What a mess. The graph nodes slowly crawl around, as if to ensure that when you click you won't hit the thing you meant. Feels like something built in Flash during Nokia's heady days. (Unintentional irony? Nokia was known as a company with lots of Flash concepts and little software product execution.)
But the content seems really interesting. These are internal prototypes and documents from Nokia's archive, now released for the first time. I wish there was a way to browse them in chronological order without all this janky graph visualization nonsense.
There's a link in the corner that takes you to the actual archive repository:
I don't suppose you managed to grab it before we hugged it? I guess it will recover and I'll check back, but if you happened to have grabbed it locally I'd love to dig through it today :) (je @ h4x.club if you're able - thank you!:)
The UI for this does seem a bit "Baby's first force-directed graph". It's quite hard to use for navigation - if it sprang to life on load but then stayed static (other than hover highlighting) I think that would be much better.
I came across something interesting titled "Apple iPhone was launched, presentation (2007-12-31)"[0].
It mentions Nokia N800 and implicitly implies a lineage of devices (N770 > N800 > N810 > N900 > N9).
Sometimes I wonder what Nokia might have been like in a timeline without Jobs and Ballmer.
> Leverage N800 with its touch screen - it competes nearly in the same arena
It’s very telling that someone at Nokia thought it’s basically like the iPhone. In fact the N800 was a thick plastic chunk with no cellular, a resistive touchscreen, and a stylus-driven GTK+ user interface. Its most popular software feature among its userbase seemed to be that you can open XTerm.
They did eventually make an iPhone competitor on this same Linux platform (the N9), but it took five years. “Competes nearly in the same arena” indeed — in the same sense that my 8-year-old daughter competes in Simone Biles’s arena because she also likes jumping and takes some gym classes.
It looked like Nokia felt shaken by the iPhone and had the right mindset at the time, but their actions didn't match what was presented, the world would have been different indeed if Nokia had stepped up their game in this time.
Hm, for a site specialized in Nokia phones, it sure has a lot of "unknown models". I assume those are design mockups or prototypes of phones that didn't make it to mass production? At least this N-Gage lookalike https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_e3183882-13b3-48a0-a5... clearly has a dummy screen...
I visited a lunch spot popular with Nokia R&D employees. It was extremely common for people to have a prototype phone in a fabric bag at the lunch table, so you couldn't see what they were putting to the test of daily use. Lots of very funky phones were glimpsed, only few of them later became commercial products with definite model numbers.
I really wish the old Nokia was still around but without the cruft of their internal politics.
Something that Nokia was slow to get is also the appeal of the App Store / Play Store as a way of downloading apps easily which was always a problem in the older mobile operating systems.
This is in relation to a concept of phone "body" combined with a replacable faceplate which would expose different functionality (additional buttons, slide-out keyboard). One year later they introduced "Xpress-on" covers, which seem to boil down to having different colors. A bit more mundane.
There is some really interesting media in there, I'm not a huge fan of how it's surfaced with this network visualization tbh - the small viewport version you get on mobile or when shrinking the window down is actually nicer imo, you can just flip through the individual entries
To me it's a very confusing website, that's also a stuttery mess(Chrome, Win10, Ryzen 4000 6 core). I would much prefer the web page styles of the 90's with just hyperlinks and pictures instead of these fancy orbital sci-fi neural net styles so that some fron-end designers can flex their skills. It looks cool but the UX is bad.
Is this the future of European tech? Online museums to show digital tourists our glorious long gone tech past similar to our IRL museums? The irony is not lost on me.
They were being thrown away/deleted so some researches from the university decided to save them. I much prefer this to losing this information/history fully.
That's not it. Those had roll wheels or something and no touch screens.
I have seen picture of the prototype somewhere. It was square blue prototype with big screen with shape like iPhone. It might not be in the design archive at all because it was R&D prototype.
What a mess. The graph nodes slowly crawl around, as if to ensure that when you click you won't hit the thing you meant. Feels like something built in Flash during Nokia's heady days. (Unintentional irony? Nokia was known as a company with lots of Flash concepts and little software product execution.)
But the content seems really interesting. These are internal prototypes and documents from Nokia's archive, now released for the first time. I wish there was a way to browse them in chronological order without all this janky graph visualization nonsense.
There's a link in the corner that takes you to the actual archive repository:
https://repo.aalto.fi/index.php?name=SO_b66a9391-dcf8-4399-8...
This seems like it might be a less brain-melting way to browse the content.
I don't suppose you managed to grab it before we hugged it? I guess it will recover and I'll check back, but if you happened to have grabbed it locally I'd love to dig through it today :) (je @ h4x.club if you're able - thank you!:)
I agree the usability is a nightmare
What a mess of a webpage. Probably there is interesting content there but the presentation made me close it down immediatley.
I think this is a traditional interface to the same archive:
https://repo.aalto.fi/index.php?name=SO_b66a9391-dcf8-4399-8...
Yeah, I don't understand what's going on.
I was curious, but that mess of a webpage made me close it right away.
The UI for this does seem a bit "Baby's first force-directed graph". It's quite hard to use for navigation - if it sprang to life on load but then stayed static (other than hover highlighting) I think that would be much better.
No mention of my fav Nokia of all time, the N9; also no mention of MeeGo and Maemo
I came across something interesting titled "Apple iPhone was launched, presentation (2007-12-31)"[0]. It mentions Nokia N800 and implicitly implies a lineage of devices (N770 > N800 > N810 > N900 > N9). Sometimes I wonder what Nokia might have been like in a timeline without Jobs and Ballmer.
> Leverage N800 with its touch screen - it competes nearly in the same arena
[0]: https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_926740c7-5165-439a-a0...
I had the N770, the N800 and also the N900.
It’s very telling that someone at Nokia thought it’s basically like the iPhone. In fact the N800 was a thick plastic chunk with no cellular, a resistive touchscreen, and a stylus-driven GTK+ user interface. Its most popular software feature among its userbase seemed to be that you can open XTerm.
They did eventually make an iPhone competitor on this same Linux platform (the N9), but it took five years. “Competes nearly in the same arena” indeed — in the same sense that my 8-year-old daughter competes in Simone Biles’s arena because she also likes jumping and takes some gym classes.
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It looked like Nokia felt shaken by the iPhone and had the right mindset at the time, but their actions didn't match what was presented, the world would have been different indeed if Nokia had stepped up their game in this time.
Don't forget Elop! He hitched Nokia's wagon to Microsoft's horses and then rode it straight off a cliff.
Anyone remember the Morph concept?
https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_35687268-3fde-4493-a0...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX-gTobCJHs
Blew me away back then, but forgot the name. This archive helped to recover the bits in my head. Thank you!
Hm, for a site specialized in Nokia phones, it sure has a lot of "unknown models". I assume those are design mockups or prototypes of phones that didn't make it to mass production? At least this N-Gage lookalike https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_e3183882-13b3-48a0-a5... clearly has a dummy screen...
I visited a lunch spot popular with Nokia R&D employees. It was extremely common for people to have a prototype phone in a fabric bag at the lunch table, so you couldn't see what they were putting to the test of daily use. Lots of very funky phones were glimpsed, only few of them later became commercial products with definite model numbers.
It's an internal Nokia design archive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42723034 So there are a lot of internal designs and prototypes
I really wish the old Nokia was still around but without the cruft of their internal politics.
Something that Nokia was slow to get is also the appeal of the App Store / Play Store as a way of downloading apps easily which was always a problem in the older mobile operating systems.
"My First Nokia" designs were funny in this presentation: https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_47c69f41-6009-4520-9e...
Impressive! More companies should think like that.
This is in relation to a concept of phone "body" combined with a replacable faceplate which would expose different functionality (additional buttons, slide-out keyboard). One year later they introduced "Xpress-on" covers, which seem to boil down to having different colors. A bit more mundane.
https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_ebb0df1b-4db3-4b3c-ad...
Is this a Nokia Watch or rather a Nokia Cuff?
They had both! This one looks like a tamer variant of their cuff design. The cuff that got more attention was called Morph.
I wonder if the software empowering this data is an open source project?
I just want to know how it was made. It looks like the entire presentation is encapsulated inside of a "canvas" tag.
Also looks like, Nokia worked on this archive intensively starting 2023. Seems like a whole retrospective project. Amazingly inspiring.
There is some really interesting media in there, I'm not a huge fan of how it's surfaced with this network visualization tbh - the small viewport version you get on mobile or when shrinking the window down is actually nicer imo, you can just flip through the individual entries
Guys, what are we doing here?
To me it's a very confusing website, that's also a stuttery mess(Chrome, Win10, Ryzen 4000 6 core). I would much prefer the web page styles of the 90's with just hyperlinks and pictures instead of these fancy orbital sci-fi neural net styles so that some fron-end designers can flex their skills. It looks cool but the UX is bad.
Is this the future of European tech? Online museums to show digital tourists our glorious long gone tech past similar to our IRL museums? The irony is not lost on me.
Here: https://repo.aalto.fi/index.php?name=SO_d5d11763-74a5-40a7-a...
This page is just front end to Aalto repository.
Thanks
They were being thrown away/deleted so some researches from the university decided to save them. I much prefer this to losing this information/history fully.
>I much prefer this to losing this information/history fully.
Edit: Fair enough but I Still maintain my option on the site's poor design.
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I feel genuinely stupid trying to use a website like this.
Here you go the 90's style web page with folder structure :
https://repo.aalto.fi/index.php?name=SO_b66a9391-dcf8-4399-8...
Can anyone find the Nokia touch screen prototype that came 7 years before iPhone around 2000 but was rejected by management.
This is probably the one you mean, the oval-shaped "3G concept" touchscreen device from 1999-2000:
https://nokiadesignarchive.aalto.fi/index.html?node=C0001
You can hover over the "related entries" links to view the images.
That's not it. Those had roll wheels or something and no touch screens.
I have seen picture of the prototype somewhere. It was square blue prototype with big screen with shape like iPhone. It might not be in the design archive at all because it was R&D prototype.
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Found a sketch here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nokia/comments/vf8k58/nokia_history...
Can't find it from this archive, but the concept appears on this PDF
https://www.aalto.fi/sites/default/files/2020-11/Haikio2.pdf
"Pocket office"
"Phone, computer, television, video, all are becoming one"
http://twitpic.com/btc934 "Taskuterminaali 2002", the concept is from 1996 envisioning what would be released in 2002.
I guess the technology components were not yet on that level by then.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Nokia/comments/vf8k58/comment/m7gor...
"low power" has zero hits. I guess low power is implied.
This archive more about the aesthetics design, not technical stuffs.
Needs an imgur with 800 photos.
The interface is a mess, but the data is phenomenal.
RIP back button
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