Hot on the heels of the recent announcements of the Nokia 920 and new Motorola Razr smartphones, Olof Schybergson, CEO and co-founder of service design consultancy, Fjord, offers comment and analysis on the launches of these devices, design implications and broader implications that these will have on this competitive market, which is set to see the iPhone 5 launch today.
The recent smartphone launches from Nokia and Motorola offer a glimpse into the likely trajectories of these two companies, along with some interesting insight into their wildly divergent views on design.
The Nokia 920 shows that the company is getting back to its roots, focusing on design as a differentiator, and demonstrating that they care about what people really want. Meanwhile, with its new Razr line, Motorola is flashing its tech chops powered by Google: the ultimate temple to technology. But with Apple set to unveil the next iPhone this week, the jury is still out on whether either company has done enough to make people think twice before buying their next smartphone.
Nokia’s playful, people-focused design
Nokia has done a lot to make the design of the 920 stand out. They’ve combined a playful look and feel with some of the most compelling features on the market. Their approach shows they’ve really thought through what people want when it comes to a smartphone.
Even from first glance, Nokia’s design sensibility is apparent. The large screen is a good move, and undoubtedly will help with shelf appeal. The device’s bright hardware, colours and shapes of
also set them apart from the competition. Nokia has placed a major bet on photography, offering arguably the best smartphone camera on the market. The camera was designed to make the most of how people really use their smartphones – often indoors and in low light, and often with a hand that moves. Finally, the collaboration with Fatboy on the wireless charger is particularly sweet – making the phone seem more like a little person as it lies on its colorful “pillow.”
From a software perspective, Nokia has worked hard on getting the details right. They’ve gone to pains to match the “live tiles” of the Windows Phone 8 interface with the color of the hardware, showing that Nokia’s ID team and the UI team from Microsoft are in lockstep. Nokia has a powerful heritage in mapping, and their maps implementation will be at least on par with Google’s offering. Nokia is pushing innovation with City Lens (inspired by Fjord’s earlier collaborations with them), attempting to make augmented reality a practical and usable feature. The integrated software experience really shows that Nokia is focused on doing what’s interesting for people when it comes to their smartphone.
Motorola: Design for the geek set
At first glance, the hardware design of Motorola’s resurrected Razr is completely indistinguishable from the sea of grey and black smartphones we’ve seen for the last few years.
Like the Nokia 920, the Razr also has a large screen, but the rest of the phone is uninspiring. This is a huge turnaround from Motorola’s heyday when the first Razr broke the mold in industrial design.
With the new Razr, technology has clearly triumphed over design. When the original Razr was first launched, it was a triumph of stylish hardware, but with very poor software within. This latest Razr incarnation offers the opposite – powerful software housed in a boring shell.
Motorola has been quick to highlight technical features like the speed of its network connection, battery life, and battery size. They are proud of their tech prowess and roots.
From an aesthetic perspective, the real insult of the Razr is the design of its interface. Its home screen is an ugly mess, likely to only appeal to a male geek audience. By promoting features like better multitasking and an improved unlock screen, Motorola is pushing narrow features rather than innovation. The Razr is a powerful phone with immense capabilities, but it is not made for most people.
The Apple Effect
We’ll soon see if Nokia’s design focus or Motorola’s tech focus can manage to put a chink in Apple’s armor. The iPhone 5 will certainly pull in new customers, and existing iPhone users are likely to remain locked in to the Apple service-app-phone ecosystem. Impressive tech features aside, Motorola and Google will need to do something more meaningful if they want to appeal to a broader audience. If Nokia can recover from its botched launch, the investment it has made in designing a phone with soul will likely pay off in the long run.
What these latest launches from Nokia and Motorola have revealed is likely to be evident in their future launches too – Nokia will aim to differentiate with design, while Motorola will focus on tech based differentiation.
By Olof Schybergson
CEO and co-founder
Fjord
http://www.fjordnet.com/
