Future Lumias: Bigger and smaller screens, thinner bezels says Nokia’s head of design

Nokia doesn’t like to talk about unreleased products (unless they’re doing teasers), but Vodafone have managed to get Nokia’s head of design to spill a bean or two.

We called for bigger screens. We got some bigger screens in the 920 and co, but we obviously want more. Last year, I spoke to some design people about this need for larger screens (back in Finland in June 2012) and they were quite adamant on not simply ‘following’ the likes of Samsung. Well, there’s definitely a market for phablets, what with 35M last year being sold (?) with some predicting about 40-60M to be sold this year.

http://blog.vodafone.co.uk/2013/07/22/the-future-of-lumia-nokias-head-of-design-spills-the-beans/

Apparently, Nokia now sees why people would want bigger screens and want to offer consumers that choice. Yay.

• They note that with imaging being important at Nokia, the camera does define a certain required footprint.
• “Personally? I like a product like the 925 which is big, but that I can still use with one hand. But I can totally see why people might like bigger displays. At Nokia we like to give people some choice as to how they want to use the product”  – Nokia’s head of product design, Stefan Pannenbecker.
• You need to understand how people use their phones, and when you know that, you can figure out how people will use their phones in the future, too.
• We will see bigger screens with less bezel! Hurrah! “We try to minimise the footprint of the product by optimising the way we build the screen and the frame around it”. How about some on screen WP buttons eh? They eat so much space, and 99% of people ( I made that up) hate the search button.

We already know to expect the launch of the largest screen Nokia to date, at 4.7″, the same as the HTC One. Much larger than the 4.5″ screen of the 920 (which is huge btw, I picked up my N8 last week and woah, the 925/920 screen is so big in comparison :p). Interestingly, that device enters at the entry level range, as the Nokia Lumia 625. An interesting move from Nokia to continue pushing high end experiences to affordable prices (hence how the likes of the 620 got high praises all around, some saying it’s what every entry level smartphone should be, and why the 520 is selling so much.

Rumours are that future lumias will come in the 5″+ and even 6″ range. Please do. 🙂

Category: Lumia, Nokia