If you were a kid of the 90s, you might remember the moment you received your first Nokia phone. Topping up the credit to text your new bf, playing Snake, or sending over the latest polyphonic ringtone to your mate on the other side of the bus via Bluetooth. You might also remember pleading with your parents for the new update with a camera, or the one that had lights which flashed when you received calls.
In the 90s and early 2000s, it seemed that everyone in the world was receiving their first mobile, allowing the everyday person to send texts, chat on the phone and play Space Impact or Snake. And Nokia was the undisputed pioneer – it released the famed ‘brick phone’(3310) and the ‘banana phone’ (8810), which appeared in the 1999 film The Matrix. But as the world moved on to Motorola flip phones, Blackberries, and eventually iPhones, Nokia’s prominence faded, and – though quite harshly put – having a ‘brick’ became a little uncool, placing it in the cupboard to gather dust as a reminder of the past. Once the most influential force in mobile innovation, the company fell behind. So, what happened, and where did Nokia go?
Nokia’s origins stretch far beyond phones. Founded in 1865 by Fredrik Idestam in Tampere, Finland, the company started as a paper mill before expanding into rubber and cables. By the 1960s, Nokia pivoted toward electronics, creating Finland’s first radio telephones. By the 1980s, it had established itself as a leader in mobile communication with devices like the Mobira Cityman (1987), one of the first handheld mobile phones. The 1990s saw Nokia transform into a global giant, driven by the Nokia 1011 (1992), the world’s first mass-produced GSM phone, and the iconic Nokia 3310 (2000).
At its peak in the early 2000s, Nokia was untouchable. However, the company’s reliance on the outdated Symbian OS and its late entry into the smartphone market left it vulnerable to competitors like Apple and Samsung. By 2014, after years of struggling to regain its footing, Nokia sold its mobile division to Microsoft. Though no longer a leader in consumer phones, the company rebranded and refocused on telecommunications infrastructure, particularly 5G networks, while licensing its name for consumer devices.
But Nokia’s story doesn’t just end with reinvention. Its legacy now has a permanent home in the Nokia Design Archive at Aalto University in Finland. Spanning decades of innovation, from chunky mobiles to the minimalist devices of the early aughts, the archive offers a rare glimpse into Nokia’s evolution and creative processes. “Every large global company is trying to understand what drives people, how we see the world around us – but you don’t want to let anyone else in on this thinking. It’s so important, but it just doesn’t leak,” says Anna Valtonen, lead researcher and professor in a release. “The archive is one of the first opportunities we have to see the work that every organisation does behind-the-scenes.”
Freely accessible online, the archive houses over 700 curated entries, including sketches, photographs, presentations, and interviews. These materials span from the mid-90s to 2017, offering insights into Nokia’s ambitious vision. From early black-and-white screen devices to pioneering features like inbuilt cameras, location sharing and video calls, the archive captures a time when Nokia redefined the limits of mobile phones.
“What we had at the time were phones with black and white screens that could take calls and send a text message. At the time, we were asking: Could the mobile phone be something more? What are our wildest dreams for what a phone could do?” says Valtonen. Inbuilt cameras, QR codes, location sharing and video calls became a reality, which showed the company’s commitment to putting the people and their needs first – even if it didn’t work out for the better.
Yet, the archive reveals more than just technological milestones. As design historian Kaisu Savola observes, “When we started the project, the focus was on objects. As we began going through the material, we soon realised that it was about people.” Professor Guy Julier adds, “The archive, and the research going on around its contents, challenges the idea that technologies and their formations are hidden away in black boxes, only accessible to experts or the powerful. At the moment, there is not enough creative exploration around our options – like they were doing at Nokia – or discussion that really considered peoples’ different needs and concerns, not just the interests of global corporations or governments.”
So, will Nokia ever return to the main stage? Perhaps that’s not the question we should be asking. Rather than just looking back, the Nokia Design Archive is both a record of what was, and a tool to inspire new ideas about what technology can be in the future. As Julier notes, “The archive reminds us that technologies don’t magically come into being, but are explored, envisioned, prototyped and tested not just by designers, but as part of an enormous professional operation.” Valtonen adds, “In the early ages of Nokia, there was a genuine wish to understand people, how they live, what makes them tick. Now we’re at a similar point of societal transformation with AI. Nobody has concretised what it is yet, but we need to get people thinking about what could be.”
“The archive reveals how designers made vision concrete so that the cold could be properly explored long before they became a reality. It reminds us that we do have agency and we can shape our world – by revealing the work of many people who did just that.”
