Nick Jones

Now that Christmas is over the pre-3GSM PR war has started in earnest. Various pictures and videos have been surfacing on the internet showing what purports to be a chunky wristwatch shaped 3G handset from LG. This is interesting; but it hides an even more interesting question: why is it that none of these cool iconic handsets ever come from Nokia?

Tiny wristwatch phones are unlikely ever to become mainstream products, the battery life is probably lousy and the user interface on anything that small will be painful. That’s not the point. Handset manufacturers build products like this for the same reason that Dodge built a 500 hp Viper or Audi builds the R8. Not because they will sell a lot, but because they show the world that the manufacturer has got what it takes to be a leader. Such products impress us and the reflected glory shines on the rest of their range.

To my mind Nokia hasn’t produced an iconic design in years. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard to argue with 40% market share, so they’re definitely doing something right. But handsets are basically fashion accessories, just like cars are as much about impressing people as getting from a to b. My suspicion is that what happens inside Nokia is they have lots of cool ideas, and then kill most of them because cold practicality sets in from either the production engineers who don’t want to difficult-to-manufacture gadgets, or the product managers who believe that if you can’t deliver 12 days standby time no-one will buy it.

So we see great concept designs like the “morph” but boring implementations. Sorry Nokia, but I think you can be too rational sometimes. Learn from Apple. Let your hair down and give us an occasional handset with “wow” factor.