[HN Gopher] Nokia Design Archive
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Nokia Design Archive
Author : microflash
Score : 147 points
Date : 2025-01-16 06:12 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nokiadesignarchive.aalto.fi)
(TXT) w3m dump (nokiadesignarchive.aalto.fi)
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| 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.
| doikor wrote:
| 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.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| _> 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.
| doikor wrote:
| These are not pulled from some random website. These are
| actual internal archives donated from Nokia (well Microsoft
| Mobile Oy these days)
|
| https://nokiadesignarchive.aalto.fi/about.html
|
| > The Nokia Design Archive is a graphic and interactive
| portal designed by researchers from Aalto University in
| Finland. It currently hosts over 700 entries, curated from
| thousands of items donated by Microsoft Mobile Oy and
| representing over 20 years of Nokia's design history --
| both seen and unseen. You can freely explore the archive,
| learn about designers' experiences working in Nokia and
| discover interesting topics surrounding design and mobile
| technologies.
|
| You can look at the uncurated collection at aalto
| university repo https://repo.aalto.fi/index.php?name=SO_b66
| a9391-dcf8-4399-8... (not sure if all of the materials
| digitized/online though)
| troupo wrote:
| How exactly would wayback machine allow you to have a
| collection of related items and their connection to each
| other?
|
| How do you go from e.g. Vision 99 (if you manage to find it
| in Wayback machine) to all related entires?
| https://nokiadesignarchive.aalto.fi/?node=C0027
| beAbU wrote:
| By using HyperLinks, embedded in your HyperText document
| written in HyperText Markup Language, that was sent to
| your terminal using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
|
| This is all 1960s era concepts.
|
| Literally any wiki style site will be a perfect fit to
| serve this content.
| troupo wrote:
| > By using HyperLinks, embedded in your HyperText
| document written in HyperText Markup Language
|
| Yup, linking millions of documents that you are required
| to sift through to combine the information you need
|
| > Literally any wiki style site will be a perfect fit to
| serve this content.
|
| And does wayback machine have this "any wiki"?
|
| Meanwhile the site in question is literally the wiki with
| hyperlinks you're talking about
| nabla9 wrote:
| Here:
| https://repo.aalto.fi/index.php?name=SO_d5d11763-74a5-40a7-a...
|
| This page is just front end to Aalto repository.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| Thanks
| emsixteen wrote:
| I feel genuinely stupid trying to use a website like this.
| vincnetas wrote:
| Here you go the 90's style web page with folder structure :
|
| https://repo.aalto.fi/index.php?name=SO_b66a9391-dcf8-4399-8...
| rob74 wrote:
| 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...
| troupo wrote:
| It's an internal Nokia design archive:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42723034 So there are a
| lot of internal designs and prototypes
| bni wrote:
| What a mess of a webpage. Probably there is interesting content
| there but the presentation made me close it down immediatley.
| reddalo wrote:
| Yeah, I don't understand what's going on.
|
| I was curious, but that mess of a webpage made me close it
| right away.
| sampo wrote:
| I think this is a traditional interface to the same archive:
|
| https://repo.aalto.fi/index.php?name=SO_b66a9391-dcf8-4399-8...
| nabla9 wrote:
| Can anyone find the Nokia touch screen prototype that came 7
| years before iPhone around 2000 but was rejected by management.
| throwaway03562 wrote:
| Found a sketch here:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Nokia/comments/vf8k58/nokia_history...
| pavlov wrote:
| 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.
| nabla9 wrote:
| 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.
| pavlov wrote:
| This archive is all about the R&D prototypes. Unfortunately
| the website makes it impossible to find anything.
| nabla9 wrote:
| No it's not. It's a design archive. It includes design
| concepts, some involving prototypes, but only in relation
| to design.
|
| Industrial design and engineering R&D are different
| things.
| Cloudef wrote:
| 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"
| Gravityloss wrote:
| 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.
| Fnoord wrote:
| SGI Irix was ahead of its time, and so were the Nokia
| Communicator.
|
| Battery quality/video quality wasn't up to par for mobile
| devices. Some DVB-T smartphones were released. Also, WWW
| wasn't made for touchscreen (where capacitive touch
| requires more modification than resistive).
|
| I'd say on the Linux-side, Maemo and the internet tablet
| (NIT) were ahead of their time, still limited given power
| efficiency, but better than Intel.
| qingcharles wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Nokia/comments/vf8k58/comment/m7gor...
| pavlov wrote:
| 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.
| neom wrote:
| 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!:)
| sizzle wrote:
| I agree the usability is a nightmare
| moondowner wrote:
| No mention of my fav Nokia of all time, the N9; also no mention
| of MeeGo and Maemo
| usagisushi wrote:
| 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...
| agawish wrote:
| 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.
| pavlov wrote:
| 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.
| jampekka wrote:
| N800 and other Open Source Software Operations' devices
| were not allowed to have cellular connection because of
| Nokia internal politics. N9 development was also hindred by
| the Maemo->MeeGo and the GTK->Qt transitions. And it was
| killed in its infancy in the Microsoft takeover.
|
| There's no denying that Nokia screwed up but it was mostly
| because of stupid politics, not technology.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Both Maemo and WebOS were better UIs than iPhone and
| Android, and eventually both iPhone and Android had pretty
| much adopted a Frankensteined combination of the two.
| Android's process "card" UI is _indistinguishable_ from
| WebOS, and I think it was designed by the same person.
|
| Nokia could have competed, they were just internally a
| mess. So, the board wanted to sell to Microsoft, and
| brought in a guy whose job was to wreck Nokia and shepherd
| the deal (and pretend like it wasn't intentional.) The N900
| showed too much potential, so I assume part of the wrecking
| was to force them to rewrite Maemo into Meego for the N9,
| which would be buried on release.
|
| The resistive touchscreen was amazing on the N900, and I
| have no earthly idea why people claim to prefer capacitive
| screens (my guess is a bunch of cheap Chinese products with
| cheap resistant screens.) They hate being able to point
| with precision without a special pointer, not having to
| wear special gloves or to take off your gloves in the cold,
| and a screen that doesn't shatter?
|
| You had an N900. How was the screen worse than any
| contemporary (or current) capacitive screen? I still an
| N900 as an mp3 player daily, and I still don't understand.
| Fnoord wrote:
| I had a N810 and a N900. Had a Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000
| before that, and an iRiver H340. The iRiver was
| fantastic, but heavy (due to HDD), single purpose, and
| offline. Also, 40 GB ended up being too little but back
| then it was _huge_. Nowadays, I use Airsonic Advanced [1]
| on my server with gigabit fiber. Client can be whatever,
| for example Android smartphone over 5G (won't saturate
| the gigabit fiber). Caching works well, as does it with
| other streaming services. I could also use Jellyfin on
| it. I self-host as much as I can, including agenda, but I
| cannot be angry at people who to Google, Apple, or
| Microsoft cloud because it Just Works (tm).
|
| On N810, GPS was meh. The keyboard was OKish although I
| believe Psion Series 5 devices had the better (bigger
| keys). If you got small fingers (esp. young people) you
| may like the smaller keys more or are OK with it. Back
| then, websites weren't written yet for capacitive
| touchscreen (responsive started to after iPhone release).
| As a DAP, I find N-series Maemo lousy. Turns out physical
| buttons are great on the move. But the beauty of the
| these Maemo devices as well as Sharp Zaurus was that you
| could use them for _so much_. In theory... cause in
| practice, you did not have 24 /7 internet (until N900 or
| if you tethered). Battery life was meh. Many websites
| worked badly. Storage was limited.
|
| > The resistive touchscreen was amazing on the N900, and
| I have no earthly idea why people claim to prefer
| capacitive screens (my guess is a bunch of cheap Chinese
| products with cheap resistant screens.) They hate being
| able to point with precision without a special pointer,
| not having to wear special gloves or to take off your
| gloves in the cold, and a screen that doesn't shatter?
|
| Resistive and capacitive each have their pros and cons.
| On N900, the gestures (like in Fennec) were innovative
| but still at infancy. N9 was better gesture-based, as is
| SailfishOS, though I never used either as daily driver. A
| resistive UI requires a pen, or large UI whereas a
| capacitive screen can be used at any time with finger
| (those 'special' gloves and pens are sold everywhere
| these days, and is only an issue when its cold). What was
| needed, for the mobile market to massively succeed, was a
| different UI than desktop: a user-friendly, capacitive UI
| with larger interface, and gestures.
|
| [1] https://github.com/airsonic-advanced/airsonic-
| advanced
| glonq wrote:
| Don't forget Elop! He hitched Nokia's wagon to Microsoft's
| horses and then rode it straight off a cliff.
| simultsop wrote:
| I wonder if the software empowering this data is an open source
| project?
| ddxxdd wrote:
| I just want to know how it was made. It looks like the entire
| presentation is encapsulated inside of a "canvas" tag.
| simultsop wrote:
| Also looks like, Nokia worked on this archive intensively
| starting 2023. Seems like a whole retrospective project.
| Amazingly inspiring.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| "low power" has zero hits. I guess low power is implied.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| This archive more about the aesthetics design, not technical
| stuffs.
| ianbooker wrote:
| https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_ebb0df1b-4db3-4b3c-ad...
|
| Is this a Nokia Watch or rather a Nokia Cuff?
| __jonas wrote:
| 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
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| The interface is a mess, but the data is phenomenal.
| bemmu wrote:
| "My First Nokia" designs were funny in this presentation:
| https://repo.aalto.fi/uncategorized/IO_47c69f41-6009-4520-9e...
| imp0cat wrote:
| This means also, that the expected lifetime of a phone is more
| than 20 years. It must be updateable and durable.
|
| Impressive! More companies should think like that.
| morsch wrote:
| 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| 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.
| secondcoming wrote:
| RIP back button
| v-yadli wrote:
| 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!
| maxglute wrote:
| Needs an imgur with 800 photos.
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(page generated 2025-01-16 23:01 UTC)