The fundamental design of the Apple iPhone has not changed since its release. It is a rectangular touch screen with a single physical button below, a handful of tiny buttons and data port scattered around the edges, a camera lens on the back, a headphone jack on top and that's that. Since its release, virtually every manufacturer has adopted the same essential design for their entire product range.
Nokia fought hard against that trend. Its first competitor against the iPhone was the N95. That was everything that the iPhone was not. No touch screen. Numeric physical keyboard. Slider form factor! Fat. Media transport controls. 5MP camera with flash. GPS. Card slot. 3G. Infrared port.
The N95 was announced a few months before the iPhone so it was not strictly a reaction to it. However, it was released after the iPhone had been announced and it looked like a defiant finger raised towards Apple. It had all the technology that the iPhone lacked and not a single concession to the quantum leap in user friendliness that the iPhone had taken.
Over the next 6 years, the iPhone ground remorselessly on through 5 iterations. The essential form factor and layout of controls and ports has barely changed once.
During that time, Nokia threw a range of different ideas at the market. The first follow up to the N95 was the N82, an old-fashioned candy bar phone but lighter than the iPhone and with the first xenon flash on a cameraphone. The N96 was a variation on the N95 theme but added DVB-H TV.
Apple either did not notice or simply refused to play the Nokia game. The iPhone 3g stayed with the 2MP camera, did not offer flash and could not shoot video. It added 3g but moved to a plastic construction that was utterly non-descript.
It took nearly a year for Nokia to come back with its answer: the twin flagship offering of the N86 and N97. The N82 was firmly in the N95 bloodline with an 8MP camera, loaded with multimedia options and resolutely no touch screen. The N97 had a slide out QWERTY keyboard and touchscreen. It was like nothing else on the market.
The iPhone 3GS bumped up the camera to 3.15MP. Not only did Apple not care about matching the 8MP of Nokia's flagship cameraphone, it was not even going to bother with the 5MP which had become standard on all of Nokia's mid-range phones.
Nearly a year after the release of the 3GS, Nokia released the Nokia N8. In my opinion the most well-rounded phone Nokia ever made, it was Nokia's first credible attempt at an all touch phone. It had a bewildering array of technology: USB to go; HDMI; DLNA; two charging methods. Physically, it may not have been everyone's idea of beauty but there was nothing remotely like it made by anyone. It said "OK we will do an all touch phone - but we will do it our way." It was built like a cold war submarine.
The iPhone 4 was announced and released (Apple having done away with the huge gaps between announcements and release that Nokia seemed to like) between the announcement and release of the N8. It represented the only significant change in the iPhone's form by the introduction of camera like metal detailing around the edge and glass back and front. It introduced the first 5MP camera to an iPhone, arguably the first serious camera on an iPhone.
Nokia took a year to respond with the N9, a solid virtually unbroken losenge of bright colour. This was a massive rejection of Apple's black glass and metal design ethos. It was universally recognised as a gorgeous design.
Straight after the N9 Apple launched the iPhone 4S, finally lifting the iPhone to the 8MP level and introducing Siri but otherwise making no significant changes.
The Lumia 800 that followed the iPhone 4S was not Nokia at its innovative best: it was essentially a re-run of the N9. Soon after, however, Nokia delivered what we now know was its last truly individualist product, the Pureview 808. The 808 said "Nyet!" to everything that went before. It was big and bulbous with no precursors. No hint of the iPhone's rectangles but not a follow up to the N8 or N9 either.
We now know that there was nothing really new to come from Nokia after the 808. All of its flagships since then have been variants on the N9.
Now that Nokia has been absorbed into Microsoft we can be fairly sure that really interesting form factors will not be coming out of Nokia again. Thanks Nokia for what has been.
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