Nokia floats out a collection of cool concepts Concept phone designs sometimes materialise into real products, so although Nokia's latest line-up of maybes seem unlikely, we can keep our fingers crossed eh? Last month we saw a few concept designs for Windows Phone 7 mobiles. In response, Nokia has put out five of its favourite mobile designs that will probably remain …
The folding phone... errrr, well it looks like a great way to show off flexible and transparent electronic components if they are ever invented, but that's about it...
The weeble phone on the other hand looks kind of fun. Pity it's bound to be crippled with an MS operating system which means it will slowly raise off the desk when a call comes in then topple over and land flat on its face!
Re. "Looks great if ever X is invented" Yes, that's what a "concept" often is.
"... gauge customer reaction to new and radical designs which may or may not have a chance of being produced."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_car
I guess all these car designers are just wasting time:
http://www.google.com/images?q=electric car concept
This reminds me of Apple in the mid-nineties: full of ideas, but none of them had any chance of becoming a reality.
Frankly, these ridiculous designs are a sign of designers run amok. There's absolutely nothing here that would make my life, and by extension everyone else's, more comfortable.
Also the comments nicely show why it's a bad idea to ask customers for their input. All of the replies were in the 'cool, I want it' segment, yet no one seems to have any inkling of the practicalities involved.
What they need to do is get back to the basics of what a phone is supposed to do.
If I were cynical, I might call this a desperate attempt to remain relevant after the lukewarm response to getting into bed with Microsoft.
"Hey, we're becoming irrelevant - raid the concept cupboard! A few hastily-rendered CG images of impossible products should do the trick!"
If I were cynical.
No-brainer is the breathalyser app for the mobile smellephone. Should also have a mode that tells you how many mints is enough to disguise the odour.
Wait, are you supposed to have two people with these phones and they can smell each other?
And you think the -other- concept phone is the kinky one?
These had better be... waterproof?
Nokia hardware has generally been pretty good but they tend to throw out ridiculous concepts that are perhaps a decade away from any chance of being a real product. Folding displays are around but not to the level that Nokia would need to make a real product from these concepts. If I was a shareholder I would really love to see how much money is wasted on this pointless crap.
Speaking of pointless crap, why the hell did they bother with the E7? It's an N8 with a keyboard and all the problems Symbian brings to a touchscreen and all the niggles (menus inside menus with more menus) that made me and many others finally give up on Nokia.
Some of them.
It's funny though, reading some of the comments (especially on the more outrageous designs on this page
http://blogs.nokia.com/nseries/2011/03/03/the-word%E2%80%99s-best-nokia-concept-phones/ )
It would appear that some people have no 'concept' of what the word 'concept' means.
Some of the tech in these concepts is outstanding, like the long, thin, bendy 888, but to say that it's even 10 years away is a massive understatement.
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These concepts, certainly the kinect concept phone, have been around for a looong while, at least a year or more.[1]
Presumably with no real product to share for another 12 months Nokia are instead raiding the Nokia Labs archive and recycling old concepts to keep themselves in the news? Seems to be working...
1. http://designno.com/1272/Kinetic-Cellphone-Concept-for-Nokia/
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