According to an article from the Finnish newspaper Kauppalehti Optio, Nokia’s design head Marko Ahtisaari and his team are following up the award-winning design of the N9 with a phone that will revolutionise the user experience of phones. No clues have been given so far other than the user will not need to bend down and physically push their finger on the screen, which is intriguing. Time will tell whether this will be a natural experience like the swipe motion employed by the N9 and, to some extent, Windows Phone.
Ahtisaari stated in the interview that Apple’s offerings, the iPhone and iPad, resemble a poorly designed home because to go from one room to another requires going through the front door – in other words, to leave one place and open anywhere else requires pushing the home button. The user experience was adjusted with the release of the N9, which required only a swipe to leave one place and be back at the home screen, but whether this new phone will continue with this theme remains to be seen.
Ahtisaari states in the same article that he is spending about a third of his time working on a Nokia tablet – presumably running Windows Phone, but who knows, we could see a MeeGo comeback yet, or even the astounding bendy “kinetic” phone displayed last year, where interactions are all done through tilts and bends. Whatever route they take, it should be one to watch with CEO Stephen Elop repeatedly stating that as the iPad is the only successful tablet on the market, Nokia will not be entering the fray until it has a product that can do well. For this to happen, it would either need to be completely revolutionary or run Windows 8, clearly and explicitly telling the consumer market why that is beneficial. After all, with the purpose of a tablet being to have a more portable laptop, a well-placed Windows product could clean up being the only tablet to offer full desktop usability. As the iPad is really a glorified iPhone with the same crippled multitasking, and the Android offerings are largely painful to use, a new product that gives consumers the ability to do everything they would on their home PC but on the go could be exactly what a tablet is all about. And if Nokia used the concept design in this post’s image, it would certainly stand out from the crowd.