For Nokia Smartphone Success, Hardware Design Isn’t Enough (Premium)

I am curiously excited by Nokia’s return to the smartphone market. But the newly-announced handsets are not enough.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re a great first step. Even without a true flagship-class handset, HMD’s new Nokia-branded lineup is impressive. Each device is beautiful and appears to be well made. And the prices are something to be cheered in this era of ever-more expensive smartphones.

But when I look back on Nokia’s attempted resurgence with Windows phone, I’m reminded why I was so excited by this company and its efforts at the time. And the handsets were only part of it.

Granted, those phones were a big part of it: Nokia brought first-class design to the Windows phone market at a crucial time and propped up the struggling platform. But over time, Nokia expanded its support for Windows phone beyond the actual phones and in doing so became a true platform partner with Microsoft. In doing so, it far exceeded the bounds of a typical handset maker.

There were four additional key elements to the Nokia advantage, as I thought of it, circa-2013:

Apps. Nokia created an incredible library of Nokia- (and then Lumia-) branded apps which further differentiated these phones from phones based on competing platforms as well as from other Windows phones. The firm’s apps took advantage of key Lumia hardware features and were either legitimately unique or at least expanded on the basic stock apps that Microsoft bundled with the OS. And they were backed by often-impressive services, most notably HERE, that were, for a time, exclusive to Lumia.

Camera. Nokia quickly established its high-end Lumias as having the most impressive camera optics in any smartphone, and it was able to outperform the competition over several years with handsets like the Lumia 920, 925, 1020, 1520, and Icon/930, each of which was superior to anything Apple or Google’s Android partners could muster at the time.

Accessories. Only Nokia offered a full range of color-coded and accessories for its handsets, with devices as diverse as chargers, wireless chargers, car chargers, headsets, speakers, and more. Nokia didn’t just toss out a few hardware devices, it created an entire ecosystem for its Lumia handsets that really elevated those products above the competition.

Customizable design. The first Lumia handsets utilized a durable but heavy unibody design that made it difficult for users to customize them. So Nokia switched to lighter and more customizable form factors in which a back shell could be swapped out for different colors or even new form factors that combined flip covers, wireless charging, and other functionality. This versatility and customization was a key differentiator for the platform, and users could even color-match their phones with the Nokia accessories they chose.

Obviously, it’s 2017, and this exact strategy won’t work today. (It didn’t work then, either, arguably.) But I see hints of the past in Nokia’s comeback.

For example, the first Nokia-branded HMD handsets appear to hit at roughly the same place the first Lumias did back in 2011-2012. That is, they are basically nicely-designed unibody products that run a fairly stock version of the chosen OS, in this case clean Android. This was the right choice, I think, but I’d like to see HMD/Nokia expand its horizons a bit—both with the handsets themselves as well as the surrounding ecosystem—going forward.

Looking over this week’s announcement, I see that things are moving in this direction. HMD says we can expect “a portfolio of Nokia accessories” that follows the design philosophy seen in the initial handsets. “The full Nokia accessories portfolio includes a range of headsets, portable and Bluetooth speakers, in-car chargers, cases and screen protectors,” HMD notes.

I know, baby steps. Like many, I’m just happy to see Nokia come back in this way, and I’ll take what I can get. But it’s hard not to immediately leap forward to a potentially better future, one that undoes the terribleness of the past and, in some small way, sets things right.

By which I mean, I’ve come to understand that it is Nokia, and not Windows phone, that is the most important thing to come out of that failed effort. And I’d like to see it not just endure, but thrive.

Can you feel it?