

Nokia’s Visionary Wants to Out-Design Apple - Brajeshwar
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/09/nokias-visionary-wants-to-out-design-apple/

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jpxxx
This article is mostly counting angels on pins given that Nokia has months and
not years left, but their Lumia hardware designs really are excellent.

They're beautifully tapered, the colors are distinctive, and the feel in the
hand is lovely. I wasn't delighted with the sicky Pentile displays they used
for the first run, but the new IPS displays should put that to bed. They're
strongly reminiscent of the 2nd Generation iPod Nano, one of the most
fantastic pieces of Apple design.

Despite all of Nokia's profound failures in the last few years, they found a
distinctive and appealing design for their "flagship" phones that didn't
mindlessly ape the market leader and they should be commended.

~~~
kmfrk
If you want to get really depressed, read Gizmodo's (or Engadget's) review of
their Meego(?) phone that was never sold because of the MS acquisition.

The review basically said that someone had finally created the perfect
competitor to the iPhone. And it was never released. :(

~~~
tjpick
I got the N9 here in New Zealand a couple of months ago. It is absolutely
brilliant.

By absolutely brilliant, I mean $200 cheaper than the Lumia 800 (which I also
got for my wife); A mile better than the crappy samsung gio I previously had;
beautiful hardware design; very hand front facing camera and auto adjusts
screen brightness to ambient light; very good account management/integration.

The thing that lets it down is app availability.

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darklajid
I like the look of it and I'd love to have a decent smartphone with a great
camera for my wife (no iPhone). My nagging inner nay-sayer is probably just
the geek that bought into Maemo (and still wears the shirts).

That said and out of the way: Isn't Microsoft dictating quite a bit about the
design features of Win7/Win8 phones? Put differently, is there enough room for
design (as in, artistic, for simplicity distinguished from technical advance
in this question) innovation?

The OS is outside of their control I assume. The basic form factor is a given,
buttons etc. predefined. What, ignoring the tech specs and build quality, are
the design features?

Or am I just misreading design over and over again as 'make it beautiful'
instead of 'engineer it in a way that it works well'?

~~~
dmix
You're correct in that Nokia's limitation of design is in the hardware. The
vast majority of the interaction is the software.

That leaves primary the touchscreen, shape of the phone and maybe a button.
Also, the camera. I'd say thats about ~20% of the experience of using the
phone, likely less.

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atirip
First rule of out-designing Apple is you do not talk about out-designing
Apple.

~~~
sp332
I don't think the designer said that. The author asked him some specific
questions about Apple, but almost all of the Apple-oriented content of the
article was from the author, not the designer.

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iscrewyou
Looks different and something I would want to grab and use. But honestly,
Windows Phone layout is just boring. After I used it for a few times, I
wouldn't want to pick it back up.

~~~
potatolicious
Not a Windows Phone user, but have used several and liked them fine - is it
really any more boring than the iOS home screen?

~~~
pearle
Yeah, I really don't get this line of thinking. The iOS and Android home
screens are about as boring as you can get. It's just a grid of icons.

~~~
mrj
My home screens also have widgets to show the weather, books I'm reading,
control various power options, media controls, etc.

It's not just a grid of apps, there is much more possible on the Android home.

~~~
majormajor
Widgets let you do what live tiles do, but the difference is really in the
discoverability. "Pin to start" is pervasive throughout the WP interface, and
live tile functionality is built into the "default" app launcher icons. Pull
up the location of my apartment in the navigation app? Oh hey, I can pin it as
a tile for one-tap "get directions home"? Sweet! Stuff like that.

On my Evo I never made nearly as much use of widgets because adding them to
the start screen was a different process from adding apps to the start screen,
and not integrated into the apps themselves in the same way as far as I
remember.

The other start screen thing I like about WP is that I hardly ever used the
stuff on anything but my main, front-and-central home screen on my Evo. I
usually just glanced at the home and then shut it off without swiping left or
right to my alternate desktops, unless I wanted to launch an app on one of
them. The WP "just swipe down to scroll through all the tiles" idea is really
convenient for helping to remember everything you pin there.

~~~
css771
The discoverability thing was maybe valid on Gingerbread and below. But with
ICS and above, the widgets are integrated into the app drawer, and there
should be no discoverability concerns.

~~~
tomflack
They are, but every app adds 3-4 widgets to that draw. There are so many in
there, in variations like small, medium and large size, that I never ever look
in it.

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againandagain
Put affordable 3D printing and thus production of small hardware enclosures in
the hands of honest and open creative people (that excludes Apple). Let the
electronic engineers design the boards, and the Asian factories mass produce
them. But let honest creative people design and produce the enclosures.

There are so many more creative people out there who could contribute to how
electronic gadgets look and feel but who can't because of the closed
prototype-->offshore mass production pathway, which has not changed since the
1970's.

Everyone can see that continuing to rely on Apple as the sole source of
creativity is not going to work.

~~~
bobbles
Do dishonest creative people make worse design decisions than honest creative
people?

------
hexagonc
I'm not sure what's new here. All the Windows Phones (7+) had a unique user
interface. The array of live tiles, the emphasis on a narrow array of primary
colors and the lack of UI customization always characterized Windows Phones.
Also, Nokia phones have been known for good build quality for quite a while.
Producing phones in colors other than black and white isn't new either.

Considering the limitations that Microsoft imposes on customizing the OS, I'm
not sure how many avenues for differentiation remain for the phone body
itself. There is only so much you can do with pure design. I think the more
radical and original designs are only enabled by superior core technology like
the size of the SOCs, batteries and other internal components. If you want a
smartphone as thin and flexible as a credit card, then you're going to need
advancements on a whole lot of fronts, most of which aren't within the purview
of the designers. I think that Nokia needs to bank on something more than just
phones that are outwardly a bit fancier than the competition. 4.7 inch screens
and Gorilla Glass are old news.

------
justinmk
> “Nothing else looks like this in a phone store,” he says of the 920. “It’s
> very, very, very organic. It’s almost super-organic,

Also wants to out-do Apple on reality-distortion :)

I am glad to see a company competing on visual/industrial design, where Sony
and Dell have failed miserably.

~~~
nooneelse
Organic things like trees and such are well known for their smooth glass
surfaces and straight edges. Be careful if you put one of these phones down in
a park, you might lose track of it among any nearby sticks. :)

This goes beyond distortion and well into redefinition.

~~~
randallu
"Organic matter" always makes me think of "fertilizer" or "compost" (ha ha).
But I do like the ID designwork Nokia have done.

I don't see how the new phones will change the game for them, though; they're
incrementally better than the old ones (apparently as is the software).

~~~
nooneelse
I quite like the way these phones look too. Nokia, when they try, does a good
job on such things, I think. It is just that nothing about them looks organic
at all. So it is absurd that someone kept using that term for them.

------
ksesong
A good follow-up to this article could be [this
review][<http://www.domusweb.it/en/design/portable-cathedrals>] of the
deceased Nokia N9.

~~~
f137
Thanks, excellent writing. I think I'll buy it after all :)

------
mechnik
<cones> += [rectangles]
[http://cabin9design.com/media/content/50274%20Pine%20Cone%20...](http://cabin9design.com/media/content/50274%20Pine%20Cone%20Wall%20Mirror.jpg)
a nice Scandinavian touch

------
jlarocco
I don't have a smartphone, so I'm not the target market here.

But to me, it looks like a yellow iPhone running Windows. What have they "out
designed Apple" on?

Are there subtle smartphone features I'm missing out on?

~~~
potatolicious
The Lumia phones really need to be held in the hand to appreciate the design.
There are a few salient points:

\- The colors are fantastic, the palette is incredibly vibrant without being
gaudy.

\- Despite the bright colors, the material feels high-quality and not
plasticky, which is the fate that usually befalls brightly colored consumer
electronics. The texture of the colored bits is really, really good - better
than anything HTC or Samsung is fielding, IMO.

\- The curvature of the device feels very natural in the hand, moreso than IMO
most phones - particularly Motorola phones that feels very front-heavy and
too-thin.

\- The glass front feels like glass, unlike, say, Samsung's phones. My Galaxy
Nexus's glass feels very distinctly plasticky, almost like a thin film has
been deposited on top (and I suppose it might actually be just that).

\- There's a comfortable heft to it that subtly reminds you that it's supposed
to be an upmarket device, similar to iPhone, and dissimilar to Samsung's
flagship phones, which feel _too_ light to be taken seriously.

~~~
Su-Shee
Couldn't agree more.

I already own an N9, which is a beautiful, tasteful piece of hardware in
itself - no plastic-y feel at all and I have a Galaxy Nexus, too.

Really, no comparison.

On top, I find the metro UI design very elegant and convincing, I'm actually
considering a Lumia. Can't wait to try one in my hands.

------
eternalban
Apple's real strength/genius was marketing.

~~~
yottabyte47
I don't know that you can separate marketing from making great products as
causes of Apple's success. I think both are needed.

~~~
eternalban
The statement was concise and clear. You are reading into it.

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markmm
I applaud their intentions but their latest effort just looks like any other
smartphone only plasticier.

