The story behind Nokia’s new mobiles
dubai — Mobile phone users — specifically, those who got their know-how during the glory days of Nokia — went bananas when the iconic Finnish company announced in February that it would be relaunching the indestructible Nokia 3310.
Sure; the nostalgic handset grabbed headlines everywhere. But the real story was the three other phones Nokia unveiled alongside it: the Nokia 3, Nokia 5 and Nokia 6.
All because they are the first Nokia smartphones to be powered — mercifully and finally — by Google’s Android OS. It’s a signal that the company is ready to jump into the big league; how they would perform in the market is anybody’s guess at the moment.
And in case you missed it, Nokia now isn’t making its own handsets. The job of designing their newest smartphones fell to the hands of HMD Global, a Finnish mobile phone maker that develops devices under the Nokia brand.
Raun Forsyth and Alasdair McPhail, design directors at HMD Global, were the brains behind the Android-powered Nokia phones. They shared a little behind-thescenes peek into how the company developed the devices, keeping in mind, among others, the ‘principles of Scandinavian simplicity and functionality, and staying true to the Nokia design heritage’.
How did the creative process start?
“It all started with a strong team vision. We got together with one goal: to create something mind-blowing. As a newly-established product team, we began by drawing our intimate understanding of Nokia’s brand heritage and defining a solid common vision for what we are heading towards.”
“The goal was to deliver fantastically-durable and smart devices that are at the same time so beautiful you fall in love with them. However, we believe that love develops over time. Whilst others try to trap your attention with shiny, over-the-top designs, we take a more understated approach. Our smartphones will not blind you; they will just keep delighting you as you use them until you end up in love [with them].”
What were the design principles?
“First, you need to get the bones right — a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of what you want to achieve. Phones have such intricate internals that you cannot design the exterior without understanding the functionality of each part. Otherwise, you will affect the performance.”
“Next up was applying Scandinavian simplicity and purity as opposed to complexity — meaning reducing the unnecessary. If you take away what’s not essential from a device, the features that remain are naturally betterquality as there is more attention and space for them. Think about Formula One racing cars: the engine is now part of the chassis, it is all in one piece, reduced and simplified.”
“Then, you have to design with purpose. We started by determining what qualities are most important to us and Nokia users. Metal provides durability but piercing together separate parts to create a shell results in a higher risk of them breaking apart and disrupting structural integrity — not something we were prepared to compromise on. So we invested in a metal unibody; each Nokia phone is carved from a single piece of aluminium, a process that takes 12 hours per unit.”
“Finally, there’s excellence in visual mechanics. People buy on emotion; we can’t help but react to how the look of something makes us feel. That is why, often, beauty overrides logic — consumers are known to choose the aesthetically-pleasing piece over the supercomputer.”
“It’s a hard balancing act to fit performance into a shell designed in isolation, which is why we work from the outset with engineering, making it possible to bundle functionality and usability with a sleek and beautiful design.”
The new Nokia 3, 5 and 6 — as well as the 3310 — will be available in the GCC in June. And for those who think Nokia and HMD Global aren’t still serious about what they’re doing, let’s not forget the rumoured Nokia 7, 8 and 9 — the last of which is said to have a dual camera and a whopping 8GB of RAM.