I worked at a mobile commerce startup in Helsinki in the late 90s and I remember seeing some of these in the hands of business acquaintances. It just amazes me that Nokia cranked out so many oddball designs and that basically they all disappeared without a trace. I wonder if any of them actually were seriously studied by academics for their UIs.
There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
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Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#92No post body was provided.
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#93I miss the days when you had bonkers phones like this. I agree with most people that life is a little dull with our iPhone clones. It's nice for watching videos (which I don't do too much), and less nice for typing (which I do rather more). The E90 form factor is still my dream phone. If you think the Nokia phones were nuts, you should dig up stuff coming out of Japan 2000-2010, like the Hitachi WOO Ketai H001 (yes,…
We all like crazy designs like these because they are a breeding ground for innovation. However they tend to flop unless one of their innovations proves truly revolutionary.
Early personal computers and even laptops had interesting and varied designs before everyone coalesced around the optimal desktop, tower, and notebook designs.
A big part of the problem is software. If a phone maker puts out a truly unique form factor today, they are stuck in a situation where most existing software was built assuming the user is on a giant rectangle.
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#94Is there a more general framework for understanding when a sudden amount of variation is expected and perhaps rational? The analogy is very loose, but this makes me think a bit of the cambrian explosion, or periods when a sudden environmental shift is followed by a profusion of new species. When a new 'space' is opened, it seems like a range of things can try to fill it, until one strategy becomes dominant, at least…
Glad to see this comment - the Cambrian explosion analogy was the exact one that came to mind for me, and I actually think, as you put it, the same dynamics are in play. Lots of different approaches are taken until it is clear that, after time, one is dominant and the best. I remember when the iPhone first came out the whole "tapping on glass" keyboard was highly controversial, but it soon won out (and, IMO, especial…
My impression is not that swipe typing is the winner, but because of configurability of the keyboard (different language layouts) and the option to use the screen estate for other purposes (e.g. when watching videos). The latter is particularly important, as the screen-to-body ratio is critical in those devices.
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#95I miss the Nokia N900 form factor (although, larger would have been nicer). It combined touch-screen AND a full keyboard.
It also had stylus and a kickstand! It could broadcast in FM!
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#96I've got fond memories of trying to order from the Farnel website with a Nokia 6800 back in 2006ish... I think via wifi. The entire experience was awful and infuriating on a number of levels, but it did actually get on with it. Might have been running Opera as a java app. Thanks for the post - I've been trying to remember what that was and failing to google for a couple of weeks now. Some of the ire and sarcasm seems…
I have fond memories of the WAP internet. In 2001 in Canada it was really expensive to get any kind of data plan, and you might only get 5MB per month. I had a plan with no data at all, but you could use the WAP browser to access a handful of things for free, on the provider's website. It was things like weather, very limited news and movie times. One day I was messing around in there, and a 404 page had a link to google. I bookmarked the link and from that day had unlimited WAP internet access (and google had a built-in gateway to WAPify any web page). My next phone was not a flip phone, had a real (bad browser), and had a prominent web browser button that worked from any other screen. However you could only exit the browser by navigating menus. It also had a tendency to reset in your pocket, which of course turned off the keylock. So at least once a day you'd end up pocket-googling and using up your precious megabytes.
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#97I had the Motorola V70 (the one that "PIVOTED") and I loved it! https://twitter.com/GerryMcBride/status/1591909798488178688
It was my 2nd to last pre-smartphone era phone, the last being the RAZR.
I get that the swiveling piece was unique but I wouldn't put it in the same "bananas" categories as some of the other ones
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#98I had a Samsung Alias for a while, which was a genuinely cool phone. It could flip open either vertically (in the normal RAZR style) or it could be flipped open horizontally.
The keypad had e-ink displays in each key, and if you had it open vertically, it would display a number pad for dialing. If it was open horizontally, you got a full keyboard instead.
I could text faster than all my friends.
I also had a Motorola Hint, which was a neat little device - smaller than your average phone at the time, and almost square. You could slide out a little keyboard.
Keyboard phones were neat. Bring em back I say!
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, which could be really annoying for someone who has a challenge pressing two buttons fast enough to trigger. A hotel I stayed at had touchscreen "requests" for elevators (you put in your floor and it would call a elevator for you) and it was super annoying (trying to get floor 12 would doublebounce on 1 and 2 so you'd often get 11 and 22 before getting 12) until I found a pedestal out of the way that had real bu…
> Yeah, which could be really annoying for someone who has a challenge pressing two buttons fast enough to trigger. Sounds like that can easily be fixed with enter and backspace buttons.
It can be fixed even more easily by using normal elevator buttons.
Re: There was a stretch where phone design went bananas
#100I did some investigation around this. At their peak, Nokia launched 46 models a single year [1]. I believe Apple has launched somewhere The genius of Steve Jobs was in showing that you can have whole company focus on making a brilliant device that works for everyone. I still don't get why companies are so much focused on launching hundreds of different models instead of one and leveraging economies of scale. [1]: htt…
> The genius of Steve Jobs was in showing that you can have whole company focus on making a brilliant device that works for everyone No, it doesn't work for everyone. He showed that there are enough people who can and are willing to pay for a premium device. He choose a niche. Nokia uses a classic price segmentation strategy. Read more here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...
Gotta find myself a niche like that.