Nokia prototypes that show the might of the brand

Mobile phones today are considered a family camera, a personal utility tool, or just a place to get some information from the real world. People nowadays are taking them for granted. However, for me, mobile phones are something I grew up with and saw them changing. I always imagined what the next step would be with each upcoming model. I would usually be right, but sometimes I would be surprised by what the possibilities were. Although I used other brands like Alcatel, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia was the one that brought the future to Croatia the quickest.

My biggest wish was to get inside some office full of Nokia prototypes and just study them, their possibilities and the ideas inside the minds of engineers. I never had that chance, but Dimitrios Vlachos did. This dude was playing with some really cool Nokia prototypes, and now he managed to get an email full of images of Nokia prototypes.

There is an image of the Nokia Atlantis, or the phone that was developed along with the Nokia N8. I am not sure I have ever heard of or covered this model and even checked on our Nokiamob.me site to be sure since it is a bit older domain :).

There are also photos of the gorgeous Nokia N950 with that super clicky qwerty keyboard that would make such an appealing sound while opening it.

Dimitrios showed also Nokia Columbus and Nokia N8 prototypes where the camera stand was being included. While having that would be super useful, I’m glad it didn’t come with a stand since that would ruin the looks of the aluminium body.

There are some devices in the photo collection that I still want to see. Nokia Moonraker should have been the first Nokia smartwatch intended to follow Nokia Mclaren. It had a neat square body and a neat UI that could be controlled by hovering over the glass.

I loved the Nokia phones when Symbian was ruling the world since it gave us some bold design. Nokia has not been shy about its experimental design, and some phones, such as the Nokia 7280, have been announced. However, Nokia HDR-17 never did, and by looking at it you probably know why. But it sure does look interesting. Man, phones used to be fun back then.

Nokia was also trying to make a smarter and faster OS for its feature phones and Meltemi was supposed to be just that. I remember that the plan was to have OS that would start up in just a second and support apps. Nokia developed a few working devices that were almost ready for the market, but the whole project got cancelled as well as many others just before the Burning memo was announced.

The one I wanted to see was a windows phone Nokia RX-100 with a full physical qwerty keyboard and touch screen above it. This phone would have been a nice combo but having a larger screen that can also serve as a keyboard and then miraculously become a large screen for consuming videos was the superior idea that shaped the devices of the future.

Whoever sent photos of Nokia prototypes to Dimitrios has my utter respect! Check out the Twitter thread below.

[Thread/Exclusive] This is your first look to a GRAND collection of Nokia unseen, unreleased prototypes! Brace yourself, cause this is gonna be HUGE! Let’s start right away:

— Dimitrios Vlachos (@ileios) April 11, 2022

Cheers Dimitrios for the tip 😉