Techforrmative YouTube channnel
Slate phones were almost unheard of until Apple launched the first iPhone in 2007. This started a revolution in the tech industry where keypad and QWERTY phones instantly became a thing of the past, and slate phones are all the rage. In other words, the phone industry we know today wasn’t all that sleek, monotonous, and boring until the first iPhone. In fact, before 2007, we are being served with phones that are literally in all shapes and sizes with Nokia Corporation being one of the biggest contributors.
In the background, there is a non-stop experimentation of what the future cellphone form factor would look like. This is not a time for being boring, and typical. Nokia almost had the world’s first multi-touch touchscreen phone in 2004 (probably also the most expensive), three years before the first iPhone came out, if not for its scared management who thought it would flop. A testament to how competitive the design department was working during the time. This clamor for fresh ideas resulted in some of the weirdest, quirkiest, and arguably, ugliest phones to ever exist.
A US-based YouTube channel called Techformative has a small albeit ever-growing collection of released and unreleased prototype phones from different phone brands. But what stood out to me (obviously) is his collection of Nokia phones. From Nokia 7280 (AKA Lipstick phone) to N-Gages, to the weird Nokia 6800, to the awkward and arguably ugly Nokia 3650, and some Nokia prototypes like the Nokia N8 and Nokia Vela, Techformative gave us complete access to his Nokia collection.
The Techformative YouTube channel has amassed over 12,000 subscribers from his 513 uploaded videos. The guy is not just a Nokia fan as he is also just as passionate about other brands. More so with prototype phones that only a number of people know about. As someone who shares the same passion for mobile technology, I understand the desire for “what would have become” phones. But he also collects non-refurbished Nokia phones that are fully authentic from the case down to the internals.
I mean, this is the guy who has a decade worth of notes about mobile technology, and the guy who has an authentic fully retail-sealed Nokia 3310/3990 which he ought to open on the phone’s 50th anniversary. It’s not all that easy though. According to Techformative, getting a Nokia prototype is a struggle as it was Motorola that dominated the US market prior to the iPhone.
One of the first interesting phones he showed me is an orange Nokia N8 prototype. Unlike the retail Nokia N8, the prototype shows a slightly different design and buttons. First, the prototype has three buttons on the front. At its back, it has a kickstand which also acts as a bumper to prevent the phone from wobbling when placed flat on the table. Both phones, however, are built on the same anodized aluminum monocoque case although with a completely different board as per Techformative.
What is so striking about the prototype is the difference it has with the retail Nokia N8 as per imaging. It is known that the Nokia N8 was created as a testing ground for what could later be known as the PureView technology. The retail version came with a built-in ND filter and a Carl Zeiss Tessar …….
Source: https://nokiamob.net/2022/07/20/the-strange-world-of-nokia-with-techformative/