Nokia Design is looking to mess with your mind. They want you, oh humble blog reader who is either A) addicted to the internet to such an extent that you’d kill yourself if Facebook went away, or B) someone in India who has an unhealthy obsession with the Nokia brand because you’ve fooled yourself into believing that the device in your pocket can act as tool to slide you into a better caste, to participate in an experiment to see if you can create the perfect mobile phone to please everyone.
Over the next 8 weeks Nokia’s official blog, Nokia Conversations, will ask readers about how large of a display and which user interface this mythical device should have, the size and shape it will take, what materials will it be made out of, whether it should be powered by Symbian or MeeGo, how many wireless radios must it have inside, how many megapixels should it have, and finally, what will this unicorn be called.
After all this data is collected, Nokia Design will make a 3D render of a device they have in mind. Knowing how Nokia’s internal legal department works, this “new design” is likely going to be something that’s been sitting on a shelf for a few years, a design that was made by an intern who joined Nokia 3 years ago because he thought his awesome idea would change the world, but then left the company because he spent all day making PowerPoint documents instead.
Yes, it’s safe to say I’m a cynic, I’m actually proud of that label, and it’s these sorts of projects that make me feel, think and act in such a manner. It takes Nokia 2 years to make a mobile phone, from concept to product on a shelf. Nokia Design isn’t just a bunch of folks with MacBook Pro laptops, thick framed glasses, sitting on chairs worth more than what you make in a month, yet can be had at IKEA for 30 EUR, it also has teams of anthropologists, trend hunters, and more awesome people than I care to count. They all get together and make devices, and lately they’ve been releasing nothing but duds.
After the E71 have you seen a Nokia that made you go “wow, that’s sexy”, because I haven’t, and I’ve been waiting for over 2 years to see something that does.