be more than just smartwatches, but it’s only now that we seem to break out into more categories like smart rings. There’s definitely a lot more potential in this market segment, but few are taking the risks to jump into them, and probably for good reason. If you don’t pull them off properly, you’ll end up with something that’s more tech than wearable anyway.

Nokia’s Medallion concept is one such example. They’re supposed to be small displays you can wear around your neck like a necklace, or on your wrist like, well, a smartwatch. But beyond the novelty of displaying a favorite character or photo, they don’t do much. Even worse is how the concept looks less like fashionable accessories and more like uncomfortable collars. Given Nokia’s other “fashion-oriented” phone designs, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise.

Morph: The Shape-Changing Wearable

One of the more recent concepts that made a buzz on the Web is Morph, the pinnacle of wearable tech and flexible mobile devices. It was practically a phone that you could wrap around your wrist as a wide bracelet, but then also unfold into a large tablet. It was hi-tech, fashionable, and practically improbable.

Even today, we don’t have the technology to implement any of these designs in a satisfying way, as demonstrated by the Huawei tri-fold Mate XT and the bendable Motorola prototype. Perhaps in a decade we’ll look back at this particular design and chuckle at how old-fashioned the idea was, and it’s definitely one of Nokia’s most ambitious and oddest concepts of late. Sadly, we will never see its fruition, at least under the Nokia brand, now that it, too, is just a part of history.

The post The Strangest Nokia Designs: Top 10 Concepts That Never Launched first appeared on Yanko Design.